Go Into The Story Interview: Sophia Lopez

My interview with the 2021 Black List screenwriter,

Sophia Lopez wrote the original screenplay “A Hufflepuff Love Story” which landed on the 2021 Black List. I had the opportunity to chat with Sophia about her creative background, her script, the craft of screenwriting, and what making the annual Black List has meant to her.

Scott Myers: Congratulations, Sophia, making the 2021 Black List. I want to get to that in a bit. First, let’s go all the way back. How did you end up becoming interested in screenwriting?

Sophia Lopez: I’ve really loved TV and movies for as long as I could remember. I did this thing as a kid, where I would re-watch the same movie every day for weeks and even months — I did it with The Wizard of Oz and SPICE WORLD (the Spice Girls movie). I think being so immersed in these stories translated into me naturally wanting to tell my own. So, I would play with my Barbies for hours, coming up with my own plotlines.

Scott: I had a friend who wrote two Barbie books.

Sophia: No way.

Scott: This was a zillion years ago. It was very funny. Barbie Goes to Outer Space, that was one of them. They told her, “She can’t ever wear a helmet because that’s going to mess up her hair.”

[laughter]

Scott: That’s how protective they were of the Barbie image. I thought that was so funny.

Sophia: That is funny. I had all of the Barbie merch, I watched all of the Barbie movies, I was completely obsessed.

Then, after Barbie, it became all about animation for me. That became my big thing. I got into Miyazaki’s movies, I think I was in second grade when I saw “Spirited Away.” That was a huge eye‑opener for me. It changed everything. It made me realize the power film has to just totally transport you into another world. So, then it all became about trying to get into my dream school, USC Film.

Scott: So, you go to USC film school. I’m assuming that that’s where you were writing screenplays and learning the craft.

Sophia: I was a screenwriting major, and it was so awesome. I met so many of my dearest friends, and the professors were so inspiring to me because they were also writers. They were giving personal advice about how to deal with starting out in the industry, but also, obviously, writing advice. It was a nice combination of actually learning three‑act structure and stuff like that, but also learning to cope, I guess, with a writing career.

Scott: They call it the USC Mafia, they’ve got all these connections in Hollywood. They bring a bunch of people in, film and TV professionals, all the time to speak, so it figures to be quite a film school experience.

Sophia: Oh, my God. It was amazing. If I could go back and do it over and over again like it was a Groundhogs Day except for four years [laughs] on a loop, and I wake up at the end of the fourth year and started over again, I would do that.

Scott: How did you then transition into working in Hollywood?

Sophia: Over the summer breaks from USC, I would intern at “Hawaii Five‑0” in their writer’s room. I loved it. It was the first time I had gotten exposed to a writer’s room of a working TV show. It was also another huge moment for me, an eye‑opening thing, and I loved it. I wanted to be around it all the time.

During the last week of the internship, the summer going into my senior year, I found myself in the elevator with the showrunner. It was going to be a quick ride between the first floor and the fourth floor where his office was.

I figured, “It’s the last week of my internship, and I’m out of here on Friday anyway, so what’s the harm in pitching an idea? If he likes it, then great. If not, then I’m embarrassed, but I have a cool story.” Then, it turned out he liked it [laughs] and they bought the story off of me. Then, they invited me back to be their PA after graduation.

Scott: You literally did an elevator pitch?

Sophia: Yeah, and it was the most nerve-wracking experience of my life…Even thinking about it now, my palms are sweating. It made me really, really nervous and stressed. But I knew I would hate myself if I didn’t do it, so I had to.

Scott: That’s great, Sophia. Now you give me total evidence that I can use with my students. I say to them, “You’ve got to be able to pitch your story in a lot of different ways including the elevator pitch.”

Sophia: It’s so true! Over the time I’d been interning, I’d watched the writers coming up with their episodes, from the initial idea to the pitch, then later the outline and the script. It was about a 22‑episode season, so I got the opportunity to witness a lot of pitches for a lot of episodes. I was observing how they all formulated their pitches, and it was so inspiring to me that they had both the creativity to come up with an idea, as well as the organization/structure to pitch it in a way that made it easy for listeners to follow along. I was coming up with some fragments on the side in my little notebook, and had some loose ideas for pitches. Then, when I was in the elevator with the showrunner, I was like, “I should definitely just try.”

It was the showrunner of “MacGyver,” “Magnum P.I.,” and “Hawaii Five‑0.” So, I was interning at the “Hawaii Five‑0” writers room the first two summers and then after that, they brought on MacGyver and Magnum P.I. I was rotating between the different sister shows.

