53. HUGH HOWEY: Creating the books for Apple TV's "Silo" and the changes he likes most

If you haven't already started watching Silo on Apple TV, what are you waiting for? Season two is in progress now and it is intense. Hugh Howey wrote the books "Wool", "Shift" and "Dust", which are the basis for this popular series starring Rebecca Ferguson and Common. In this conversation, we're talking about his writing process, the changes the show's made that he likes, and what he's most excited for you to see.

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Bookshop:
Wool (Special Edition)
Silo Boxed Set
Wool (book one)
Beacon 23
Sand
Halfway Home

Amazon:
Wool (Special Edition)
Silo Boxed Set
Wool (book one)
Beacon 23
Sand
Halfway Home

Transcript

00;00;03;08 - 00;00;26;09
Speaker 1
Hi and welcome to the Literary Hype podcast. I am Stephanie here, literary hype woman. And today's author conversation is one that I'm really excited about because I came about this a little bit backwards from how I normally find people to talk to. I usually read the book and then go into watching the show or movie, but this time a friend really recommended that I check out the show Silo and I quickly became obsessed.

00;00;26;09 - 00;00;49;01
Speaker 1
And so of course I had to go back and start reading the books and those books are Will Shift and just that is the main trilogy by Hugh Howey that the new TV show on Apple TV is based on so I got the chance to talk to Hugh at New York Comic-Con, and we discussed the books, we discussed writing, we discussed season two and teeny tiny little details to look for in Season two so that me further ado.

00;00;49;01 - 00;00;50;26
Speaker 1
Here's my conversation with you, Howie.

00;00;55;25 - 00;01;08;22
Speaker 2
Welcome to Literary Review. Ahead of the season two of your books being turned into a TV show next year. What's it like for you to see your books have this huge resurgence? Thanks. That's just.

00;01;08;25 - 00;01;25;01
Speaker 3
Crazy. I know when I was writing the first few years, right, not knowing it was going to read it and that over a decade later, it's still in bookstores, it's still discovering it's surreal. It's like beyond that.

00;01;26;27 - 00;01;34;28
Speaker 2
What was it like for you to see this show come to life and what you dreamed up being acted out on the screen?

00;01;35;08 - 00;02;05;12
Speaker 3
Honestly, it didn't make sense at first. I knew what was happening in the UK when I worked in the writers room we had scripts, but I've seen scripts before doesn't mean it's real. And I heard people were building stuff in the UK and outside of London. I was like, Gets that kind of make sense. And then flying that for the first time and seeing this entire studio being transformed to the people working in construction design and paint everything to make sense.

00;02;06;00 - 00;02;23;00
Speaker 3
That was the first time I was like, Oh my gosh, this is real. And what does that mean? The main studio with the Silos paper, which is just one of the things that people that weren't on this show and that's what we got.

00;02;23;15 - 00;02;28;07
Speaker 2
This is a great detail on this that you just really love.

00;02;28;25 - 00;03;03;24
Speaker 3
I love this signage. There's one person who would come up with all these amazing signs that you see in the background. A lot of the London sets about like turning up the lights to power and as a great British turbine, like the spring, you know, they call it even that we noticed in the maps in the background for the silent level's almost like the London to maps and so I love those new details.

00;03;04;02 - 00;03;11;01
Speaker 2
So for anyone who hasn't seen the show, see the trailer, read the book, what is the core of the story.

00;03;11;22 - 00;03;30;25
Speaker 3
Of the story is this group of people, the last of humanity, live underground. And they've been there so long, they have no idea how they got there. You know? You know, so it's trying to peel back this onion of conspiracy and this mysterious, passionate about the situation.

00;03;31;10 - 00;03;42;07
Speaker 2
It's such a fascinating story and so little changes. Are there any changes to the show that you were like, Oh, I wish I would have thought of that.

00;03;42;11 - 00;04;07;19
Speaker 3
Oh, so many, because, you know, I'm just one person writing dozens of print, but other creators one thing that this is kind of an accidental success. I heard the short story it a standalone and then the rest of the novels were surreal. To me. But after so I didn't have a chance to put like Monster literally in the room the other in the book.

00;04;08;08 - 00;04;19;10
Speaker 3
It's one thing you get to do with the show is go to some flashbacks and show them working together. And that was like public service, but like a service to me just to get to see those characters interact.

00;04;19;25 - 00;04;23;17
Speaker 2
What's your favorite character interaction on the show versus the.

00;04;24;01 - 00;04;48;03
Speaker 3
Part? I think regarding Juliet, which is just much more once in the second season, there's a lot of stuff that happened in the books that it just seemed something new and exciting for me. That's where I, I don't want a story that just does a page by page translation. We're going to tell the same get the heart of the story, right?

