Interview (Part 2): Wendy Britton Young

My interview with the 2024 Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting winner.

Wendy Britton Young wrote the original screenplay “The Superb Lyrebird & Other Creatures” which won a 2024 Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting. Recently, I had the opportunity to chat with Wendy about her creative background, her award-winning script, the craft of screenwriting, and what winning the Nicholl has meant to her.

Today in Part 2 of a 6-part series to run each day through Saturday, Wendy reflects on the inspiration for her Nicholl-winning script and its eight-year journey from concept to final draft.

Scott: Let’s jump into the script, “The Superb Lyrebird & Other Creatures.” You mentioned this was the first thing you imagined as a screenplay. How many years back are we talking?

Wendy: Eight years ago.

Scott: Wow, eight years ago. Here’s the logline.

“A neurodivergent teen who envisions people as animated creatures, battles an entitled rival for a life changing art scholarship, while her sister unwisely crosses the line to help.”

What was the starting place for the story?

Wendy: I started with a character — the protagonist, and she was an artist. The neurodivergent aspect of it came in a little bit later. Essentially, she’s somebody who has a very unusual point of view, who has the gift of a beautiful imagination — of a unique artistic voice. Her challenge is that some people around her want her to fit in more — to normalize.

Also, I just thought there aren’t that many films that really express the story through the eyes and voice of a character with that point of view.

Scott: Yeah. You’re right. There’s Little Man Tate. There’s a movie, Gifted, or even if you want to go further on this sort of spectrum, Rain Man, but those are…the character is not the protagonist. They are a central character. They’re an important character, but they’re not the protagonist. It’s always from the perspective of someone trying to wrap their head around or deal with this unusual person. In the case of your script, that would be Mea.

In Latin, it’s mea culpa. I was curious about that actually. Was there any sort of symbolism to the name? Because I know that “mea” means “mine,” I think, and then in the Italian, it’s short for Maria, and it means bitter. Is there any symbolism in that?

Wendy: Yes. Both sisters each have their own kind of selfishness, and it’s expressed very differently, but it was “me” and “I” — Mea and Ivy. But, to your point, “mine” could imply “my voice.”

Scott: There you go. Me and I. Character names can be important. Right off the bat on page one, you’ve got these quick images, quite a visual opening. Then there’s an animation right up front with briefly sketched baboons, wildebeests, and warthogs. So I think this probably circles back to what you’re saying. You’ve never seen a story that’s told from the unique, specific perspective of a protagonist with this kind of mental acuity.

The animation, was it always there, or was that something that emerged over the course of the writing?

Wendy: I always had the animals in there. A friend of mine suggested I use animation, and I immediately liked that. Then I sent it off to a contest, and one of the readers there said, “This animation is really unique and captivating, and you should have more of it.”

I only had three moments of it, and I was like, “Of course!” Then I went “wild” with it.

Scott: Let’s dig into that a bit. Not just the animation, but it just occurred to me, I never thought of — animation — animal.

Wendy: Hey, that’s right.

Scott: The protagonist, Mea, the way she’s described when she’s introduced:

“Mea Strang, Viking hair, blue, unblinking eyes, behind those eyes, a different world. She hugs a thick notebook like it’s a Bible.”

A notebook turns out to be extremely important.

She’s very knowledgeable about animals. She really immerses herself in that. It could have been anything. She could have seen people and seen them as robots or whatever, but animals. Maybe you could unpack that a little bit. Why that works for you in terms of this character.

Wendy: Because she’s been a bit isolated. The way I wrote her family is that she was overprotected because she had some trouble early on where people made fun of her, and so she was homeschooled and alone, with the exception of Ivy, her sister.

She goes outside to draw, so she spends a lot of time in nature, and she feels safe around animals. So, in situations with people where she feels anxious, she pictures them as animals.

Another really cool thing is that when I was researching this, I came upon this little film made by a young woman who has Asperger’s, and she has a bunch of friends who are on the spectrum, and they, especially two of the young women talked about their imaginations as being a creative place, but also a retreat where they felt safe.

So if they were struggling with too much input or anything that was presenting a challenge to them, these beautifully constructed worlds — I’m just getting chills — were this place that they could go to that was totally theirs, and they were very elaborate, and had such beauty to them. It’s funny because I had been creating this character along those lines, but when I saw that little film, I was just like, “Oh, my gosh. This is so real and so beautiful.” It was inspiring.

Scott: What you just said was quite lovely. It’s like the security that stories can provide us.

Wendy: Yes.

Scott: Right? The narratives that we can construct about things. I was quite struck by what you were just talking about there, that it really is a way for her to navigate this stuff.

Wendy: Yes.

Scott: She has a sister and in the script, we see her first, she’s got Mea behind her. Her sister Ivy, 24, so there’s a seven year difference between the two of them.

Here’s how Ivy is described when she is introduced:

“The blonde woman is Ivy Strang, 24, a charming, determined Jean d’Arc, sans the divine guidance.”

Could you describe Ivy to us? What we need to know in this introduction of this character at the beginning of the story.

Wendy: Yes. I try to use my first piece of dialog to promise something thematic about the story. Mea is anxious about going to this new school, so she says to Ivy, “Did you know dodo birds went extinct because they had no fear of humans?” Ivy’s response is, “Just act normal.”

That one exchange gives us a lot of information, both about the story, and their dynamic.

Ivy is complex. She’s Mea’s protector, and takes that role very seriously, especially since the parents passed away in a car accident. But she’s also frustrated by it.

She hasn’t even really adulted herself, but she’s thrown into that position. Really, she’s probably been in that position since Mea was born. But she’s a bit of a mess because she hasn’t dealt with her own personhood and development, being so focused on Mea.

So there’s a lot of conflict there. Their relationship is close, and also complicated.

Scott: Yeah, and of course, you know as writers, we know you can’t have drama without conflict, and so you’ve got this complicated, complex relationship between these two characters.

Ivy even introduces herself as a sister-guardian when she’s trying to get her into this school midyear of her senior year, and they’re like, “Why?”

“Well, she’s been homeschooling. Well, there’s this scholarship…” that she perceives as being the pathway for her sister to have a future. Right?

Wendy: Yeah.

Scott: All this to the detriment of her own personal journey because she’s going to a local community college, and I think I remember she was going to major in teaching, and then she was going to do sociology and then do theater and then psychology, which suggests she’s trying to find herself but not succeeding.

Wendy: Yes. She almost uses Mea as an excuse to not deal with her own lack of focus, let’s say.

Scott: Yeah. If I were doing an armchair psychologist, I could say the reason why she hasn’t locked on something is that if she did, then that would upset the dynamic between the two sisters where she’d have to go and follow her own thing.

Because of this terrible accident within the last four years where their parents were killed in a car crash, she’s had to take on the massive responsibility of taking care of Mea, and so that has held her back.

Wendy: Yes. Her one place where she feels in control, her comfort zone, is with the guys. That’s her go-to, where she’s very at ease and confident. Of course, that is the opposite of Mea, who looks at that kind of wistfully and feels the pangs of wanting to have greater connection, possibly in a romantic way.

Ivy’s been holding her back, thinking she’s a child. That it’s not time for that yet, but it’s going to come. It’s like the tide coming in.

Tomorrow in Part 3, Wendy shares her thoughts about the importance of character-driven storytelling and how that’s reflected in her script’s characters.

For Part 1, go here.

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