Scott: Let’s talk about your script, “A Hufflepuff Love Story,” which is just a hoot and, as I said earlier, it made the Black List in 2021. Here’s a plot summary:

“Unpopular Hogwarts student, Finn, blames everything bad in his life on being sorted into Hufflepuff rather than Gryffindor with Harry Potter and the cool kids. When he discovers a chance to go back in time and fix that, he takes it only to discover things aren’t quite as simple as he’d imagined.”

I’m imagining that along with “Barbie,” at some point, you segued over to “Harry Potter.”

Sophia: Big time. My earliest memories are reading the books, watching the movies. I remember I saw “Prisoner of Azkaban” in theaters three times. That’s my favorite movie in the whole series even though I love them all. That’s definitely my bias of which one I prefer, because it’s so moody and a little sinister, which I like.

I couldn’t get enough of Harry Potter as a kid. Literally, I would re‑watch it, and then when the last book came out and I got it right away, I cried as I read it because it was over. I was obsessed with all of them. I know that whole world inside and out. I love it.

Scott: Is Prisoner of Azkaban your favorite book, too?

Sophia: I think that for the books, “The Goblet of Fire” is my favorite — because it’s when the series shifts tonally from a younger children’s book where the feel is “wonder” and “magical adventure” to a darker, more mature vibe that takes on more serious events and themes. Of course, that kicks off when Cedric Diggory is murdered by Voldemort at the end of Goblet of Fire. I remember reading that and being shaken because while death had always been an element at play in the books, with Harry’s parents being dead, we’d never seen a character that we knew murdered in cold blood like that. It was chilling and a turn that I never saw coming — and it really stayed with me.

Scott: Are you a fan of Harry Potter fan fiction?

Sophia: I like anything that can explain why Harry and Hermione didn’t end up together.

[laughter]

Sophia: Anything like that, I am into.

Scott: I mean, what’s up with that?

Sophia: I tried my best to give my explanation in the script. Let’s say Harry and Hermione had gotten together early on. They would have been too compatible — and too similar — to the point that the relationship would’ve happened sooner and been more combustible than Hermione and Ron’s relationship ever was. They would’ve broken up before the fourth year, so they would’ve broken up before she could save him in the Triwizard Tournament (in Book 4). That was my best reasoning, where it wouldn’t work for a butterfly effect reason, but I don’t know.

Scott: This project is not a send‑up. It’s not a parody, but it is having fun with the franchise.

Sophia: Totally. Personally, I’m a Hufflepuff. I’ve taken the quiz. When I was younger and I was like, “I think I’m a Hufflepuff,” you get this reaction: “Sucks for you. I’m a Gryffindor.”

I really felt that weird shame in the back of my mind about being a Hufflepuff, and it’s not even a real thing. So it was fun to take it a step further and be like, “What if that actually was a real thing and I did go to Hogwarts?” What if, as a Hufflepuff, everyone wrote me off and pitied me? The Slytherins are the cool kids. Gryffindor was the jocks. Ravenclaws the brainiacs. I’m just like, the “etc.” I’m parceled off with the people who are looked at as, “Oh, you guys are good friends. That’s your good trait.” “You’re a nice, friendly person, but you’re not smart, cool or athletic. You have no distinguishing traits.”

Scott: Of course, that sets up nicely for the kind of traditional underdog story, which is quite popular.

Sophia: Yeah. Also, I like to look at it as a high school movie, because I’m a big fan of high school movies. I love Mean Girls. I love “10 Things I Hate About You.” The classic high school films, like a John Hughes movie. The question was, “What would that movie look like if it took place in Hogwarts?”

Scott: Let’s jump into some of these characters. The Protagonist is Finn Fletcher. He looks like Ron Weasley. How did that character come into existence?

Sophia: I feel like there’s something really funny about, “Oh, you look so much like someone” except you’re the unpopular version. You’re the knockoff version of some important and respected person. Something about that is really interesting, and tragically funny to me.

I have a sister who’s a model. I love my sister. I’m her biggest fan. She’s a model and I’m a writer. There’s a big difference in those two professions. One’s a little bit more schmucky than the other. [laughs] I can relate to Finn in that way where sometimes, my mom will be with her friends who are all like, “Oh my gosh, your daughter’s a model.” Then I’m the one who shows up and I’m in my sweatpants and my hoodie with a stain on it. Though I’ve never felt, like, victimized by this dynamic, I definitely feel like I could get into that emotionality of being the underwhelming side of the coin, the lesser version of something. Of course, I just took a tiny kernel of my own experience, then saturated it and expanded on it to shade in Finn’s psychology. My question to myself as a writer was, what if that dynamic dominated your life? What if you were so close yet so far away from what you aspire to?