00;04;48;03 - 00;05;02;24
Speaker 3
Do the characters right and then let the story unfold in this way. Just so many times I'm seeing something between Lucas and Juliet that's not independent, and I'm like, That's right. So I didn't have to come.

00;05;02;24 - 00;05;14;26
Speaker 2
Up with that. So often fans get really upset when the show or the movie doesn't exactly follow the book. So talk a little bit about how different mediums affect this story in particular.

00;05;15;14 - 00;05;42;00
Speaker 3
Yeah, I think I'm more relaxed with adaptations and then a lot of other people and even fans like I, I'm a fan of other works that have different versions and different community. I think it's great when you tell our stories. If you have my wife, I tell the story. The same thing that happened yesterday. We have different versions of them and both are really best examples and stuff like that.

00;05;42;19 - 00;06;03;19
Speaker 3
I think storytelling really has started with a profession where we sit around a campfire and I would tell a story and I would respond to the audience was telling me that someone in the audience would pick up that story and retell it later in the moment, and this is how it came about in The Odyssey and circling and all these great, incredible stories.

00;06;04;09 - 00;06;16;19
Speaker 3
So we're just kind of doing that. So the comic books, especially at Comic-Con, and we keep telling stories like these really magic superheroes all the time and.

00;06;16;19 - 00;06;17;04
Speaker 2
More to them.

00;06;17;14 - 00;06;30;07
Speaker 3
The multiple yeah. And the multiverse is kind of like a cheap way out of that, you know, the contradictions and introduce embrace the contradictions. Thanks for joining the way of stories told you.

00;06;30;20 - 00;06;37;04
Speaker 2
When you were writing this and the mental pictures of these characters. How does that line up with their casting.

00;06;37;18 - 00;06;58;26
Speaker 3
There were certain people I had in mind when I was writing it to me. I would say like, this happens as a fan of other works. Once you've seen who they cast, that just becomes the character. It starts to overpower whatever we have in mind because our imagination becomes only so strong the visuals were much more powerful.

00;06;59;00 - 00;07;02;25
Speaker 2
I took the original place that was.

00;07;03;24 - 00;07;21;02
Speaker 3
The original spark was a combination of a couple things. One was the audience that the get, the idea that we didn't see the true shape of things, that we were able his analogies are when it came, there's a fire behind us.

00;07;23;03 - 00;07;45;22
Speaker 3
I'm going to shout as you try to do, and I think was an untruth but then I also noticed the word more time to read the book. We were starting to get the gist of our reality, which means that a bunch of those shouted something like, What is this doing to us that we don't have time to see?

00;07;46;03 - 00;08;02;09
Speaker 3
So we just assume whatever you see on the screen for you and this very deep phase for you, CGI, that all that great. And so I combined those two movies into the monster. It started to, you know, look like just that. You know.

00;08;03;07 - 00;08;10;22
Speaker 2
I think technology has changed so much since you wrote it. If you go back and write this again, what would you change?

00;08;11;04 - 00;08;47;13
Speaker 3
I'm terrified of that idea, but I think a lot of it back you can't even be successful. It could be I would mess it up every time you see that right, people, which is how you feel. You occasionally have to do it and say, I read this for myself. Group that was serialized for small number of years, and I don't even so yeah, if I went back and tried to change it really.

00;08;48;19 - 00;08;56;09
Speaker 2
So with this being a big and trying to move forward with that, what is the monster like for you and how do you deal with it that create.

00;08;57;13 - 00;09;34;17
Speaker 3
The tricky now is I just assume I'm writing this considering myself and that helps to write things that kind of upbeat like away from the obvious or not. So even when I was writing this after I saw Wolves and that was already a big part of that part of my cellar. So I would shift. I decided to take a departure, not just like pick up from the last page, which is the natural tendency, but then obviously know you just are kind of recycling your content.

00;09;35;10 - 00;09;55;08
Speaker 3
So I keep doing like the last couple of things. So I published more short pieces when I come out and when one was like totally interesting, you know, it was sort of like things I'd never done done a few children's pictures still created without really.

00;09;55;19 - 00;10;18;17
Speaker 2
Mentioning something out there in my book. And he wrote You Die a little tribute to you. What was it like for you to write that he was writing that and the like? It's not in front of me. In the book, everyone was like, Oh, you have this book? It wasn't like something like that.

00;10;19;17 - 00;10;52;20
Speaker 3
At the time. I was really active in some writers, and when up at some of the accounts of and say, Hey, I wrote it as a favor to my fiction website, I was like, Yeah, actually, you can just put it on the Kindle and sell it to money like at the time and to this day, absolutely. I just need to make a living at that so I wrote it as a person to publish this fiction and, you know, on it.

