David Murphy

In my last blog on the ODDs I talked a little bit about how David Murphy, my main character, is not the same person as David Cowpar. I wanted to go into that a little bit further today.

When I first began to write the ODDs I wrote it as if it was me in that situation, facing those things. At that time though the ODDs was not the name of the book, it was called 'David, the Demon Slayer' and had a very Buffy spin-off feel to it, which, at the time, was what I wanted it to have.
David, the third Demon Slayer is David Cowpar. He is pretty much me in outrageous situations, having to be brave, take charge and be in command and be responsible for the lives of those around him.

In a large sense DtDS was a way for me to cope with my life. It provided some escapism from the things my teenage self was putting me through. In the ODDs world I could be whoever I wanted, I could be the hero I could not be in real life; where I am not very outgoing, rather shy and the like. David Cowpar, in the original stories of DtDS is what I wanted to be, the person who did what was right no matter the cost, the person who made mistakes and learned from them, the person who paid for their mistakes and took responsibility. All something I was not between the ages of 12 and 16.

It is interesting that at 16 I rewrote the second draft of the first ODDs to change the concept from David the Demon Slayer to David the Demon Eliminator. This moved it away from my Buffy comfort zone and towards what it is now. At the same time in my life I had become a little bit more comfortable with myself (though this did not last) and so in the first version of the fourth ODDs we see movement away from Limerick, away from my life, away from my needing to be the hero of the story. Editors note Also third and fourth ODDs book spoiler alert. Skip past the italics if you don't want those books ruined: In the fourth book David isn't the hero. It is in this period that I think my brain started dealing with my own failures as a person and so David went through that as well. His failures are a lot more visible though. The end of the third book sees a victory but the destruction of Limerick and the death of a lot of people close to him. This has an effect on him that pushes him towards alcohol and eventually he loses the ODDs to someone else who is sub sequentially murdered by one of David's supporters. This is a spiral if ever there was one.

It wasn't until I lived in my own house (Number 2) and knew exactly who I am that I could go back and properly re-write the ODDs. This time I wanted it to not focus on the one character as it is hard to tell a story from one perspective. I have elements of that in the ODDs still; the characters can think and if I include their thoughts, which I often do, I italicize them. So it might look like this.

"You will meet your doom if you go that way," the guardian said to David.
Many things have tried to introduce me to my doom before, David thought, but none have been successful as of yet. You'd think doom was avoiding me or something, he decided to decline offering this thought to the guardian and opted for:
"I'll bear that in mind; but either way, I have to keep going."

but it is less about the one character and other characters can have thoughts as well. So in college David Cowpar got scrapped from the ODDs storyline and was replaced with David Murphy, who is largely based on Jason Kelly, a guy called David Murphy and a sprinkling of me... I would put them in that order. But he is living a wacked up version of my life from when I was 12 until when I was 16.

Another big change is the age. I wrote what was going on in my life at 12 so David was 12. Now he is 16 in book one, making him a lot older in the situations he is in (besides school, which has been updated appropriately). This also gives distance between me and David Murphy.

The second book will be a large departure from who I am and who David Murphy is. He goes other places, he becomes a rebel, he causes trouble for the Guiders, he takes over some stuff, he becomes more powerful and is more recognizable as the boss. This change, though not out of character for David Murphy, is what prompts me to feel closer to some of the Possibles like Robert, Tom, Anton and Romeo, who are now the underdogs that David was in book 1.

Finally when I put myself in the ODDs world I often still think of myself as David the Demon Slayer. It's like I'm a concept of the eventuality of the story line. Which is a fascinating thought; in my own head I'm only a scrapped concept because David Murphy isn't me. He is better. David Cowpar, in his world, could not compare.