Scott: It reminded me when I was first reading the script, I was going to life of Brian, from the “Monty Python” where this character is born the same day as Jesus. Got a parallel track.

Sophia: Yeah!

Scott: Then you’ve got Lavender Brown who is the object of Finn’s affection.

Sophia: Lavender is a real character from the books. I was having fun with the idea of Lavender and writing to her voice as it is in the books, because it is a fun voice to write.

Scott: Then there is Oswalda Dos Santos…

Sophia: She was my own creation. She was so much fun to write.

Scott: How did she come into existence?

Sophia: I like the idea of this outcast girl, like the Julia Stiles character in 10 Things I Hate About You, but she’s at Hogwarts.

I’m Mexican-American, and I thought it’d be great to have this Mexican female character where you have this backstory that would explain why she’s in England, on a completely different continent than where she’s from. What’s the story there? Her parental unit, did they kick her across the world, because they were so embarrassed of her? In this case, yeah, they did.

I had broad strokes at first of what I thought would be a character I would like to see in the Harry Potter universe. I filled in the blanks, and I had a lot of fun doing it.

Scott: You’ve got that romantic triangle. Was that something that you had in your mind pretty much up front?

Sophia: Yeah. Every high school movie needs some romance! At its core, this story is about Finn learning to appreciate what he does have instead of fixating on what he doesn’t — and also, accepting himself. One of the measures of his progress in this journey is his relationship with Oswalda. When they meet, he is immediately interested in her, but at that point, he’s obsessed with the life he doesn’t have — he wants so badly to be popular. And Oswalda is a social outcast. So it’s impossible for him to be with her, because he would have to get over his desire to be popular and accept that Hogwarts’ rigid social norms mean nothing. But later his journey towards self-acceptance culminates with him proudly professing his love for Oswalda to all who will listen at a high school dance.

What was interesting to me about Oswalda, is that it’s not like she’d be so bizarre or unattractive in the real world. It’s more so in this specific rigid, social‑coded place, which is literally sorted into houses, she bucks the norm and is therefore a pariah. It’s not that she’s so bizarre or weird. It’s more that she’s just not eager to please in the same way that Finn is. Oswalda actually enjoys and relishes being weird, which, of course, would be embarrassing to someone who… is desperate to be like Ron Weasley, liked and popular, and Harry Potter’s friend, and whatever. I always like the trope of the two completely opposite people who have completely conflicting agendas coming together. She’s his worst nightmare and yet, they’re perfect for each other. I guess that’s a really roundabout way of answering the question.

Scott: I’ve got to say, as soon as I met her in your script, I’m like, “OK, that’s who I’d go after if I was in high school.”

[laughter]

Sophia: She’s my favorite character. I love her. She was the most fun to write.

Scott: There’s a lot of movie associations that popped into mind when I’m reading the script. I’m just curious. You actually mentioned several of them in the script, too.

One of them, of course, “Back to the Future,” where a character goes back in time. That’s a central thesis of your story, Finn keeps going back in time trying to rectify things, and work his way up to social stratification in Hogwarts. Where did that part come from?

Sophia: I think it’s a funny idea of like, “If I hadn’t done this one tiny thing that seemed extremely minuscule at the time, my life could have been completely different for better or worse,” but usually, it’s fun to think about for the better.

I think it’s fun to play around with that, and I could see someone driving themselves crazy if they had done this tiny thing that usually would not matter. Except for the fact that it did this one tiny instance, which is tripping over something, and then Ron Weasley sits with Harry Potter and you don’t, despite the fact that you look exactly like Ron and could have been Ron if you just hadn’t made this stupid mistake years ago. I don’t know. I just thought that was funny.

Scott: Perhaps, in your life, somebody caught their heel, allowing you to get to the elevator with that dude from “MacGyver.”

Sophia: [laughs] Oh, my God.

Scott: Then, there’s a “Groundhog Day” dynamic too, because he keeps repeating…Well, it’s a different process, but there are moments there. For example, there’s a funny little bit of business toward the end of the script where he said, “I’m going to read your mind,” but he’s actually got this knowledge that he’s learned up to that point. It’s like “Groundhog Day.”

Sophia: Totally. Before I wrote the script, I watched Groundhog Day. Obviously, I revisited Back to the Future. I watched “The Butterfly Effect” with Ashton Kutcher. I watched quite a few movies that were similar either in concept or in tone. I watched a bunch of high school movies, too, and rom‑coms, because the rom‑com genre was actually new to me for this script. I hadn’t written at a straight‑up rom‑com before. Groundhog Day was a big influence, of course. It’s such a good movie.

