Go Into The Story Interview: Sarah Jane Inwards

Sarah Jane Inwards wrote the original screenplay “Jellyfish Summer” which not only won a 2017 Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting, it made the 2017 Black List. I had the opportunity to chat with Sarah Jane about her background, her award-winning script, the craft of screenwriting, and what winning the Nicholl and being on the Black List has meant to her.

Go Into The Story interview with Sarah Jane Inwards

Scott Myers: Sarah Jane, you grow up in Minnesota, is that right?

Sarah Jane Inwards: I did grow up in Minnesota. Rochester, Minnesota.

Scott: Isn’t the Mayo Clinic there?

Sarah Jane: Yes. I grew up in the town of the Mayo Clinic. Both my parents worked there. Pretty much half the town works there. I grew up in a very medical environment.

Scott: Did you happen to see Pixar’s “Inside Out”?

Sarah Jane: I did. I love that film.

Scott: Riley is from Minnesota, right?

Sarah Jane: [laughs] Yes. It’s funny you mention that because that film really struck a chord with me in so many ways. The fact that she was from Minnesota really pushed me over the edge when it comes to crying during the climax of that movie.

Scott: Oh yeah. Pixar, such great storytellers. How and when did you develop an interest in writing?

Sarah Jane: I really have been writing as long as I can remember. My mom found the oldest piece of my writing that we believe exists. I think I wrote it when I was maybe four or five. It’s a little story that goes like this: “There once was a princess, but she did not have no ham.” [laughter] Clearly, I’ve gotten a little bit better since then. Yeah, I’ve always loved writing stories and telling stories. It originated writing short stories. As I grew up, I dabbled in making little movies and, eventually, making features and writing features. As long as I can remember, I guess, is the best answer.

Scott: Movies and TV, were they much a part of your life?

Sarah Jane: Definitely, a big part of my life. My family always had a movie night. Essentially, every weekend we’d pick a Friday or Saturday to go out to movie. It’s what made me a cinephile.

Scott: Any particular movies from your childhood that are your special favorites?

Sarah Jane: The one that comes to mind first is Disney’s Mulan. For many reasons, but it was one of the first times I saw a girl kicking butt, really, and loved it. I would watch it on repeat on VHS over, and over, and over again. I’m very thrilled that they’re doing a live action, so I can relive my childhood.

Scott: I was watching the video of your Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting award acceptance speech, and you mentioned how you’d had some pretty significant medical issues as a youth. Did that influence you as a writer at all?

Sarah Jane: It definitely did. I was born with a birth defect called gastroschisis, which is a fairly rare birth defect in which there’s a hernia by the umbilical cord. The easiest way to think about what it is, is that I was born with my guts outside of my body. Initially, when I was born, it created a lot of issues, but luckily, once I was healed in the first couple of months of my life, I had a fairly normal childhood health-wise until my late teen years.

I started developing a lot of complications from it and, throughout college and a little bit beyond, had multiple open abdominal surgeries and even some life-threatening complications that landed me in the ICU. It really did change my worldview in many ways.

The biggest two ways are, one, my gratitude and motivation. I had many times when I really couldn’t do anything. Since I, luckily, got my life back, I have been extremely motivated to do as much as I can. The second way is thinking about what sorts of stories I want to tell.

You probably saw in my Nicholl speech how I wondered how I could give back after I felt like I got my life back. I took my dad’s advice, his fabled advice at this point. That’s, “Some people save lives, and some people make them worth living.”

I keep that in mind when I’m thinking about what stories I want to tell. “How can I help make life worth living?” whether it’s by providing entertainment or some fun, or maybe it’s advocating for a cause, or what have you.

Scott: That comment by your father was just brilliant, but you do have a strong commitment to helping others. Could you talk about this initiative you launched as a student at Northwestern University — Applause for a Cause?

Sarah Jane: Applause for a Cause is an organization that I co-founded with Alec Ziff, another Northwestern student. Essentially, Applause for a Cause is an organization where the students write, direct, and create a feature-length film every year. Then all of the proceeds from the showings at the end of the year go to a charity of that year.

Through that, Alec and I ran the organization for three years while we were there and made three feature films with the help and dedication of so many other students there. We’ve been absolutely thrilled to see that the students at Northwestern have continued to keep Applause alive and thriving.

