LIZANNE SOUTHGATE
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Where do you live (City, State, or Country)?
Corvallis, Oregon
 
Your script stood out among hundreds of others. What was the inspiration for your story and why did you write a script instead of a short story or a novel?
The marriage of a shy young woman with an extraordinary talent and an immigrant performer who excelled at healing broken creatures, caught my heart and let me tell the story of a famous sharpshooter through the eyes of a frightened girl and the man who loved her.
 
How long did it take you to write your script...and what is your writing process? Do you outline...use index cards...white board...or just start with FADE IN?
When I’m frustrated with a story, I’ll use index cards on a board and hope that the solution will jump out at me. Usually, I start jotting ideas, information and bits of dialogue on a legal pad.  Sometimes, it’s a fact or an image, and sometimes it’s a free write. When my writing partner sees me start writing around the edges of the pad or squeezing words between margins, he knows I’ve found the flow. (Creation isn’t linear!)
 
What is your ultimate ambition as a writer?
To tell stories that make people laugh or cry or rage, stories that leave the reader or viewer feeling their own humanity a little more clearly.
 
Which film or television writers inspire you? Why?
Just like I don’t have a favorite child, I don’t have a favorite writer. The writer that creates fascinating characters, dialogue that lashes out and sticks in the mind or offers a twist so unexpected but truthful, has my heart.
 
What advice do you have for writers hoping to win a contest or place as a finalist as you have?
Write what speaks to you, tell the story that makes you laugh or cry, that makes you want to reach for a sword.  And don’t “polish” all the life out of your story.
 
What else are you working on that the world needs to know about?
Rewriting a screenplay about children who suddenly hold the fate of the world in their hands and realize how few adults they can trust to help them save it.
And – because there’s never only one idea keeping me awake – a pilot about a young Sheriff in a 1970s small town trying to clear her father’s name after the children he is accused of killing begin to reappear.