Scott: You mentioned John Hughes, I was reminded of a movie that he did that a lot of people don’t reference nowadays, “Some Kind of Wonderful.”

Sophia: I watched “Some Kind of Wonderful,” as a comp for this. I think it is interesting, because obviously when you’re an adult, it’s accepted that people have different interests, people present differently and it’s no big deal. But when you’re in high school, differences are less accepted. It’s like, if you step out of line and do something that we the majority of people in this high school deem as weird — then, you’re a weirdo. “Some Kind of Wonderful” shows this dynamic really well and that’s definitely something that inspired me.

Scott: Then, you mentioned “She’s All That.” I think I remember the guy makes a bet with someone to turn some nerdy girl into some hot girl.

Sophia: Yeah. There are a lot of movies I referenced in the script.

Scott: You also mentioned “Heathers?”

Sophia: Yeah. I love “Heathers.”

Scott: What were you thinking in there? That speaks about the tone of your humor. That’s a decision. That’s a choice in the road, am I going to have them inside this insular world? Or is part of the humor going to be that we’re going to bring in references from our contemporary, real‑world?

Sophia: I think it’s funny that they are in the wizarding world which is so distinct from the muggle world, and I wanted to highlight the differences in world a bit. Muggles, we like TV, and we like movies and stuff. That’s totally foreign to them. They never would’ve heard of any of the movies that are constantly referenced in the muggle world.

It wouldn’t really be that weird if you were in a muggle high school, and you knew Back To The Future or whatever. But in the wizarding world, it is so bizarre and odd. That gave me a chuckle. I feel like sometimes when I write, I like to amuse myself. I just think certain things are so random and funny. Wouldn’t it be hilarious if this person did that? Usually, it’s not as hilarious or funny as it is in my own mind [laughter].

Scott: You also make another choice, talking about things like body odor issues, acne, and orthodontic headgear. That’s a choice too where you were looking into the underbelly of what it might have been like to be in Hogwarts. Was that just again to amuse yourself?

Sophia: No. I felt like it was important to show the other side of Hogwarts. The upstairs‑downstairs dynamic that would definitely be there. We saw Harry Potter’s experience already. In the books and films, he is painted as an outcast — and he is in a lot of ways.

He’s an orphan who grew up in the muggle world so he feels very alienated. Plus the pressures of being “The Boy Who Lived”. But when we’ve seen his journey, we haven’t seen him deal with “real world” teen issues like acne, braces, stuff like that, the less glamorous part of being a teen. So part of the fun of is doing a reality check of what being a teenager is actually like, whether you’re at Hogwarts or not. Some things are universal.

Another part of the fun of this project, was to get into the mindset of: what if Harry Potter is actually the most popular kid at Hogwarts. He’s the boy who lived. He’s super famous, he’s super rich. Everyone wants to know him.

I had a lot of fun writing the opposite, where you’re just regular Joe in Hogwarts. You’re a teenager so you have acne. Even though you’re in this amazing, fantastical environment you still have to brush your teeth which is so mundane. None of that is ever talked about in the Harry Potter books. What if you’re an average kid who has to deal with all the average teenager stuff but you happen to be in this amazing setting?

Scott: I’m fascinated to hear about your thoughts on this, because whenever you’re writing a story, especially as a screenwriter, there’s that question: how you’re going to find the story structure. It seems like you’ve got a pretty natural one here.

Once you have the idea of like, “OK, he’s going to go back in time, and then he’s going to come back and now he’s in Ravenclaw.” That’s not where he wants to go. He’s going to go back in time. That idea of jumping back, if I’m not mistaken it’s four trips or something?

Sophia: Yeah, every house. He works his way through every single house. Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, Slytherin, finally Gryffindor. He realized that being in Gryffindor didn’t solve his problems — the truth is, he needs to solve them from within rather than with external validation.

Scott: Then to explore how everybody’s reacting to him, because this is your butterfly effect. Every time he comes back, everything’s changed.

Sophia: It was interesting also to tap into the teenager in me and be like, “Wow, I always thought I was so weird, because of insert X, Y, or Z thing about me. The truth is, maybe I wasn’t so weird.

If I had just been in a different friend group or if I had worn different clothing or whatever, I wouldn’t have felt that way, because I would have had external reassurance instead.” That was part of Finn’s discovery as he works through the different houses.

Because early on, with him, it’s like: he thinks he’s a loser and therefore he’s losing. But along the journey he learns that the grass isn’t always greener. “It’s A Wonderful Life” comes to mind. The tragedy of Finn at the start is that he feels he has the potential to be more than he is, and have more than he does — and because he’s fixating on that, he’s missing out on all the things that make his life wonderful, like his amazing friends and his relationship with Oswalda.