They’re working on their eighth film at this point. I believe their charity this year is Portlight, a charity that focuses on helping the disabled in the aftermath of natural disasters such as hurricanes.

Scott: The students who were involved in this, were they film study students, drama students, or is it a cross-section?

Sarah Jane: It was a great collaboration of students from across all disciplines. We had everything from film students, theater students, music students, which you’d expect, but then we also had economic students, engineering students, and social working students.

It was really great to incorporate anyone who loved film and wanted to get involved. We just opened our arms and said, “Let’s do it. Let’s make a movie together.”

Scott: That’s terrific. Did you do film studies at Northwestern?

Sarah Jane: I did.

Scott: Studied screenwriting?

Sarah Jane: Northwestern doesn’t necessarily make you take a particular focus. I did end up picking majority of screenwriting classes.

Scott: That’s primarily how you picked up the craft, through screenwriting with the university, or did you supplement it with other things?

Sarah Jane: Yeah, I would say that was my primary education, was through Northwestern.

Scott: Now you live in LA. How did that transition happen?

Sarah Jane: The day after I graduated from Northwestern, my mom came to Chicago. We packed up my car, and we drove for three days out to Los Angeles to go dream chasing. I think a lot of people do that, “Let’s just go chase our dreams.” I’ve been out here ever since.

Scott: What do you do to sustain yourself while you write?

Sarah Jane: I worked in a few different parts of the industry. I started out working as an associate producer on documentary and reality TV, of all things, which was a really great, interesting job. You get to meet a lot of fascinating people and gain insight into so many real life stories. That was fun.

Then, after that, I ended up working on different productions as a PA, really. I had a, I guess, scattered career because I was trying to keep as much time open to practice writing.

Scott: I’d like to move into talking about your script, “Jellyfish Summer,” which, as noted, won both the Nicholl, 2017 Nicholl Fellowship, and also was recently named to the 2017 Black List.

Here’s a plot summary, “A young black girl’s family in 1960s Mississippi decides to harbor two human-looking refugees who have mysteriously fallen from the sky.” It’s an imaginative, compelling script, combining drama and science fiction. In reading it, I was struck by just how inventive it was. What was the inspiration for the story?

Sarah Jane: First of all, thanks so much for reading and thanks for the kind comments about it. I think every writer’s excited when people read their work, so thank you. Actually, the origins of this story were rooted in my desire to tell the story of Bosnian refugees and immigrants, and the Bosnian genocide that occurred in the ‘90s.

In Minnesota, immigrants and refugees usually land in the Minneapolis area, but some end up where I grew up, in Rochester. I grew up with some Bosnian refugees and immigrants. As I went on to college, I ended up studying Bosnian language and reaching out to the Bosnian community in Chicago to learn more.

I wanted to tell a story about that experience. As I worked on that story, the Syrian refugee crisis started to really pick up. That is the backstory, the seed of inspiration, but the real spark for Maisie’s story was actually when I saw a photo of Alan Kurdi. He was the three-year-old Syrian boy whose body washed up on the beach in Turkey, and there was a viral photograph of that.

For some reason, that image sparked the idea for this story. I know that it seems like quite a far-reach from those origins to the story that Jellyfish Summer is, but I decided to talk about these big themes in an allegory.

I also found that, in talking about xenophobia in America, it’s hard to not talk about racism in America as well. I wanted to shine the spotlight on those two things and how their roots are inextricable in my mind.

Scott: So you started off more from a central thematic premise rather than, say, a character or a story world.

Sarah Jane: Yeah, definitely. I guess the desire to write the story started out with the theme of why we should help refugees. It’s the central theme. In telling that story, I began to dive in and try to find a specific story to tell within that idea.

Scott: How did 1965 happen?

Sarah Jane: That’s a great question. I found allegory is an easy way to talk about today. I think a lot of sci-fi writers use sci-fi as a lens to talk about racism, xenophobia, etc. because it makes the “other” somebody about whom nobody has preconceived notions already. Instead of talking about Syrian or Bosnian refugees, for example, we’re talking about these Fallen people. In the same way that that kind of allegory helps to keep people viewing it without their preconceived notions, I wanted to talk about today’s political climate with a similar type lens. Through that, I decided to use the 1960s’ Civil Rights Movement.

