Chuck Chaykin: Bounty Hunter
I thought I’d play around with my fun space adventurer, Chuck Chaykin, again. (The original Chaykin sketch can be found here.)
There’s a long proud line of these sorts of characters. Han Solo, Malcolm Reynolds, Heath Huston. These characters and their stories are undeniably fun and some of the most endearing heroes in science fiction. They’re mercenary, but cuddly. They are simple to understand, with pretty clear motivations, but they’re also layered in a way that makes them complex and interesting despite that. They have a nobility about them that fans can innately sense. Above all, they are relatively ordinary people who have the capacity for greatness.
And they usually have some cool spaceships.
That’s basically what I’m aiming for with Mr. Chaykin and his cute telepathic comrade, Val. Set in a space western-style universe, they have adventures hunting down robot pirates and protecting small towns from tentacled bandits. I may sit down and write their first adventure together as my story for this year’s Writer’s Ink themed collection.
It’s an interesting puzzle to work out what words to use to describe Chaykin and Val’s mental conversations. Should I just replace every “said” with “thought” ? What happens then when they really just think something to themselves? Or should I simply establish that they’re conversing telepathically and then use standard dialogue tags (this is what I’m leaning toward)? It’s something I’ll have to work out. Anyone have any recommendations of books with lots of telepathic interaction?
So here’s another quick Chaykin sketch, in which our heroes find themselves in dire straights! Just a few hundred words.