Scott: Finn does go through a psychological journey of sorts. He has a character arc, and that idea of external validation, which is so prominent in the experience of an adolescent of trying to find yourself and finding yourself reflected in all the different people that you’re with.

Oswalda has this comment to him. First she says, “You’re selfish.” Then she says, “No, that’s not it. You’re naive. You thought it’d all be better if you had this or that. If you dated this girl. Were friends with that guy, but that’s just not true. It’s never true.”

Honestly, not to get too heavy with it, but it reminds me Joseph Campbell talking about the outer journey is really an inner journey. Does that resonate with you in terms of Finn?

Sophia: Yeah, absolutely. That resonates for me with Finn’s emotional journey of, grass is always greener, and wishful thinking that drives you crazy. Like, “Oh, well, if I was friends with that person, then my life would be better.”

There are a lot of people who are of the mindset that — if I had this, then I would be happy. Or if I had that, then I’d be happy. But I feel like at the end of the day, a lot of times people do get whatever it is they’re chasing, and it doesn’t make them happier. It changes circumstances maybe momentarily and then you realize you’re exactly the same as you were. True happiness is never the result of external validation, it comes from within.

Scott: That brings to mind another movie reference: “The Wizard of Oz.”

Sophia: That too. Yes. I love “The Wizard of Oz.” Yeah, exactly.

Scott: Comes back, now he’s home. He had to go through that journey in order to return to this place and feel comfortable there, just like Dorothy, right?

Sophia: Yeah. I think it’s also so essential for Finn’s emotional journey that he learns that the bully is operating out of a place of insecurity. Because Finn himself is insecure. He realizes everyone has problems, he’s not unique in his lack of confidence. By the way, once you’re an adult looking back at it, it’s “Of course, that kid who bullied everyone was insecure,” or “Of course, they were going through something emotionally.” At the time when you’re in high school, it’s not your mindset, at least it wasn’t mine.

That was definitely essential for him to learn so he could stand up to the bully. But also, I didn’t want him to bully the bully and be like, “I’m not the loser you are.”

I wanted to be more like, “Oh, I have compassion for you. I understand why you’re acting that way.”

Scott: That’s empathy.

Sophia: That felt very true to the books, too. I feel like the books are very empathetic even with Voldemort, you see why he became that way. The books are also very empathetic to Draco Malfoy and his journey.

Scott: Let’s talk about the scripting process because I’m sure everybody reading this interview will be like, “I could knock out a script in two and a half weeks that amuses me.”

[laughter]

Scott: Was it literally starting from scratch and two and a half weeks later you find this thing, or had you been noodling with it or…?

Sophia: No, it’s not like it was two weeks from conception to finished product. I read this quote somewhere and I can’t remember exactly, but it was a writer who was saying, essentially, a lot of the writing is done in your thoughts. By the time you sit down and put pen to paper, it all spills out. I totally agree with that.

My manager John Zaozirny is amazing and we worked super closely through the whole process. So we’d been discussing the script, going back and forth, and talking about comps. On my own time, I was thinking a lot about it, like it consumed my thoughts. I had an outline. Then I sat down, opened Final Draft, and was like, “OK, I need to actually just sit down and do it.” Then I was off to the races. I had never written that fast in my life. I was writing all day and all night for two, maybe two and a half weeks. I was having amazing snacks.

[laughter]

Sophia: Previous to that, I had rewatched all the Harry Potter movies and reread a bunch of the books. Also, I had read “Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead” and watched all the comp movies.

But I think the real reason I was able to write this script so quickly, beyond the prep work that went into it, was because it was something I connected with so much, on such a deep level. It was a beloved source material that I knew inside and out. I had prepared for 25 years for that moment. I knew everything that there was to know about Harry Potter.

Also, when you run into a wall when you’re writing something in the Harry Potter universe, you can google anything. There’s a million blogs with timelines of the events of the books, which helped me realize things like: “No, no, no. This could never happen because Harry Potter competed in the Triwizard Tournament in ’94 and not ‘93.” There’s huge Harry Potter fandoms and websites and resources online.

Scott: Let’s jump to the morning of December 13th, 2021, which was when the annual Black List rolled out. Were you tracking that?

Sophia: I had strongly hoped and wished, and prayed and pleaded in my own thoughts. I was like, “Oh, my gosh. Wouldn’t that be amazing?” but I was like, “No, that would just…I can’t even hope for that. That’s crazy.” For years, I’ve always read the Black List scripts and been a big fan and follower of the Black List. So the thought of being included on the Black List was just crazy to me.

