L. C. Scott

I lived in my imagination when I was a kid. Whether I was playing detectives with my best friend at school, building cubbies with my little brother or sitting alone with my action figures I was always making up stories. Then a few teachers through Primary School seemed to like my creative writing projects and their encouragement really set me on the right track. I was fortunate enough to know exactly what I wanted to do from a very young age. Newcastle is a particularly creative town. There’s a strong music and arts scene there and the beach setting is incredibly inspiring.

I love to plan my books out before I start writing. The plan will shift and adapt along the way but I like to know where I’m headed before I start. My initial concepts usually come from somewhere random, like a song, a dream or a conversation with friends. Then from there I’ll start figuring out who the characters are and how they will react to the problem caused by the initial idea. That usually gives me a strong starting point to write a plot outline which I then break down into chapter summaries. Once I have that I can’t start writing the first draft.

My editing work is on a freelance basis, so I have the luxury of being able to take time off in between jobs to focus on writing. When I’m working I try to fit my writing in after hours and on weekends, but I prefer to take off a few weeks at a time to fully immerse myself fin the writing process if I can.

I always build a playlist while I’m coming up with ideas for a new story. It ends up turning into a sort of soundtrack for the book that I can listen to whenever I need to get into the head space to start fleshing out ideas. Sometimes songs inspire characters. For example, Mia from Wellsville was inspired by Green Day’s Jesus of Suburbia. I actually came up with her character before I came up with the actual concept for the book. It was 2020. I was in London, trapped alone in my flat during lockdown and the lyrics “city of the dead, at the edge of another lost highway, signs misleading to nowhere,” really hit. I suppose the entire book came from those couples of lines.

While I’m writing, film scores help me pinpoint the right tone for a scene. Spotify has a playlist for every mood. I also have a nasty habit of name dropping songs in my books as a way of letting the readers get to know the characters a bit better through their music taste.

I touched on this a little above but a lot of it came from the feeling of isolation during lockdown. I was in London, one of the biggest cities in the world but I still felt trapped and isolated. Conspiracy theories were running rampant at the time and there was a lot of talk about flat earth and simulation theory. Wellsville was kind of my way of creating my own little conspiracy theory, one that incorporates a bit of flat earth, simulation theory and a bunch of others into one plausible idea. One night at the pub I was talking with some friends about the possibility of us all living in a simulation and suddenly the thought popped into my head that we could all stored in a tiny hard drive floating through space. The second I had that idea I knew what my next book was going to be.

A lot of the settings are inspired by Europe. Olympus, one of the main settings of Wellsville is an amalgamation of a lot of gothic European cities. I also love to incorporate elements of Greek Mythology into my writing, particularly when naming people and places.

Listening to film scores helps me visualise my story like it’s a film. Some people say my work reads more like a film script than a novel which can sometimes be seen as a criticism, but I don’t really perceive it that way. My background is in film production and editing so that’s just how my imagination works. I want to know exactly where every character is standing in a scene, what they’re wearing, what their facial expressions are, how they communicate without words, and I want the reader to know those things too. That can sometimes be difficult to communicate in a text format and It might be unconventional to focus on those details but I can’t help but include them.

I always wanted to write a TV sitcom… but then I realised I suck at writing jokes. I could come up with a good concept and story, but the laughs just weren’t there. So instead, I decided to focus on the things I was good at and hope that my sense of humour would shine through in my voice. I don’t go out of my way to inject humour into my writing. Sometimes it just feels natural to what the characters are doing or saying in a scene. A lot of the time humour naturally comes through in the voice of the characters. But at no point do I try to write jokes anymore. Trust me. If I did they would fall flat.

I think the main thing I want people to take away is that everyone is the main character in their own story. You can dislike someone for being different to you, but until you’ve actually spent some time in their head you never really know who they are and what’s going on in their lives. If you put surface level judgement aside and take the time to listen, you may actually find some common ground and realise you could be great friends. All the high stakes sci-fi stuff is just set dressing at the end of the day. Empathy and understanding are the real themes of Wellsville.

I’ve mostly been influenced by authors from my youth. K.A Applegate’s Animorphs series was a big one for me, as well as anything by Morris Gleitzman. Also, Goosebumps taught me to end every chapter on a cliffhanger.

For me the characters have to feel real. They need to have relatable problems and motivations. This goes for both the protagonists and antagonists. I think as long as the characters are grounded in some sort of reality then you can get as batshit crazy with the other stuff as you want. But whatever world you build must have rules that are clearly communicated to the reader and you absolutely have to abide by those rules consistently, otherwise it’s very easy for the reader to get lost or lose investment.

Not everyone has a flexible work schedule like I do. But I didn’t either when I first started writing. You just have to really love it and spend a large chunk of whatever free time you have writing. Set goals. Even 500 words a day is something. Figure out how long it will take you to reach 80,000 words at that work rate and then you’ll have a solid timeframe to work with. Breaking things down like that makes the insurmountable task of writing an entire manuscript feel way more achievable.

Not really. No rabid fanbase yet. Just Instagram scammers.

Go to a café. Order a coffee. Check my emails. Sit on Youtube for an hour. Order another coffee. Check my emails again. Youtube for another three hours. Realise the café is going to close in 45 minutes. Smash out a thousand or so words in a panic before they kick me out. Works every time.

I’m currently working on the Wellsville sequels. The next three books are planned out and I’m in the middle of writing book 2. There’s also an older project called Afterlife that I’m hoping to dust off and rework at some point in the near future. It was my first baby so I’m really hoping it gets to see the light of day eventually.

I’ve been using Allauthor for around four months. My experience has been nothing but pleasant so far.