LYNN ELLIOTT
​

 PictureLYNN ELLIOTT
​How did you discover The Santa Barbara International Screenplay Awards and how did you decide to enter this contest among all the others?
I received my PhD from UC, Santa Barbara, after immigrating from Wales, so the city is special to me. In addition, the International Screenplay Awards has an excellent reputation, and I have been the recipient of many of its awards.

Where do you live (City, State, or Country)?
Chico, California, USA. Born in Cardiff, Wales.

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? What inspires your overall journey into screenwriting?
My background is academic. I was a professor, teaching dramatic literature (English Department) at California State University, Chico. The playwrights I taught became, in turn, my teachers. Often, I’ll turn to their plotting techniques for my own scripts. For example, a couple escape to a forest to avoid parental sanctions: the Bard’s MND, and, for me, GHOST TOWN, NM. ALTA CALIFORNIA, which has won multiple national and international awards, “began” when I first arrived in the US. I took some classes in a community college before transferring to UCSB. My “US history class” focused on Westward Expansion, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. No women, blacks or native peoples. So, I set myself a task: find out something about the native peoples of California. The more I read, the more I realized this was a story that needed a larger audience. What was being taught, in schools and elsewhere, was only the partial story. For example, few know of Captain Felipe de Neve, a humane, and now largely forgotten, opponent of Padre Serra. Over the years, my continued exploration developed into ALTA CALIFORNIA. See my short vimeo: https://vimeo.com/715066748

How do you decide which stories to tell, and what draws you to these particular themes?
It really is a need “to know, to really know,” a truth hidden behind accepted untruth. For example, when teaching Pirandello’s Henry IV, I dutifully trotted out an accepted biographical “truth”: the playwright’s wife, Antonietta, was placed in an asylum for the last 40 years of her life. Reason? She inherited her father’s “gelosia suprema”/intense jealousy. I wondered if this was an acceptable rationale given details of her “lived experience.” And so was born PIRANDELLO’S WIFE, a stage play at first and later developed into a screenplay.

What is your typical writing routine? How do you structure your workday to stay productive?
I don’t have a set routine. Once I have focused on a topic, it stays with me, nagging at me, demanding my attention. Truly Keats was right: “La Belle Dame Sans Merci.”

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?
I begin with a general topic. It challenges me with a WHY or WHAT HAPPENED? Given that the Spanish were leaving California, what would happen to the natives left in the missions. With whites coming from the east, were the mission Indians (neophytes) left to fend for themselves? Was an alternative solution presented? Yes, from Govern Felipe de Neve, California’s “forgotten man.” How did he oppose Serra? What is the result? Questions, questions, always questions. During the Covid epidemic, for example, I pondered the effect of a powerful virus. What if there was a virus that
meant certain men would be impotent? How would it affect men and women, particularly with respect to racial make-up? And “The Mongrel,” a one-hour episode of The Seed-Bearers” was written. As with all my work, I love exploring characters and their dialog. Sometimes I have to “go into” the thought process of a character totally unlike me: a woman, a man who worships power, someone who justifies evil, etc. And I to see how their “thought process” manifests itself through their dialog. Very early in my writing career, I had to set my English professor aside and speak as a brutal character who “ain’t not never gonna be worrying his self ‘bout double negatives. No how!”

How do you handle writer's block or moments of doubt (we all have them) during your creative process?
Forgive me but that’s rarely a problem. If I get a valuable, professional critique, I attend to it asap. I am a constant reviser! Thoughts are always travelling through my head. Sometimes it’s as simple as working and reworking a couple of lines, making sure the dialog is appropriate to the character and situation. More problematic than writer’s block is rewriter’s block! This is the belief that what you’ve written is perfect as is! It often is not!
​
Picture
​What tools or software do you find essential to your workflow as a screenwriter?
I work with Final Draft.

How do you approach competition entries, and what have you learned from participating in these contests?
Unfortunately, there are many scammers in this profession: contests/festivals that promise the world; “experts” who offer little advice but happily take your $300, etc. Some, who have not even read your work, give a generalized, maybe AI response! In the beginning, I fell for many of these! Be careful! Determine which are the most valuable contests!