Even now, I have no words for it. It was like the craziest moment. I was so excited. John called me that morning and said, “You’re on the Black List,” and I literally…I couldn’t even form words. Words couldn’t come out of my mouth. Even now, I’m getting tongue‑tied. I was so, so excited.

Scott: Has it meant anything to you professionally?

Sophia: Yeah. Oh, my gosh. It really was so awesome. I got so many meetings from it.

Also, people liking the script and messaging me about it meant a lot, because I was like, “Oh, my gosh. What? People are reading my script?!…” I don’t know. It was so wild. I saw there was a Reddit thread about it, which I thought was so exciting, because I was like, “I’ve made it to Reddit.”

[laughter]

Sophia: That was a cool moment. I also got to meet a bunch of fellow Bellevue clients who were also on the Black List. John’s company Bellevue Productions had the most scripts on the Black List this year of any management company.

Scott: It was eight or nine, I think.

Sophia: We did “Scripts & Scribes.” We did a big livestream, and I knew a few of the people.

My friend Chris Wu was also on the Black List and did the livestream. He was writing on “Hawaii Five‑0” while I was a PA on “MacGyver”. We would hang out a lot. He’s so talented and so cool. The livestream was really awesome, because I got to put names and faces to the other writers whose scripts I had read and loved. It was great to hear about their process and all that stuff. [laughs] I’m not super eloquent. But it was a moment that I’ll never forget. It was the best ever.

Professionally, the Black List translated into a ton of meetings. Soon after, I got staffed on Starz’s HIGHTOWN, which was amazing. Plus, my friends from USC took me out for drinks and we celebrated. It was just really nice.

Scott: I’m so happy to hear that. Particularly landing the gig, because that’s super important. The Black List is nice, but a gig is a gig, you know? I’m always happy when I find out that people have actually got employment in the biz…

Sophia: Yeah, getting staffed — there were no words but, “Wow.” I was truly speechless. All the effort and ever since I was a kid, trying really hard to be a writer. And then to be on the Black List then get staffed writing on a TV show, it was just the most amazing feeling.

Scott: I’d like to ask a few craft questions for you. Maybe step out from “Hufflepuff: A Love Story,” something that requires an original story concept. How do you come up with story ideas?

Sophia: Some ideas I feel like I’ll have a dream or something and I’ll journal it, or I keep a Notes app on my phone whenever I’m in a funny situation. Or I meet a wacky person, who has a very specific POV and is interesting in some way.

I’ll write a little description and jot it down, even if it’s a random person I only ever met once at a coffee shop. I’ll have different ideas, a running list, and not all of them are fully formed ideas. A lot of them are just thoughts or stream of consciousness.

Then sometimes I’ll find that I can combine different areas of things that interest me. Taking a character on my list, then plopping it into a different loose idea I’d written down. And sometimes I’ll think “oh, wouldn’t it be fun to do a vampire thing?” Then the next question is, what kind of vampire would I want to write? Then who do I know, or know of, that is sort of vampire‑ish, or who could be the unexpected vampire that I know, and just go from there.

Scott: I think Nora Ephron’s mother told the kids, “Everything is copy.” Everything you experience — the people you meet, the dialogue you hear — it’s all potential content you can use.

Sophia: That’s how I feel. Exactly. Pretty much I can’t think of a script that I’ve written that doesn’t somehow draw on my own life experiences, or a person that I know or a person I met for two seconds or something, or a person I’m a fan of.

Scott: My class, right now I’m teaching, I have them do this each week: Dialogue from Real Life.

Sophia: That’s awesome.

Scott: We start off our classes like, “OK, what did you hear this week?”

Sophia: What’s the funniest thing that you’ve heard? [laughs]

Scott: The other day someone was saying, “Well, I was sitting in this place and I was having a yogurt, and all of a sudden these people next to me started making animal sounds. They were conversing like they were animals.” [laughs] We were like, “OK. Let’s riff with what. What’s going on there?”

Sophia: That’s like in “Mean Girls” when they’re doing the cafeteria tour.

Scott: Yeah, right. Okay, another question, this time on prep writing. How do you go about breaking a story? You go to cards? Do you get the outlines, character development, all that process?

Sophia: I definitely love a strong outline. I’m a big outliner. That’s something that USC Film School taught me.

In school, they would always drill and do outline, outline, outline. Sometimes I would be like, “Oh, I feel like I don’t have time to outline. I’m behind on this assignment. I’ll just dive in and start writing because I’ll save time that way.”

“Save time.” Then I would be three‑quarters of the way done with a script, and it would all fall apart and it’d be a mess. I would be crying. [laughs] It would be horrible, because I had no roadmap of where to go with it.

