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.
