Why isn’t the meat section of the grocery the best place to get attacked by monsters?
What happens to a mysterious Peruvian woman that winds up the only healthy person on a ship landing in the Philippines?
How do you balance the plotting with the pantsing?
We found out the answers to all that and more when we sat down with author, storyteller, screenwriter, and computer whisperer, Vince “VC” Marello.
It hasn’t all been monsters in grocery stores and uncovering historic mysteries. Vince tried venturing into a lucrative medical career, but found that wasn’t igniting his passion to explore the strange What Ifs and cutting edge questions out there.
He found a superpower in film production and screenwriting. The whole world shifted as Vince embraced something that lit him up. In retrospect, it was a natural fit. Between a love of writing Dungeons and Dragons campaigns and a fascination with Friday late-night horror and Sci-Fi reruns, this craft had been calling to him for his entire life.
Things got exciting when Vince landed a job helping an historian convert one of her books into a screenplay. It centered around the women who influenced the men who made it into the history books. She taught him that anything found in history can be put anywhere. The future, another planet, the possibilities are only limited by your creativity.
That’s how the patchy true story of a woman in the late 1500s became something more on the pages of a screenplay. It was known that she left Peru. It was known that she married the ship captain. It was known that she was on the ship when it landed in the Philippines. But there were huge gaps that never fully explained why everyone else on board that boat besides her was knocking on death’s door while she was vibrant and healthy.
Vince filled in the What Ifs and crafted a historic romance screenplay about this baffling occurrence. It even received an Honorable Mention in Writer’s Digest. Unfortunately, life got in the way a bit with market factors and writers’ strikes. While that manuscript was shelved before filming, it didn’t stop him from continuing his journey to being an author.
Writing under the pen name VC Marello, he’s independently published two books and is working on the third and final installment in The Hell Gate series. Starting in a grocery store that becomes infested with monsters, Vince leaned heavily on his experience working those customer facing roles and wasn’t afraid to let new characters reveal themselves as he went.
In the writing world, you hear about the Panters (fly by the seat of your pants, no planning) and Plotters (creating strong outlines that are followed). Every writer has a different approach that works for them and Vince leans heavily into Plantsing (some initial planning, but filling in or creating details as you go along).
His family may think it’s weird when he’s arguing out loud with his characters, but fellow writers understand. That kind of camaraderie and support is something Vince sought out in several writing communities. He found it in the Broadleaf Writers Association.
To hear more from this interview, check out the full video recording.
Check out his books and connect with Vince VC Marello on his website, Instagram, and X.
We appreciate chatting with Vince and many other writers in various stages of their journey in the Broadleaf community. You’re welcome to join other folks who understand your passion and struggles. There is more info about that over on broadleafwriters.com/become-a-member/