Without an outline, I was not driving towards anything specific and my writing was vague because of that, because I didn’t know exactly what I was trying to get at. I had an idea, but I didn’t know exactly. I definitely learned that outlining is essential for me — not only for big picture structure stuff, but also for specificity in the scene writing and dialogue and character development.

Scott: Now that you’re on staff on a TV show, that’s it. Right?

Sophia: Yeah, definitely. Outline, outline, outline.

Scott: How about developing characters? Are there some specific things like questionnaires, biographies, monologues, any techniques you use to discover them?

Sophia: Yeah, I’ll do character bios, character’s life timelines, sometimes I’ll even think about the character’s astrology and their sign. I’ve seen a lot of awesome resources for developing characters online so many places. Also, in school, my professors would give lectures on character and what’s the want, what’s the need? And I personally always like when a character either gets what they want — but it’s not what they need, OR, if they don’t get what they want but they do get what they need. Something else that really stuck with me was the idea of “the positive modifier” and “the negative modifier”. You know, when there’s two characters who physically represent the two different paths the protagonist could go down.

In “Star Wars” for example, there’s Darth Vader as the negative modifier and Obi wan as the positive modifier. Luke looks at Darth Vader like, “Oh, that could be me if I’m not careful.” Or in Mean Girls, Cady could become Regina if she doesn’t hang onto her authenticity and moral compass.

I love characters in scripts that the protagonist looks at and either aspires to be, or fears becoming.

Also with character development, writing a character bio before I start writing is helpful in terms of, where are they from? What are their parents like? Do they have siblings? Are they insecure? If so, what are their insecurities, or are they hyperconfident? Or, is it fake confidence?

With Oswalda, I had the idea for like, “Oh, this fun zany character,” but I feel like she would mean nothing if she didn’t have an emotional anchor for why she acted that way. I was intrigued by the idea of her having a deceased family member. That grounded her emotionally and also, it’s tragic irony that you have magic in this world but you can’t use it to bring back your loved ones from the dead.

Scott: You’ve packed a lot in there. I got this book coming out and I did all this reading on Carl Jung, and he talks about the shadow. You mentioned that Luke Skywalker could have become Darth Vader. That’s literally that scene he has in Episode Five.

Then there’s that scene in “Raiders” where Indy meets with Belloq who says, “I am a shadowy reflection of you. It would take only a nudge to make you like me, to push you out of the light.”

Sophia: It’s the classic villain line of: “You and I aren’t so different.”

Scott: Right. In “Hufflepuff,” you gave Finn a choice. He has a choice to stay at the apex of his life with this girl Lavender. He could stay there, but he chooses not to. He doesn’t go to “the dark side.”

Another craft question: How about when you’re writing a scene? What are your goals for writing a scene?

Sophia: I always love reversals in a scene, or doing something really unexpected. Of course it can’t always happen but I love when it does. I had an amazing professor who basically said, “There’s no excuse for a boring scene. You can make it interesting. A scene doesn’t have to be the most obvious way of two people having a conversation. You’re the writer, you can have them talking in a diner and then have the diner blow up mid-conversation.”

Because prior to that, my scenes were always two people sitting down in a room having a conversation back and forth. Not that that can’t be amazing, but when I was doing it, it certainly wasn’t. [laughs] I was doing the most basic. “Hey, how’s it going? Oh, good. Did you eat yet? Yeah, I had breakfast. I had a bagel for breakfast. What did you have for breakfast?” That kind of stuff that no one cared about really. Then I realized, “Oh, OK. I can have them having conversations while doing things that are fun and interesting.” Or they’re walking around and they’re having this conversation and something explodes or whatever.

You can do whatever you want because if it’s writing, it’s all hypothetical anyway. Unless you’re writing to get it specifically made on a specific budget or something. I think that was big for me, but also giving myself the ability to write the scene how I would like to write it at first, and knowing that I would probably cut it down later.

I think it was Alfred Hitchcock who said, “Movies are life with the boring parts taken out.” I like that. I write the scene a little longer, and then I’ll go back and trim it and trim it and trim it, until it’s down to just the essential part of the scene.

Because I definitely tend to be long‑winded as maybe you can tell. [laughs] I tend to be long‑winded.

Scott: What about dialogue? I asked this question. A lot of writers are like, “I don’t know.” It’s either you have it or you don’t. From a teaching standpoint, that’s depressing for students to hear that. Do you believe that people can learn to develop their skills at dialogue and if so, how do you find the voice?

