Go Into The Story Interview: Sarah Jane Inwards

My interview with 2017 Black List screenwriter and 2017 Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting winner.

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. Recently, 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.

Here are links to the six installments of the entire interview:

Part 1: “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.’”

Part 2: “I 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.”

Part 3: “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.”

Part 4: “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.”

Part 5: “I think of it like there is a story there waiting to be discovered and I’m just chipping away until I discover it… 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’s there, so let’s keep playing until we discover it.”

Part 6: “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 subscribe to the growth mentality, that anyone who wants to be creative can cultivate that talent and get better and better.”

Sarah Jane is repped by Verve and Kaplan/Perrone.

For more of my interviews with 27 Nicholl winning screenwriters, go here.

For more of my interview with 53 Black List screenwriters, go here.