Can you share a specific challenge you've faced in your screenwriting and how you overcame it?
ALTA CALIFORNIA, again, proved a true challenge. I had to determine what was the story: the history, or the character within the history? It’s so easy to get caught up in the historical moment and write about it like some newspaper reporter. I had “to see, to really see” (Ibsen) the events through the eyes of the character. As exciting as a moment might be, if he wasn’t present, then I had to set it aside. Maybe he heard of the moment second-hand, but that presents another problem. Could he trust that information? Eventually I wrote out the story as a first-person narrative. That helped me see the events more clearly and succinctly.

Where do you see yourself in five years as a screenwriter?
What a challenging question! As you see, I’ve already lived life as a n immigrant and a professor. I soon added writer to my title. Now I’m retired, so it’s writing full-time. No, not really! I love teaching and still “keep my hand in” teaching classes on Zoom about the Celts, their history and their mythologies. Five years? Who knows?

What is your ultimate ambition as a writer?
Of course. I’d love to see my work move from the script to the silver screen. I believe I explore important topics and will continue to explore them. As Andre Malraux says, “The great mystery is not that we should have been thrown down here at random between the profusion of matter and that of the stars; it is that from our very prison we should draw, from our own selves, images powerful
enough to deny our own nothingness.” Life is a challenge, and writing is my way of facing that challenge.

The film and television industry is constantly evolving. How do you see the role of screenwriters changing, especially with the rise of streaming platforms and emerging technologies like artificial intelligence?
Unfortunately, I see so many requests for scripts that duplicate successful scripts of today or yesteryear. Agents seeking the “hit” that duplicates a recent hit. We live in a constantly changing world. We face a different way of seeing year by year, even day by day. Maybe the way to explain this is to repeat my experience. I am an immigrant (born and raised in Wales. I love to explore and write, in serious and comic dramatic forms, stories of those who, through choice or happenstance, find
themselves strangers in a strange land. I share in the immigrants’ attempts to “navigate as safely as possible through an ever-shifting landscape of independent and unpredictable powers” (Alan Jacabs), and the difficulty of coalescing given and adopted values and ways of seeing.

Which film or television writers inspire you? Why?
AKIRA KUROSAWA, FEDERICO FELLINI, INGMAR BERGMAN, FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA, CALLIE KHOURI, ROBERT TOWNE, RONALD D. MOORE, RUTH PRAWER JHABVALA, QUENTIN TARANTINO, NORA EPHRON, AARON SORKIN, STEVEN SPIELBERG, CHRISTOPER NOLAN, D.B. WEISS, DAVID SIMON, SO MANY MORE. All challenge themselves and their audience. They focus on the importance of character and dialog within the story.

What’s your all-time favorite movie or television show?
THE WOLF OF WALL STREET, THE GODFATHER, BAREBACK MOUNTAIN, RAGING BULL, WAKING THE DEAD, CITIZEN KANE, M*A*S*H, RESERVOIR DOGS, THE MALTESE FALCON, OPPENHEIMER, THE GREAT DICTATOR, AND SO MANY MORE.

What advice do you have for writers hoping to win a contest or place as a finalist as you have?
Challenge yourself! Be restless! Ask question after question! What would happen if? How would it affect others? Check your dialog over and over. Dialog doesn’t just tell the audience something, or move the story along, it reveals so much about the character.

What else are you working on that the world needs to know about? (links to your projects?)
I mentioned that I am an immigrant. As I watched the success of the “Harry Potter” series, I realized that it was, for me, very English. And so, I wrote a YA novel, “The Boy Who Earned His Magic,” which is a fantasy adventure-quest, utilizing the relatively unexplored world of the differing characters, peoples, languages, myths and dramatic landscapes that make up my adopted country, the United States. I then developed that into a series of teleplays: six, one-hour episodes in all. At the end of the story, there was a mystery, a forward: one of the characters had not returned home. That was my prompt to continue writing the seventh episode.

Where can the world find you online? (Social media links, etc.) Websites:
https://www.facebook.com/lynn.elliott.4747/
https://twitter.com/Taff471977
https://www.instagram.com/lynn.elliott.4747/
https://lynnelliott47.com/
https://pirandelloswife.com
https://andwewereleft.com
https://altacaliforniamovie.com
http://quislingmovie.com/
https://theboywhoearnedhismagic.com/

VIMEOS:
ALTA CALIFORNIA: https://vimeo.com/715066748
THE SCRIPT: https://vimeo.com/724030990
ONCE THERE WERE STORIES: https://vimeo.com/802340404
GHOST TOWN, NM: https://vimeo.com/704318663
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF RODEO: https://vimeo.com/711707996
PIRANDELLO’S WIFE: https://vimeo.com/814664007