00;10;53;11 - 00;11;26;04
Speaker 3
And so other people in some senses are like, Yeah, sure, I just had a very open, anti-choice means of writing this one. So Michael is one of the people who I think you brought maybe some of the same information that and yeah, anything to help other writers at just hope for this role in together like no one should be jealous of someone's success or someone else selling a lot of books that's getting people reading is my real competitor is what we've been doing.

00;11;27;00 - 00;11;41;10
Speaker 2
That's a really interesting I think it is there is so much that could take the tension. And I really saw that research books in general during the pandemic where everyone was kind of looking for books that are important to culture.

00;11;41;13 - 00;11;58;28
Speaker 3
Yeah. And we need to have an important reason that it's selfish of me because it's my hobby. Someone who works in film, things like what people are interested in is not a stone center attitude towards the thing that sustains it, but that's actually.

00;11;59;16 - 00;12;07;14
Speaker 2
A symbiotic relationship right now. Like the book, pretty good, the movies. But then people should read the books, get the reading, kind of just keep creating for them.

00;12;08;02 - 00;12;34;20
Speaker 3
It's a golden age of entertainment. I, I think you should appreciate how many people make a living just entertaining. Just like me. I just, you know, have been raising crops in front of each other and protect each other and help each other and as we're getting, as a wrapping up that, like when I'm on target, is into a movie where people are making a living up and it's operationalization and artistry part of that pyramid, and you should celebrate them.

00;12;35;05 - 00;12;38;13
Speaker 2
What are you most excited for people to see in season two?

00;12;40;00 - 00;13;09;00
Speaker 3
I so I just got the I saw the rough cuts a month ago and just got the parking cuts like last few days. And so my wife and I are like polishing off a couple of episodes and I watch the season and there are some surprising turns that are so good that I read all the scripts. You have been on set watching The Daily News we put together, and I would watching the season for the first time as the final cuts.

00;13;09;11 - 00;13;27;03
Speaker 3
I was like, wait to be changed. Don't. No, no, that person's perspective is that the twister so convincing that I thought it was crazy. And then when it finally, like, comes together the way I remember it, I was like, Oh, that's right. We, like, take this to Paul. Everybody didn't even I fell for it like it was supposed to happen.

00;13;27;10 - 00;13;38;24
Speaker 3
So I think people are going to be in a panic I'm and I'm like, I just can't wait to see all the players and you know, what's going to happen, like sometimes.

00;13;40;13 - 00;13;42;21
Speaker 2
What's your favorite weight to build? Thank you.

00;13;43;14 - 00;14;10;12
Speaker 3
I think honest dialog. I don't know why I get a lot of compliments about my I like the natural but I'm writing in my head. I hear their accent, I want to hear woman's voice. So I just my voice in my head purely in person and in person. I hear people the way they talk. And I think the best way to protect you is to have very different characters and very different leads.

00;14;10;28 - 00;14;19;07
Speaker 3
On the page communicating. And that person always comes naturally to me. I read on your website.

00;14;19;07 - 00;14;27;21
Speaker 2
That you wrote recently about a recent trip to drought and the chain of inspiration. A little bit about the inspiration.

00;14;29;03 - 00;14;58;23
Speaker 3
Coming out it's funny, I could just press about, but I just got to like, what am I going to write to inside of? It's, you know, the reason I wanted to writing this, I knew you inspired me. I never thought I would inspire other and now I'm like, I've been on this long enough. I've seen the people that I was inspired by the change in five years.

00;14;58;28 - 00;15;37;09
Speaker 3
You have an inspiring right to point something out, which is much and that's what we have to do. We have to like it as we say come in with the intention, Hey, I already know my writing is history and we can be totally against that. So acknowledging that that's how we do it. But I would be serving it with these books versus our garden and all these other Neil Gaiman, Stewart Emerson, I mean, the words are different, right?

00;15;38;05 - 00;15;44;24
Speaker 3
And I want to be in that. And it's something that we have to keep in mind.

00;15;48;00 - 00;15;58;08
Speaker 2
There is a special edition of Sitting Around talking a little bit about what it's like to see it with all the shiny, pretty painted wooden the decision to make an inversion.

00;15;59;04 - 00;16;10;17
Speaker 3
It's gorgeous. I should have I have a all the time about it, just a drop of how they they're going to have copies here. Both of them oversell. But we've had some shipping delays and.

00;16;10;25 - 00;16;11;28
Speaker 2
Harper Alley has a couple.

00;16;12;07 - 00;16;13;20
Speaker 3
Oh, they do. It was.

