WORLD CREATION 101

At this time of the year, when everyone is thinking about family and hopefully peace on earth and good will to man, it's important to remember how horrible war truly is. 

American soldiers are fighting in different parts of the world. And unfortunately it seems like there will always be one war or another.

That's an important theme in "THE MOONBEAM RIDER," the Young Adult novel I'm writing. Which brings me to WORLD CREATION. You hear this term a lot in Hollywood. But what does it really mean? 

World creation is when you create a wholly unique world to populate with your characters and their quests. It could be, for example: a world overrun with zombies who answer to their undead vampire masters, set in a post apocalyptic Tokyo (actually, that's something I'm planning on writing in the not too distant future). 

I want "THE MOONBEAM RIDER" - which is a world only a few days into our future - in a setting reminiscent  of World War II. I want it to be a real good verses evil story. Hitler and the Nazis attempting to take over the world kind of evil. And since this is a science fiction tale, what would be better than aliens from another world attempting to take over our world? I want this story to be complete with traitorous human collaborators, selfless patriots, and all the nations of the earth joining forces to become an Allied Earth.

This world is a world where you're no longer allowed to be a kid. When you turn eighteen - male or female - there is a mandatory draft in effect. It's a romantic vision of war with acts of cowardice and heroism. This world contains occupied territories, ground fighting across war-torn lands and people living in ruins, under the harsh rule of aliens who use humans to do their dirty work and put the humans who won't submit into work camps. 

And... we're fighting for all the marbles. Because if the aliens win, they will decimate eighty percent of the human population and use the rest as slave labor, while they colonize the Earth.

This is the world my protagonist NOA ASH -  a powerless sixteen year old girl - finds herself in. Then, by a twist go fate, she is given the keys to unimaginable power (my secret for now) and can have an impact on this war. The question is, can she rise to the occasion?

I'm moving slowly but surely forward on the novel and plan to have the cover art and an audio recording of the first three chapters produced for your entertainment in early 2015.

Please keep following my exploits writing what can best be described as THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK meets WAR OF THE WORLDS.

  

FINDING YOUR HEROINE'S VOICE

Well, I'm currently a little shy of 13,000 words on THE MOONBEAM RIDER novel. I'm about fifty pages in and starting on chapter three. The complete book should come in at around 70,000 words. That's about 260 pages. 

Once you have a strong grasp of the story you are writing, the beginning of any undertaking to write a novel is mostly about finding your hero's - or in this case heroine's - voice. 

I'm writing about NOA ASH, a sixteen year old adolescent female, a very complex personality to scribe about. I am also writing my first novel in the first person. So I am literally writing in my heroine Noa's own words. 

It's a good thing that I've spent a lot of time around teenagers (I'm a former gymnast who still spends a lot of time in the gym working out and working with young gymnasts). When people become adults, they often forget how young people think and perceive the world. 

But, like writing any character, it takes a certain amount of fumbling around before you dial in on who that character is and what they will and won't do. I've now gotten to the point where I feel I truly know Noa Ash.

I'm also trying to be careful to make Noa a genuine girl. I've flipped through some Young Adult novels written with female leads and often I can tell when a male author has penned the book.

For a genre novel (science fiction/action adventure), Noa is a very unique creation from many of the characters in other genre fiction novels. She is biracial (the product of a Black father and white mother). Noa also starts out overweight. After the death of her parents, she is sent to live with a grandmother she has never met on remote and scary SHADOW BEACH,  where Noa begins to surf the dark waters. By the end of the second chapter, she sees her reflection cast in the water and realizes she has not only lost weight, but become fit.  

I still have a long way to go. But I promise to start moving forward on the book cover art, so that I can have something visually dazzling for all of you. 

Plus, once the first three chapters are tightly polished, I will have a voice actress do a audio recording of them, so you can hear Noa Ash in her own words.

Aloha.

Carlton Holder