The hit Netflix horror series is adapted from a found footage horror podcast about ritual, stories, and sound. Showrunner Rebecca Sonnenshine talks to Write On about the adaptation process: "In terms of adapting something, you just have to crack it wide open, and we diverge in many places, and in many ways, it's very different from the podcast. In many ways, it has the same spirit but we definitely made a lot of changes… but a lot of that was adapting to the television format and the visual way of telling stories."

 

Rebecca goes on to talk about what advice to take as a writer: "Sometimes you take a note, and then you're sorry you took the note. In terms of writing, I think there's a balance between believing in what you're doing and listening to other people's thoughts… I have this tendency - I think a lot of women do - to want to be a good student and take all the notes, and sometimes you just can't do that."

 

The acclaimed British screenwriter, showrunner and producer breaks down writing the haunting Princess Diana biopic for director Pablo Larraín (Jackie): "The instruction I gave to myself is that because this is a princess and it's a castle, it's a fairy tale, and I think most fairy tales are horror stories with a happy ending… I wanted to go there to make this a fairy tale, and it does have a happy ending, but along the way, it's a princess who's held captive in a haunted castle."

 

Steven goes on to give advice about hooking the reader in the first ten pages of your screenplay: "Don't think that there is a 'right' way of doing this… The thing that writers should try to do - especially those first ten pages - is make it as unlike anything that anybody's ever seen because we all know that the people who are going to read the script have read a thousand scripts that month and have seen it all, know it all, but if something happens when they're reading it that they weren't expecting, you have attention.