Interview: Stephanie Shannon (2013 Black List)

One of the best ways to learn the craft is read what professional screenwriters have to say about it. To that end for the next few weeks, I will be featuring interviews I have conducted with Black List screenwriters.

Today: Stephanie Shannon not only was one of five recipients of the 2013 Academy Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting, she did it with her very first full-length screenplay: “Queen of Hearts.” Beyond that, the script landed on the 2013 Black List and now has Seth Gordon attached to direct. In addition, Stephanie landed the assignment to adapt the YA novel “We Were Liars”.

Here are links to the six installments of my March 2014 interview with Stephanie:

Part 1: “I read a lot of scripts on that desk. When I was reading, all I could think was that I wish I had tried harder to be a writer. I just felt like I could write something better than half of what I was reading.”

Part 2: “I made a promise to myself that I would write a screenplay that year and enter the Nicholl. This was around November of last year. I started researching in December. Then I started writing in February.”

Part 3: “Like with me, I wanted to be a writer, but I thought it wasn’t practical. But, turns out it was something I could do. If you really embrace who you are, these amazing, wonderful things can happen.”

Part 4: “What I felt was interesting about Alice In Wonderland is that before it came upon the scene, most children’s books were very routine. They were all based around morals and lessons and kind of talked down to the child, making them feel like they weren’t allowed to have fun. I think Lewis Carroll is the first person to make the child the hero of the story.”

Part 5: “To me, writing is a lot like playing God. You’ve got these people down there with free will. And you don’t want to tell them exactly what to do per se. But you can know their minds and tendencies and orchestrate certain events in their lives that nudge them in the direction you want them to go, to fulfill a greater plan. If I look at the relationship between plot and character in that way, I think the result becomes much more organic.”

Part 6: “That’s what’s beautiful about storytelling. It’s ageless. It’s a way to affect the lives of people that you’ll never even know their names, but you know that you have.”

Stephanie is repped by CAA and Brillstein Entertainment Partners.

Twitter: @stephshanz.