For example, if you look at something like athletes kneeling at NFL games today, that is still very divisive for a lot of people. People have a lot of preconceived notions, right, that image? For the most part, when you look at civil rights activists in the ’60s at sit-ins at diners, most people have decided what those images mean to them and what the “right and wrong sides” were.

In the same way that I wanted to use sci-fi as a lens to talk about the other, I wanted to use the time period as a lens to talk about today.

Scott: Civil Rights Movement brings you to the ’60s and the setting for the story, which is Mississippi, the Deep South. Of course, Mississippi has a very storied history, a tragic history in many ways involving the civil rights movement. Here you are from Minnesota, you go to college in Illinois. That’s quite a segue in terms of culture.

How did you go about, A, gaining the confidence you could write that subculture, and, B, doing whatever research you did in order to create the story world you did? Having grown up in the South, I found it quite authentic.

Sarah Jane: Thank you. That’s a relief to hear because I think every writer, when they transplant themselves to somewhere that they’re not necessarily familiar, is a little bit worried about making sure that they keep it authentic.

In terms of Mississippi, I’ve only visited twice. The first time was in high school. I went to go help to clean up after Hurricane Katrina. The other time was through a documentary job I had. I went to a Chiefs of Police Conference in Mississippi.

I did draw upon those experiences a bit in terms of thinking about the accent, the scenery, and some of the general culture points. Then, aside from that, I just did a lot of research on the time and the place.

One thing I like to do as a writer in terms of dialogue — I think that’s the hardest thing — is I will just Google videos of people from the region talking. Sometimes, it’s something as simple as a make-up tutorial.

Sometimes, they’re not even related in any way to what I’m writing about, but I’m just listening to people from the area talking and trying to think about how I can start thinking of my characters.

Scott: Let’s talk about some of the key characters in the story, this particular family. Maisie Ray, a young black girl, 10 years old. She lives with her mother, Mama Delilah, and her older brother, Zeke, and her older sister, Rebecca. Could you talk about the family’s living situation when we first meet them?

Sarah Jane: This family lives in a rural part of Mississippi, on the coast. The family’s father-figure is gone because he is in the army. At the time of the story takes place, he was first out to Vietnam and then he goes back to help with the riots happening in Mobile, Alabama.

These characters, this family, lives on the shore here all together. It’s summertime when we meet them, so the kids are not in school. I guess their dynamics are the thing that really interests me the most about this family. They all have a very strong point of view about what to do in this situation.

We meet them right away when these refugees have appeared in their backyard and now they’re faced with, “What are we going to do?” Mama Delilah, her attitude is that we need to help others because, “I need someone else to help you,” if they were in that situation.

Rebecca and Zeke, however, are scared because they’ve seen bad things happen to people who help these people. Not only that, they’ve seen terrible things happen to people who were just minding their business but are black in their society, so they’re very hesitant to help these boys.

Maisie is there, a young girl, impressionable, trying to figure out where her place in the world is, and what she feels, and where her stance is going to be.

One thing that was important to me is to have Zeke’s point of view. He’s the brother who doesn’t want to help these kids. Obviously, if you’re writing about why we should help refugees, it’s a romantic notion to think we always have to help other people, but it’s not necessarily taking into account why people who don’t help others do that. It’s not necessarily that they’re bad people. There are a lot of sympathetic situations for why someone wouldn’t help another person. I just wanted the antagonist’s “point of view” to be understandable, because while it would be nice and a romantic notion to think that it’s always best to help other people, it’s not realistic to not take into account why people don’t help others or maybe can’t help others. That was important to me, just to make sure that we talk about this issue in a more realistic way.

Scott: Yes. Zeke, at one point, says, “Some blacks, some whites, some even look Oriental and Mexican. Don’t matter, anyhow. Nobody likes none of ‘em.”

Sarah Jane: Yes.

Scott: Versus Mama, who, in that perspective, she says at one point to Maisie, “That’s why we gotta help these boys, Maisie, because the second you decide someone’s life ain’t worth the same as yours, or your family’s, who’s to say someone else ain’t gonna think your life ain’t worth anything neither. Understand?”

Sarah Jane: Honestly, it’s the theme of the whole story, is right there with Mama Delilah. Not to ruin the story, but, as you go on, that ends up acting as a prophecy.