00;16;14;13 - 00;16;14;28
Speaker 2
One of the boots.

00;16;16;04 - 00;16;40;05
Speaker 3
Of the reports you've seen. Yes. There's a beautiful I don't think we've announced it yet, but we're going to do it one more show to shop. So and we see them all together. I just I mean, bless your heart, that means people are like, just read on they can go back and destroy any one copy of the picture.

00;16;40;20 - 00;16;54;21
Speaker 3
So instead of just reissue, you don't go back. You said, give me something really special. This is gorgeous. The sun's shining. This seems so my yellow pages. I wrote about it so.

00;16;54;25 - 00;17;03;27
Speaker 2
It's so shiny. And I was like, I know I just bought the book, but after reading it digitally and I was like, All right, look.

00;17;06;00 - 00;17;17;00
Speaker 3
Let's do this. Like, you can go wrong with the books and things. And that's true. I mean, even with the stairs, this side just keep pointing just a little bit.

00;17;17;23 - 00;17;19;14
Speaker 2
So the design people knew what they were.

00;17;19;14 - 00;17;20;00
Speaker 3
Doing. Yeah.

00;17;22;02 - 00;17;26;12
Speaker 2
Wasn't the only show that you have going on based on your work? Pretty much.

00;17;27;00 - 00;17;56;07
Speaker 3
Completely. I love it was amazing. So to work on I get to see some of the gym class, which I think you can access to the show, and you have just a beautiful set of scripts cast. And then you got to tell what a short novel, the two seasons of TV. So we got to stay on this journey and tell like a much bigger and more interesting story and we just have to.

00;17;57;09 - 00;17;58;10
Speaker 2
See what's next for you.

00;17;58;21 - 00;18;17;23
Speaker 3
We're going to work TV shows writing all the time because I've got so siloed short stories I'm going to collect. And when they're released between seasons, is we're going to keep working on this show about the total story from any four seasons you get the most.

00;18;17;23 - 00;18;21;19
Speaker 2
Realistic look feels like the first season was just the first time.

00;18;22;05 - 00;18;22;15
Speaker 3
Yeah.

00;18;23;18 - 00;18;25;03
Speaker 2
So speed things up a little bit.

00;18;25;13 - 00;18;34;08
Speaker 3
It's the season to be the second half of one, and then the I shoot the dust and tell them two seasons.

00;18;34;08 - 00;18;38;28
Speaker 2
Very interesting and looking forward to that. Is there anything else I want to talk about?

00;18;39;06 - 00;19;04;01
Speaker 3
Oh, well, the shout out to us, we wrote two books that are less and a the change other since but if you haven't read in other words she's just telling she's a British writer and I don't get to see each other every night. But Eleanor Taylor took her first up come into.

00;19;04;21 - 00;19;08;03
Speaker 2
The last question because of literary hype what book three.

00;19;09;09 - 00;19;36;14
Speaker 3
So really interesting so I'm some of the killings right now I think the writing is just so big that is pretty small so I was like little different this time. It was the time for is like tomorrow, tomorrow morning. So know everyone's read at this point and there's still looking for the people who haven't picked it up it's.

00;19;37;23 - 00;19;40;10
Speaker 2
I thought it was the pick of the month at Barnes Noble.

00;19;40;25 - 00;19;44;07
Speaker 3
I put it off for like and year. It was telling me to read it and then I.

00;19;49;04 - 00;19;50;16
Speaker 2
Let's be clear on that.

00;19;50;24 - 00;19;53;02
Speaker 3
It's not going anywhere. It's not all about it.

00;19;53;02 - 00;19;54;17
Speaker 2
It's like using.

00;19;54;20 - 00;19;55;03
Speaker 3
This one.

00;19;55;17 - 00;19;56;10
Speaker 2
You stole from me, but.

00;19;56;24 - 00;20;02;10
Speaker 3
I love it. I'm going to let it boxes here. Let's give that to people.

00;20;03;03 - 00;20;05;14
Speaker 2
Reading books, buying books and talking about those are all.

00;20;07;00 - 00;20;07;22
Speaker 3
Different hobbies.

00;20;10;04 - 00;20;11;25
Speaker 2
Thank you so much for taking time to talk about.

00;20;16;10 - 00;20;36;06
Speaker 1
Thanks again to you for hanging out with me at New York Comic-Con and talking about all things Wall, Silo and other TV projects. If you'd like to get your hands on any of these books as well as some of the other books, check out the links in the show notes for you. And if you enjoyed this conversation, don't forget to subscribe to the literary podcast.

00;20;36;12 - 00;20;41;08
Speaker 1
Give us some stars and share it with a friend. Thanks so much for listening to the Literary Hype podcast.