Lloyd Hall's Blog, page 3

Inspiration - Lighthouses

In one of my last posts I talked about trolleys and why I included them in almost every one of my stories. While trolleys are one of my big inspirations, another inspiration has been lighthouses. Not only do I love including them in my stories, the stories themselves often revolve around a lighthouse somehow. I was looking through my drafts of story ideas from the early stages of this story, to unfinished podcasts and I’d say about 70% of them have something to do with a lighthouse.

   

There’s something about lighthouses that has always intrigued me. They’re tall and magnificent to see in person, with giant spiral staircases inside for you to climb. But despite their unique architecture, they’ve always seemed a little lonely to me. Most that I visit these days are just museums, almost shells of their former selves. I can’t even remember the last time I visited one that was still operational.

I think part of the reason they’ve always felt a bit lonely was because of a book that was read to me growing up, The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge. This children’s book is told from the point of view of the Jeffery’s Hook Light, a small lighthouse on the Hudson River in New York. The lighthouse watches as the George Washington Bridge is built above it, and feels insignificant. Every time I see a lighthouse decommissioned and turned into a museum I think of this story. And I think it’s also why I like putting lighthouses into my writing. To see what other purpose can be given to lighthouses once they’re no longer needed to guide ships away from dangerous shores.

   

One of the other reasons I love lighthouses so much is because of my Grandmother. When I was growing up she had a house down in the Outer Banks right down the road from the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. One of my favorite childhood memories was going to see them move the lighthouse inland. As a kid I had assumed that they would just flip the lighthouse on its side and move it that way. I would never have imagined that they would just lift it straight up and move it a mile inland. That memory still sticks with me today.

   

Ever since then, I’ve taken as many opportunities as I can to go visit lighthouses. Luckily I’ve always lived near the water so I’ve never been too far off from a lighthouse or two. I even got a chance to visit a lighthouse on a little island off the coast of Connecticut that’s only open two days a year (if even that). Whenever I visit I new place I always like to check and see if they do tours of any of the local lighthouses.

   

I feel like every time I step inside of a different lighthouse I’m filled with inspiration for stories. I can instantly imagine characters visiting there, or even living inside of a lighthouse. It’s why I keep a photo album with postcards of vintage lighthouses. And why all of my stories will probably feature a lighthouse, even if they’re set thousands of light years from the planet earth.

   

Development - Kill Your Darlings

Throughout the development of Wardenclyffe there were so many ideas that got scrapped along the way. Sometimes they ended up scrapped because they didn’t fit the story anymore, other times there were just too many ideas for one story. There have probably been well over 50 versions of the first chapter before the one you see now.

The original story was very slow-paced and a lot of the scenes felt like they were just filling space. Bit walking along old abandoned trolley tracks, taking a gondala ride across a large lake, walking through a field of sunflowers. Visually the scenes were very interesting, but there was very little plot. One of the biggest changes came from the change in format of the story itself. Originally it was written as a screenplay which played on visuals a lot more. But when converting it over to a novel, many of those early visuals went right out the window - including a hand-drawn map of the world of Wardenclyffe.

   

And with every revision of the story, there were little pieces removed. Bit no longer begins the story laying under a rusted red truck repairing it, there’s no underwater casino to climb through in Highland, no more traveling Ramen cart lit with lanterns. And while removing these things was right for the story, it’s hard to forget them completely.

This is especially true of the story elements that I got overly attached to. For example in early drafts, the entire entire city of June was essentially just a a massive library. Interconnected buildings in a frozen landscape, each building containing different genres of books. Admittedly this was heavily inspired by a local indie bookstore and while it may have been cut from this story, it’s absolutely getting saved for something else. Just because it doesn’t fit this story, doesn’t mean it’s not still a worthwhile idea.

   

So that begs the question, what happens to all these story ideas when they’re cut? Well for me, there’s a little file on my computer where all of these abandoned ideas go after they’re removed. This idea was inspired by something I heard while listening to The Good Place: The Podcast. The writers talk about how they have a document where they put all their abandoned story ideas and it helps make it easier to remove these ideas from the story. Because this way they’re never completely gone, just tucked away. And sometimes these ideas come back later, or get used in other story ideas. I’ve found this so helpful for making cuts to my story since it’s hard to get rid of parts of the story that you’re really attached to.

And it’s not just the writing that changed either, I have early sketches of covers for the book and interior illustrations that I had drawn myself. Before deciding to ask for help with the artwork, I had intended to do everything myself and I’m so glad I changed my mind on that. My early sketches could never measure up to the incredible art that I ended up with in the book. So now those old cover sketches and rough drawings of maps of my story’s world will just get tucked away as mementos.

   

But in the end I think my book is stronger for having cut all of these things out of it. And even though they’re no longer in the story, I think they still needed to be written and cut to get the story to where it is now. Maybe some of these ideas will even find a way into book 2 of the Wardenclyffe Series!