Scott: In the middle of all this is Maisie Ray. She’s the protagonist of the story and she has to find her way in this remarkable situation that happens when these individuals fall from the sky. How would you describe her personality when we first meet her?

Sarah Jane: One thing I like about Maisie is that she’s very precocious and she has very strong opinions. When we start out, she has a passion for throwing these jellyfish back in the water that get washed up on the sand. Every day in the summer these schools of jellyfish wash up on the sand because it’s high tide and the tide goes out.

If they don’t get thrown back out, then they die on the beach. She gets up early and starts throwing these jellyfish back out, but it’s kind of a fool’s endeavor because they just wash back up the next day. Her determination is admirable, but it seems, maybe, a little bit foolish in the eyes of her brother. But she doesn’t care.

She’s just very compassionate and determined little girl. That’s why I love her, is because she believes that she can do something. Even when she’s not sure what she should do, I feel like, throughout the whole story she believes she can do something.

To me, nobody’s perfect. Nobody is always doing the right thing or helping others, but as long as you believe you can do the right thing, I think that you’re going to stay on a generally good path.

Scott: That image of throwing jellyfish into the ocean, where did that come from?

Sarah Jane: When I went down to Mississippi to help after Hurricane Katrina, we were staying in a camp by a bay. There were little jellyfish in the ocean when we went out swimming out there. That always stuck with me and that was a part of the idea.

When I was there, the jellyfish weren’t washing up on the beach. That does happen. Usually, it’s moon jellyfish, like in the story. They’re bigger jellyfish that don’t have stinging power strong enough for humans. I took a little liberty to have it be a frequent occurrence for the purposes of my story.

One thing I really liked is that I wanted the genre to feel very much like a historical drama, almost like the sci-fi felt incidental to that, but, when I was doing that, I wanted to make sure people’s expectations were set up a little bit to get a hint of a sci-fi. I feel like the image of a jellyfish, they look a little other-worldly. They look a little bit sci-fi themselves.

I felt all those things together tied in nicely to set the stage in the first scene to give you a hint of all these different elements.

Scott: The first 8 pages or so is like a wonderful little historical drama and then, all of a sudden, out of the sky, this space pod, spaceship falls, and this has been happening.

Evidently, this isn’t the first time. What I’m gathering from your creative process was that aspect of it emerged before the setting of the South and the family. The idea of aliens coming and using that as an allegory to talk about immigration.

Sarah Jane: Yes. I guess the best way for me to describe it in terms of my process is that the intent of the story that I wanted to write was very much rooted in immigration of refugees and what should a person in America’s response be to that, or what I would hope someone’s response would be to that. Maisie’s family had different reactions.

If you look at Zeke, he’s a teenage black boy in 1960s rural Mississippi. He has every reason to say, “I cannot take care of someone else right now.” Basically, he is maybe one of the most disadvantaged people in society. We can understand why someone might say, “I can’t help these people.”

Then, Maisie, she’s young, so she’s impressionable. She’s still deciding her place in the world and, yet, she still stands up for what is right. I guess that’s a very roundabout way of saying, “Yeah, my intent did start with the refugee allegory and then I ended up, through that, finding my way to these characters.”

Scott: These characters from the sky, there are two survivors, Teen Boy and Skinny Boy, and then, presumably, the father who dies.

Sarah Jane: Yes.

Scott: How would you describe these boys when you first meet them? Who are they and what are they about?

Sarah Jane: These boys and their father have gone through a traumatic experience, extremely traumatic. They are being forced from their home and they have no other option but to leap into this great unknown, which I feel is true of most refugees. No one wants to leave their home and you’re forced into the complete unknown.

They are terrified. They’ve already suffered huge loss, you can imagine, and right away we get to see a very specific loss, which is their father has not made the trip successfully. These two brothers, at the beginning, you can see that the older brother is leading the two of them. He’s a teenager, he’s a little older. The younger brother is 9, 10 years old.

As the story goes on, just like Maisie, Skinny also has to start making his own decisions and deciding how he’s going to view the world. I also wanted to show how Skinny also has every right to not help anyone else because he’s just trying to survive, but we’ll watch that he and Maisie are kind of two peas in a pod and they both come to the same conclusion.

Scott: At the heart of the story, in some respects, is the relationship between Maisie and Skinny in that they start off in more of an I/It relationship because they perceive each other as being distinctly different than the other, and moving toward more of an I/You relationship where they have some empathy and understanding for each other. Is that a fair assessment of that arc?

