Winston Smallwood
Harlow and the Chalkwalker is really an amalgamation of ideas. I mean, to be fair, what story isn't? I guess I do not recall what the original idea even was or if I even had one single idea. When I was younger, I would only imagine certain isolated scenes of adventure and action or high emotion. I would latch onto those emotions. I usually daydreamed about the scenes while listening to music. I had no context of what was happening or who the characters were, really. It was just the moment, and I saw those moments vividly in my imagination.
Raice was the first character I imagined. I was about 20 or so at the time. He was my Swiss-Army Hero, so to speak, and followed in the vein of most heroes folks from my generation grew up watching in movies. He wasn't much of a person. He was a just a guy who got things done inside these isolated scenes.
Some years later, I started to take the craft more seriously. I guess I was about 30 at the time. I started to think about what eventually became one of the major plots in the franchise (no spoilers, sorry.) And from there, I started bringing in more characters: Devereaux for one. Eventually I thought, "I don't have any girls in this story. I need a girl." And that's where Zascha came in. Her role was originally quite different.
After some more time of thinking and brainstorming, I soon realized that the "story" I was making wasn't really about Raice--it was about Zascha. And once I figured that out, everything really started to change. I got excited about it. I think that's important. Your protagonist needs to be someone you are excited to write about. I think if you're excited to write it, people will be excited to read it. I don't know how it works, really, but I have to believe that the things that need to be conveyed will in some way come through if you're paying attention.
Anyway, the world was really something I struggled with a great deal. I knew I wanted something familiar but different. I knew I wanted certain elements: something like a desert and advanced technology. I played around with a bunch of different ideas--some that are really just quite crazy. The world was something I didn't quite nail down until much later, and I suspect it won't be fully realized until the next few books when we start to explore it a little more. The first book is pretty centralized. The word I like to use to describe the world is "Retro-Feudalism."
I really just have this image in my head: a man stands at the precipice of a cliff atop a high mountain. He overlooks the sun-burned, desert realm. In the distance is a great futuristic civilization which resides in the shadow of a mountain, and the sun peeks over a distant mountain range painted black by silhouette. The man is very worn, and he carries a gun and a sword. It's something I think a lot about--that. How do you reconcile the use of ancient-craft melee weapons in a world which uses guns and has technology? For me, the use of the sword provides for the story and the world a sense of Fantasy, and it keeps things a little mysterious and wondrous. He's a hero in the most traditional sense. I'm trying to get that tone, that world.
Originally, I was going to make this a Graphic Novel--I started this project about five years ago or so. I have training with illustration, and I thought I made a better visual story-teller. But, that sort of endeavor was beyond me to tackle alone. Anyway, I created about 60 pages of rough pencils, and the content of those pages are more or less a single chapter of the novel.
As a Graphic Novel, I had run into a problem: "How do I visually convey these people speaking to someone who isn't physically present in the scene?" I thought about radios or cell phones, but I needed something that would allow for multiple people to speak in the same conversation, naturally. And so, the Holoworld was born on the page. I hadn't written it into the script--it never even occurred to me until I ran into that problem on the actual drawing page.
I could go on and on, but the point is, most of the ideas were something that came about over a long period of time. There's probably a story behind each one.
Raice was the first character I imagined. I was about 20 or so at the time. He was my Swiss-Army Hero, so to speak, and followed in the vein of most heroes folks from my generation grew up watching in movies. He wasn't much of a person. He was a just a guy who got things done inside these isolated scenes.
Some years later, I started to take the craft more seriously. I guess I was about 30 at the time. I started to think about what eventually became one of the major plots in the franchise (no spoilers, sorry.) And from there, I started bringing in more characters: Devereaux for one. Eventually I thought, "I don't have any girls in this story. I need a girl." And that's where Zascha came in. Her role was originally quite different.
After some more time of thinking and brainstorming, I soon realized that the "story" I was making wasn't really about Raice--it was about Zascha. And once I figured that out, everything really started to change. I got excited about it. I think that's important. Your protagonist needs to be someone you are excited to write about. I think if you're excited to write it, people will be excited to read it. I don't know how it works, really, but I have to believe that the things that need to be conveyed will in some way come through if you're paying attention.
Anyway, the world was really something I struggled with a great deal. I knew I wanted something familiar but different. I knew I wanted certain elements: something like a desert and advanced technology. I played around with a bunch of different ideas--some that are really just quite crazy. The world was something I didn't quite nail down until much later, and I suspect it won't be fully realized until the next few books when we start to explore it a little more. The first book is pretty centralized. The word I like to use to describe the world is "Retro-Feudalism."
I really just have this image in my head: a man stands at the precipice of a cliff atop a high mountain. He overlooks the sun-burned, desert realm. In the distance is a great futuristic civilization which resides in the shadow of a mountain, and the sun peeks over a distant mountain range painted black by silhouette. The man is very worn, and he carries a gun and a sword. It's something I think a lot about--that. How do you reconcile the use of ancient-craft melee weapons in a world which uses guns and has technology? For me, the use of the sword provides for the story and the world a sense of Fantasy, and it keeps things a little mysterious and wondrous. He's a hero in the most traditional sense. I'm trying to get that tone, that world.
Originally, I was going to make this a Graphic Novel--I started this project about five years ago or so. I have training with illustration, and I thought I made a better visual story-teller. But, that sort of endeavor was beyond me to tackle alone. Anyway, I created about 60 pages of rough pencils, and the content of those pages are more or less a single chapter of the novel.
As a Graphic Novel, I had run into a problem: "How do I visually convey these people speaking to someone who isn't physically present in the scene?" I thought about radios or cell phones, but I needed something that would allow for multiple people to speak in the same conversation, naturally. And so, the Holoworld was born on the page. I hadn't written it into the script--it never even occurred to me until I ran into that problem on the actual drawing page.
I could go on and on, but the point is, most of the ideas were something that came about over a long period of time. There's probably a story behind each one.
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