Development - Plotting

To say that Wardenclyffe has gone through a number of different writing styles would be a complete understatement. It’s gone through so many changes and revisions that when I look back at the original drafts I hardly recognize them. The spark of writing for me came when I hung up my hat as a fashion designer. I was looking for a new project to throw myself into and thought it would be fun to make short films.

I began by signing up for the website Masterclass.com where I enrolled in Aaron Sorkin’s class on screenwriting. If you’re ever looking to write something I could not recommend this class more. It took me through the basics of how to outline and plot out my story in depth. Every time I go to work on a new project I begin by revisiting this class. In my first lessons I plotted out some rough story ideas. Two of the finalists were a story about a mime who wanted to star in a musical, and another about an android searching out a lost power source. I outlined and wrote a number of script pages for each before eventually deciding which story I wanted to make.

   

Ultimately I decided to go with the story about the Mime since it felt like it would be easier to actually film. I wrote the script and got about halfway through filming before realizing it just wasn’t really clicking. So I took that script and stuck it in a drawer somewhere. As I put that script on the back burner I remembered the other story about the android. I dusted off the old script and gave it a read to see if there was anything there.

Something about that story kept sticking with me. I’d put the script down and wouldn’t be able able to stop thinking about it. So I decided to scrap the idea of it being a screenplay and re-write it as a short story instead. I also had the good fortune of joining an incredible writing group, the Splotches where I was able to bring my story and work on developing it with other writers. One week I brought the story in as a screenplay, the next as a short story, then as an epistolary style novel but ultimately none of those other styles fit just right.

   

The screenplay just didn’t suit the story, the short story was too short for how much information I wanted to include, and the epistolary style was admittedly all over the place. So I shifted gears and started outlining the story as a full novel. I was introduced to my new favorite writing program, Scrivener, which helped me easily plot out my whole story before I jumped in and started writing it.

Whenever I’m writing my stories I like to have as much as I can plotted out. That way I’m never having to write from the beginning to the end of my story all in one go, I only have to make it from one plot point to the next. It’s much easier knowing that I don’t have to look towards the ending the whole time, sometimes I just have to look to what’s happening next in the chapter and how I get there.

   

I do hope that someday I’ll have a chance to revisit some of those other story ideas and see what they may turn into down the road. Who knows, maybe there’s still hope for a short film about a mime wanting to star in a musical, or a tv series about space pirates. Until then, I’ve got to get back to editing Book 2 of the Wardenclyffe Series.

Inspiration - Trolleys

No matter what I write, there always seem to be a couple of things that end up in every story. To quote a favorite meme of mine “I just think they’re neat”. One of the things that always comes back to me is trolleys. And no, I’m not talking about shopping carts, I’m talking about those old-fashioned railcars. 

   

I grew up in a little town called Short Beach which in itself was a truly unique town. And one of my favorite parts was about a 4 minute walk from my house was this old set of trolley tracks. These tracks ran through the marshes and woods into the next town over. They used to run through all the towns in the area but with the decline of the use of trolleys, most of the old rails were torn up so only a stretch of them in the marshland remain. 

My family and I used to walk along these tracks and I remember trying to balance on the trolley rails and walk along them like a tightrope. During the warmer months they would bring out the old trolleys and drive them back and forth along the stretch of tracks. You could stand on the platform and wait for one, hearing the bells chime in the distance as they approached. I always loved going out and riding the trolleys through the marshes.

   

And I think my love of the trolleys (along with my love of trains in general) was why my mom decided to host a birthday party of mine on the trolley. I invited all of my friends along and the party took place inside one of the vintage trolleys, picking us up on the old wooden platform and sitting among the old wicker seats of the trolley opening up birthday presents. The trolley travelled along the tracks and dropped us off at the old trolley yard where we got to tour all of the other vintage trolleys and learn about their history. I sadly don’t remember what I learned that day but the impression still stuck with me. 

   

I moved away from Short Beach in high school but over the past couple of years I’ve kept ending up living nearby again. And every opportunity I get, I like to drive out and walk along the trolley tracks again. The trolley museum that maintains the trolleys even started hosting events like photography nights where you could ride the old trolleys out into the marshes at night and take photos of them. Which is part of why, when I was filming a short film I had written, I decided to ask to use one of the trolleys in the film. They happily obliged and, though the film was never finished, there are some great behind-the-scenes photos from working on it.

   

Despite all the changes in my life I keep ending up back at those same trolley tracks. And I think that’s the big reason I keep putting them into my stories. Something about the trolleys always comforts me. So every time a character rides the trolleys there’s something that just feels right about it. And while I may not put a trolley in every story I write, I sure as hell think about it every single time.

   

Welcome!

Welcome to my Blog! I’ve started this to be a behind-the-scenes look at how my first book, Wardenclyffe, came to be. I’ll be talking about everything from how I plotted out the early stages of the novel to where I found the inspiration for some of the things within it. It’s also a glimpse into my life as a writer and some of my own personal stories.

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