Sarah Jane: Yes, I would say that’s definitely it.

Scott: It’s not an easy process for Maisie. She’s sent into town at one point and on a bicycle, and there’s a creepy scene where there’s a bunch of these fallen, basically a District 9 feel, in a way. It almost feels zombie-like because of the situation. What were you going for with that scene?

Sarah Jane: When she first encounters the detention camps of the Fallen, is the one you’re talking about?

Scott: Yes.

Sarah Jane: There’s a few things I was going for. Number one, it’s a little bit subtle, but she’s mentioned she’s never been to town since the Fallen have started falling, which has been about maybe a month or so. This is her first up-close look at how her society is treating these Fallen people, which is horrifying in itself. This scene shows her that this new little boy, Skinny, who’s maybe starting to become a friend or someone she might care about, that this could be his fate. So that’s scary.

Number two, I wanted to show the visceral kind of scariness that is — this is more of an antagonist point of view, but — refugees appearing on your doorstep that have just suffered a lot of trauma. It might seem scary to some people. Just seeing through her eyes how it’s confusing, it’s scary to see how they’re treated, but also they seem a little scary themselves because they’re the other, the unknown.

Scott: Right, and it’s important to have that upfront so you can really reinforce how far Maisie has to go in terms of her particular transformation and their attitude about them.

Sarah Jane: Exactly, because she’s young and she’s still deciding where she’s going to be. She’s not without wavering on where she’s going to fall.

Scott: Having grown up in the South, there’s a bit of scene description in there where she’s heading into town and there’s a sign hanging above the storefront reads, “Whites Only. No Colored” and under that “And No Fallen.” It’s segregation. As you say, it’s an allegory that allows us to look at that issue, like science fiction does, in a new and fresh way.

It’s interesting because you’ve got scenes with protesters, including blacks, who want the fallen to leave. It really is more of a nuanced type of a situation. Some people are good, some people are bad, some fallen are good, some are bad, most are in-between. There’s KKK people running around.

I think that’s one of the strengths of the script, in that you’ve got these multiple attitudes and perspectives, which the story could come up as quite preachy, like, “Be good to people and be kind to people.” You do service to a lot of different perspectives. I’m assuming that’s something you were quite conscious of.

Sarah Jane: Yes, and thank you so much for that, because, of course, that was my fear is that I didn’t want to be too preachy. I don’t think anyone likes being preached at. It’s hard to do something that’s, honestly, trying to be preachy and not do it in such a strong way.

It was important to show some of the nuance and intersectionality of all these different issues between racism and xenophobia. At the end of the day, there are good people and bad people everywhere, across all creeds. It’s obviously a layered situation.

Scott: Are you much into science fiction? Is that something that you’re fond of?

Sarah Jane: Yeah, I would say some of my favorite films of all time are films like District 9 and Children of Men, these really grounded sci-fis. I think it’s because I really like stories that are talking about social justice issues, and I think some of them that do it in a really non-preachy way are through sci-fi.

Scott: You’ve got several interesting twists in the story. One is that these Fallen aren’t from another planet, they’re from another time.

Sarah Jane: Yes, exactly. At the end of the day, my own personal feeling on why we need to help other people is because they could be me, they could be you. I thought, “What would that mean to people if the refugees really were you and me, literally? How would that change people’s perspectives on how to help them?”

The people in this world, that is what they’re ultimately faced with, is the realization that this person really is me, and my brother, and my sister, because they’re from another plane of time. They’re me from a different plane of time. Yeah, it’s a physical way of looking at that hypothetical.

Scott: It’s a very clever way of driving home that arc from looking at them as the other, and then, instead, by the end looking and finding the shared commonality between the characters.

Sarah Jane: Thank you.

Scott: In terms of your writing, I want to drill down into a couple of things. You have these tiny moments in scene description. For example, early on, “Rebecca slinks to the phone on the wall, wraps the coil cord around her left fist after dialing.” It’s not just a phone call. It’s got this little bit of business. I think we’ve all, for people back in the old days, who had landlines, we’ve all flexed around with the coil, while we were distractedly talking or whatnot. Those little moments like that really added an air of authenticity, but that raises a question.