Sophia: Absolutely. I mean, what do I know? But I definitely think, yeah. There was a professor when I was in school who told us to go sit on a bench in the middle of campus and listen to people’s conversations, and even try to write some of them down and transcribe them, so we could get a feel for how people actually talk.

Because like I said, I would be writing a scene where I’d be like, “I’m so sorry that your mother died two weeks ago in an accident that happened prior to the plot of this movie.” That kind of stuff. I needed the audience to know things, so I tried to put it all in one‑packed dialog thing. Then I remember this professor being like, “No. [laughs]

Sweetie, no. That’s not it.” She told me specifically, I’ll never forget this example, because I was like, “Oh, you’re so smart.”

She was, “If someone’s mother just died, I’m not going to go up to that person and say, I’m so sorry your mother died in a tragic accident and I’m really here for you if you need me after the funeral tomorrow afternoon at 4:00 PM.” I’m not going to say that.

I would say, “Hey, how are you doing? Let’s get a cup of coffee.” That’s all I’m going to say. Or like, “Hey, you want to get some coffee?” Then I was like, “Oh.” That little tweak definitely opened my eyes and I still think about it six years later or whatever it is.

Scott: That handling exposition is so key. I teach my students I say, “If you cut the conversation here and leave it dangling, now you create curiosity.”

Sophia: So true!

Scott: Final question: What advice do you have for someone who wants to learn the craft to try to make it as a Hollywood screenwriter?

Sophia: It’s so difficult because everyone’s journey is so different. For me, personally, the big thing was learning structure. That was, for me, huge.

Once you learn structure, you have the freedom to write, and consistently write things of quality because you have the structure nailed down. I know that there’s different…There’s sequence structure and three‑act structure. TV shows, sometimes, they’ll do five‑act structure, or four acts and a teaser, or whatever.

It’s not like you have to learn one and stick to it, but learning the theories and also the hero’s journey. Learning that and those charts where it puts familiar movies like “The Lord of the Rings,” through the hero’s journey, and “Harry Potter” through the hero’s journey. Learning those things were all helpful for me personally.

Also, surrounding yourself with people who are positive and believe in you, and are awesome, because I think there’s been so many times while I’ve been trying to pursue writing, where I’ve felt so discouraged. I’ve definitely been buoyed by my family and friends and the amazing people I work with. There have been so many mentors and people who have championed me and helped me and taught me. My manager John Zaozirny and my agents Matthew Doyle and Sara Nestor are always there for me and I feel really lucky.

It’s also cool to go through it with people who are in the same boat and pursuing the same goals. So you can all support each other. Because it’s hard. You get rejected a lot, so it’s definitely nice to have people who are on your side and rooting for you, and visa versa.

Scott: Those are valuable words of advice. William Goldman said, “Screenplays are structure.”

Sophia: Mm‑hmm.

Scott: I’m reminded, because there was an anecdote I heard back when I went to college. I took a music class, and the professor was talking about Igor Stravinsky. An amazing composer who broke a lot of conventions. The student asked him one time and said, “Maestro, don’t you feel constricted by the eighty eight keys of the keyboard? Don’t you wish that you could…?” He said, “No, no.” He says, “That’s my universe.”

Sophia: Yeah.

Scott: “Within that, I got total freedom to do whatever I want, but I know this is essentially the structure. Within that, I can do anything else I want.”

Sophia: I totally agree. It’s like, “Rules give you freedom,” ironically in this way, for me at least. Also, it’s so much easier, because when you have ideas, you know what to do with the ideas — how to structure them.

It’s not just like having ideas and throwing them into the abyss. You know where you can go with it and where you can take it, and what might be the obvious way to tell the story or what might be a different and fresh way to tell it. If you know the conventions, you also know how to subvert the conventions.

Scott: Right.

Sophia: Because a lot of people are like, “I don’t want to be too conventional. I want to do something really mind‑blowing.” But it’s like, “If you don’t know the conventions, you can’t do anything mind‑blowing, because you don’t know what the conventional way is to begin with.”

Scott: I have to ask: What do you love most about writing?

Sophia: It gives me a way to process everything in subconscious ways. It’s almost like, when I’m writing, I’m meditating on something going on in my life, my friend’s life, my family, or whatever. I’m processing it and externalizing it via fictional characters. It’s not too personal, but it’s extremely personal at the same time. It gives me freedom to explore thoughts, feelings, places and people.

I love it. It’s my life. I don’t know. I don’t have a good answer. [laughs]

Scott: That’s a great answer because it’s personal to you.

Sophia: Yes, that’s what it is. That sounds good. Let’s go with that. It’s personal.

For my interviews with dozens of other Black List writers, go here.