No character traits

Sorry about the delay of this week's post. Before accusing me of being lazy, please allow me to say that I am that I've been trying to continue the robot-free streak I've been on. Moreover, the post I'm trying to write has undergone tens of changes, in my feeble attempt to convey the proper message since, no matter how many times I wrote it or re-phrased it, it ended up meaning a completely different thing altogether. In the end I gave up and posted the most recent version of it.

All characters have at least one trait, even if it's not mentioned specifically. As long as they do, think, say something, a trait will stem from there. Even in stories featuring otherwise mindless creatures, such as zombies, the character around which the action is centred must have a trait: be it that they're compassionate, merciless, active, humorous, they must have something that drives them through the story.

As a result, I was wondering whether it would be possible to write a story where the main character has no traits. Just like the woman in "B.D. în alertă" :„nici tânără, nici bătrână, nici înaltă, nici scundă, nici grasă, nici slabă” ("neither young, nor old, neither tall, nor short, neither fat nor thin"), they can't be defined by anything. I've spent months thinking whether there was already a type of character like this. After all, zombies are supposed to be mindless and robots are supposed to be soulless. However, in all stories I've come across, main character zombies had to have even an ounce of brain or soul and robots, although cold and soulless, were programmed to do actions that were either immoral and/or cruel or empathic and/or helpful. 
Would a main character that can't be defined through anything be dull? Would they be mysterious? Isn't being mysterious a trait in itself? How can it be avoided? Would it be possible to make a captivating story even with such a character?

The journey of a lightning

Last night there was a long-awaited storm, complete with wind and lightning and rain! All that gave me an idea (so blame it on my sleep-deprived brain again >.>)

From a scientific point of view, "Lightning is a massive electrostatic discharge between electrically charged regions within clouds, or between a cloud and the Earth's surface".

But from a human point of view it's more complex than that. Since the beginnings of our existence, we've been fascinated with that fire falling from the sky. We worshipped it, we cursed it, we revered it, we hated it. 
And how could we not? For on every journey to our land, the lightning brought us something:

• Glass and subsequently windows (XP, Vista, 7, you name it)

Image from an awesome article about fulgurites.

• Light

Image from Daily Mail, check this out for more gorgeous images of lightnings

• Fire

This gorgeous photograph

• Electricity

Image from a great article

• Life

Image from here

Those were two bad jokes in a row. I'm sorry, I just couldn't help it.
Anyway, my point is that lightning, from a human point of view has always been a mythical instrument of the Universe to... well... punish us, most of the time. (Though I did read somewhere an old folk tale about the the fact that every time  the lightning strikes, a devil has been struck by a saint. I can't remember anything else, other than the fact that it was complicated.)

However, the lightning is almost always seen as a tool rather than an entity. So, how about a story about the lightning? I was thinking about its journey. How does it come here? Why does it come here? Where from? Who is this lightning? 



P.S. I found this blog while researching for this entry and... well... I know what I'll be reading for the next few days.