You see all these stuff in your head. You see the scene playing out. You see all the room and whatnot. How do you know when to include stuff and when not to include it?

Sarah Jane: Yeah. Honestly, that makes me laugh because I feel like that’s what I struggle with. I often want to jam-pack every single thing inside, but, obviously, that makes for a very clunky and slow story.

A lot of what I look at, and why would I include certain things, deciding on what to include and not to include, usually has to do with either world building or character building.

For example, the example you gave of Rebecca coiling her hands around the cord. I decided to start my story really in media res. I believe it’s maybe page four or five when, boom, the fallen people are here, and from then on out we’re running and going.

That’s not a lot of time to set up who these characters are beforehand in their everyday life, so I’m looking for little mannerisms, little reactions within the action that can give you a hint as to who their character is and where they’re coming from.

Something like that, with Rebecca, is trying to show she’s hesitant, she’s wary, and, at the end of the day, that’s her stance of these Fallen people as well, but how does that manifest itself in her action of calling her aunt on the phone? That’s a lot of how I try to filter it out.

I’ve had a lot of fun with it, too, especially with something that’s supposed to feel like a period drama, almost. I wanted the action lines to read like a classic book or something to that effect. I use, maybe, a little bit more flowery language than I might in a different type of story to, hopefully, just communicate the tone that I would like to imagine this type of film would have.

Scott: That speaks to two things. This, what I call Narrative Voice, which is basically what’s the genre plus style? What style benefits the story most in terms of scene description?

Then the other thing, too, is that movies are primarily a visual medium. If you can convey something visually, through a gesture for example, that maybe can help underscore the dialogue or even sometimes replace the dialogue.

Sarah Jane: Exactly.

Scott: So, you write this script. Did you always have the Nicholl in mind? Was that the endgame here?

Sarah Jane: I always had the Nicholl in my dreams, I would say. It’s such a prestigious fellowship, and the Academy, in general, has always been my look into the industry. When I was growing up in Minnesota, I would say the Oscars were my main look at what my dream is. From around the time I was in college, I started looking at the Nicholl as, “What a dream would that be?”

When I wrote this, I did have the intention of submitting to the Nicholl, but it was an absolute thrill to actually win the fellowship. I wasn’t quite sure if that would be the outcome because it is so competitive. It was in my heart and my mind, but I wasn’t certain how it would pan out.

Scott: What was that process like?

Sarah Jane: They do have to email when you first…I think it’s when you’re the semifinals and the quarterfinals, and those notifications are through emails. As I got those emails, I just felt thrilled and validated. I’m like, “Great. That’s fantastic. I made this cut. I made this cut.”

Then, when it got to the finalists, which is the top 10, I got a call from Greg [Beal] who helps to run the fellowship, and he told me I was a finalist. It felt very surreal and exciting. From that point onward, I felt a lot more nervous than I had at previous cuts because winning it was in reach.

At the other times, it felt like such a distant dream, but then, when it was the top 10, I felt, “Wow. I have a 50–50 shot here of getting it.” [laughs] A lot more nerves kicked in at that point. Then, when the committee — they announced it to us via Skype call — when they called, I just was absolutely thrilled. It was a very emotional and exciting day.

Scott: Then a week…

Sarah Jane: Then a week, yes.

Scott: …for the festivities, and bonding with your fellow Nicholl winners?

Sarah Jane: Yes. Honestly, that was one of the best parts about it, too, is to just meet the other Nicholl winners. They’re fantastic people. Writing can be a very lonely passion sometimes because it’s pretty personal and singular, so sharing our hopes, and our dreams, and our nerves and fears together was really great.

Scott: You make The Black List, just this week.

Sarah Jane: Yes. [laughs] Another dream come true, as corny as that sounds.

Scott: Were you tracking that at all?

Sarah Jane: A little bit. I had an inkling that it was a possibility because my reps let me know that it was a possibility, but I didn’t know for sure. I don’t think any of the writers know until it’s announced. They announced it in such an exciting, nail-biting way this year by tweeting one video at a time every two minutes to announce each script.

I felt really lucky because the two people that announced my script-winning were Kumail Nanjiani and Emily Gordon, who wrote The Big Sick. As you know from my background, I connected to that movie intensely both with the fact that it deals with illness, relationships within illness, and, coincidentally, they’re an Asian man, white girl couple. I’m in an Asian man, white girl couple. We don’t get to see that represented much, so I was so thrilled that they announced my script winning because I’m just a huge fan of them.

Scott: There you go. Synchronicity.

Sarah Jane: Yes, exactly.

Scott: You’re with Kaplan/Perrone as your managers, right?

Sarah Jane: Yes, I am. I’m also with Verve now, newly with Verve for agents.

Scott: Congratulations. What’s the status of the script?

Sarah Jane: Thanks. They’ve been great. I just feel really, really lucky to have the team I have. Right now, the script is with some producers and they are looking for a director to attach. I’m crossing my fingers.

Scott: That’s great and best of luck on that. I’d like to shift into some craft questions. This is a very basic one. How do you come up with story ideas?

Sarah Jane: It’s a little bit different every time where the stories stem from. A lot of the time for me, I’m a big-picture to specific-picture type person. [laughs] Some people go from a specific point and then explore their themes past that.

In the past, I’ve thought of storytelling and developing my stories as I’m a painter painting a picture. I would think I have a blank slate or a blank canvas and I’m going to add paint to that until it becomes a full picture or a full story. More recently, I’ve thought of it more like a sculpture.

I think of it like there is a story there waiting to be discovered and I’m just chipping away until I discover it. For some reason, that really helps me whenever I feel on a block. I feel less pressure that I have to pull something out of the thin air and more like, “OK, let’s discover it. The story wants to be a something. The story’s there, so let’s keep playing until we discover it.”

Scott: Let’s talk about that playing part of it, the prep-writing — brainstorming, character, develop, plotting, research. Where do you tend to spend most of your time on in the prep of breaking a story?

Sarah Jane: I would say, for me, it’s probably the characters. I spend a lot of time thinking about my characters, and that naturally helps develop your worlds because your characters live within the worlds.

Like I said, I usually start with more of the theme or the intent and work backwards from there. If I’m looking at the theme, for example with Jellyfish Summer, I’m looking at us versus them is maybe the theme of that.

Then, when I look at all my characters, I think, “What is their stance on this theme?” Then, let’s look back and see, “How did they get to this place? Where did they come from that they got to this stance?”

Another big thing I like to think about is — What is their baggage or their ghosts? What is the thing that haunts them, that keeps them in this place? I’d say character work is really where a lot of my development comes from and that leads me to think more about my world.

Scott: How do you go about developing them? Other than asking some of those central questions, do you do any interviews where you sit down and you just let them speak in terms of monologue? Are there any specific things you do to access your characters?

Sarah Jane: Yeah, sometimes it’s…If you really talk about the grassroots, usually something like this I’d have to do some research, like we talked about — maybe watching the videos to get an idea on dialect. I’d read some similar books in the time period or similar-themed books or movies, watch or read them, think about those stories and try to draw from that as a foundation.

Then, when it comes to more specifically my story, I usually just write almost little short stories about each of my characters — about their past, about what influences them, about what they like and don’t like.

Scott: Apart from using YouTube to look up videos, any other tips you have about accessing dialogue, your characters and the way that they talk?

Sarah Jane: Characters are more than just what they say. It’s how they say it. A lot of the times, with their dialogue, I try to think about where they’re coming from as well, and how they’re saying what they’re saying.

For example, do they put themselves as the passive person in the sentence, or are they the active person in the sentence? Is such-and-such doing something to them or do they have to do something to someone else when they’re talking?

That’s another thing I try to keep an eye on in terms of developing their dialogue, is — How do they view the world? Are they a victim? Are they a hero in their own eyes?

Scott: What about when you’re writing a scene? Do you have any specific goals in mind?

Sarah Jane: When I’m writing a scene — I think a lot of people do this, it’s my favorite scene to read, so I try to write it as well — get in as late as possible, get out as soon as possible. I try to do that as a general hope for the story as well. How can we jump in at the latest possible point and still be on board with what’s going on?

One thing I like to do that’s, I think, becoming a popular style is — Can the opening scene be an inciting incident? Or is there an inciting incident for your inciting incident? For my story, it’s Fallen people falling in the backyard of this girl’s family. I was like, “Why do we have to put it on page 17? Let’s put this on page five. I don’t need to see their daily life to get an idea of who they are. Let’s just put it as soon as possible.”

I try to have that same idea on a micro-level, too, with each scene. What’s the scene’s purpose? Can we put that pretty close to the front?

Scott: It is a trend. There has been definitely a compression, particularly in the setup of stories. If you look at some movies from the ’80s, like when I first broke in, nowadays, it just seems like forever to get things going. What used to be the end of Act I is now the middle of Act I, and what used to be the middle of Act I, as you say, let’s just get the thing going.

You see movies like Ex Machina and boom, you’re right into the plot. The audiences nowadays don’t need as much background, it doesn’t seem. It’s just like, “Let’s just get into the story and let’s go for the ride.”

Sarah Jane: Yeah, and I think, just personally, that fits what my taste is. I prefer those types of stories, but there are a few exceptions in my mind that I think that slower pace up front really helps to pay off later.

The first thing that comes to my mind in recent times is…I remember Manchester by the Sea has, if I’m remembering right, a pretty slow setup and that ends up really helping to set this character’s world…The point is that his life was a little intentionally mundane at the beginning.

So it’s dependent on what kind of story you’re telling and what’s going to service that story the best.

Scott: Absolutely, but just to understand that some stories can take a more, I suppose, traditional, you would say, approach where you do more of the setup, more background, but we have the potential, the freedom nowadays with audiences who are very savvy and sophisticated, wise to start things more quickly.

Sarah Jane: Yeah.

Scott: When you write a first draft, now you got to rewrite it, what are your keys to that process?

Sarah Jane: [laughs] It’s painful. I think for everyone it can be, sometimes, like pulling teeth, the rewrite process. If I finish a draft, I get back a bunch of notes, and it’s clear I’ve got to do some pretty big overhauls I always think to myself, “If I’m still excited to do it, that’s how I know I’ve got a good idea for myself.” I try to think of it that way.

It’s like a litmus test for how passionate I am for the idea if I realize I have to do a huge rewrite. I do tend to work on some treatments and outlines before I write. They usually may be a little bit more vague than I think a lot of writers do. When I have a rewrite, I tend to go back to that outline first before I go back to the actual script pages. I think a lot of people do that. That’s a little bit easier to tackle it and look at the map before you look at the actual terrain.

Scott: What’s your actual writing process like?

Sarah Jane: Yeah. I’m someone who’s a big coffee shop or library type person. I find it easier to focus if I go to a different location and set up the expectation for myself that it’s work time. I like to go to places like the Writers Guild Library, or the Academy Library is great, or different coffee shops.

I try to write every day. I usually just sit down and write for a good chunk of hours, to various amounts of success, especially in times where you’re just staring at the screen waiting for the idea to come. Any time that I’m having trouble getting the writing to flow, I’ll try to go for a walk and listen to music that reminds me of the tone of what I’m writing. That’s what I find the easiest way for me to let my brain work out the issues, by taking a little break.

Scott: Is there something in particular you love about writing?

Sarah Jane: That’s a great question. I think a lot of writers feel this way. I start falling in love with my characters and caring about them. I think it’s because I do try to write about social issues, so I feel very passionate about the protagonist’s viewpoint on those issues.

I think my favorite point in time is when I’ve typed, “The end,” and I can go back and read it. It sounds probably lame, but my favorite part about writing is reading what I wrote.

Scott: I’ve heard that from a lot of people. They say, “My favorite part of writing is having written.”

Sarah Jane: Yeah. [laughs] That’s perfectly said. I think that’s the most honest answer of my favorite part of writing.

Scott: Let me end with a question that I’m sure you’re going to be targeted with now that you’ve achieved this frontend of, hopefully, a long career as a writer and filmmaker. What advice can you offer to aspiring screenwriters about learning the craft and ultimately breaking into Hollywood?

Sarah Jane: My two main pieces of advice are, number one, keep writing, and, number two, which is closely tied to number one, you can always grow, and you will always grow and get better.

If you start out and you have naysayers that are discouraging you — maybe someone doesn’t think you’re a great writer, or maybe you don’t think you’re a great writer and you’re doubting yourself — first off, it might not be true, but, second off, even if you are at a point where you need more work, if you keep writing, you will get better.

I think a lot of people think of the arts and creativity as either you’ve got it or you don’t have it. I really more ascribe to the growth mentality, that anyone who wants to be creative can cultivate that talent and get better and better.

For my interviews with every Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting winners since 2012, go here.