First Draft Episode #206: Stephanie Perkins and Sarah Enni

I was thrilled to do an event with Stephanie Perkins, New York Times bestselling author of Anna and the French Kiss, editor of My True Love Gave to Me, and many more. We met at Malaprop’s, Stephanie’s local bookstore in Asheville, North Carolina, to discuss villains in contemporary stories, our favorite podcasts, and the upcoming Netflix movie based on Stephanie’s most recent novel, There’s Someone Inside Your House!

Links and Topics Mentioned In This Episode

• In Tell Me Everything By Sarah Enni, the main character Ivy uses a Post Secret type app called Veil and is faced with the moral ambiguity of social media apps. Ivy deals with the negativity of social media and twisting herself into knots trying to defend something that is special to her.

• The first time that Sarah was in Asheville she was interviewed Beth Revis (Author of Across The Universe, listen to her episode of First Draft here), Meagan Spooner (Author of The Starbound Trilogy , listen to her episode of First Draft here), and Megan Sheperd (Author of Grim Lovelies, listen to her episode of First Draft here) for First Draft and she was able to reach out to them through Twitter. She believes that social media is morally gray because sites like Twitter have helped her make friends and connect with people but have also dismantled other peoples lives.

• The creator of the app Veil is a villain called Rake Burmkezerg which is an acronym for Mark Zuckerberg. Rake creates an app that fosters a lot of negativity but wants to take no accountability for it which is what makes him the villain.

• During her writing process, Sarah got the chance to explore her feelings about the people who have created the systems that are in charge and so much apart of our lives now e.g. Larry Ellison (Founder of Oracle Corporation) , Mark Zuckerberg (CEO of Facebook) and Jack Dorsey (CEO of Twitter). They manage a huge part of their lives and are met with almost no accountability.

• Stephanie was previously seen as an exclusively Romance genre was always interested in True Crime, Horror and Thrillers. There’s Someone Inside Your House is her first thriller.

• Scream (movie), was very influential to Stephanie as a child and turned her from a very frightened child into someone who saw how fun they could be and how they could be a safe place to explore your fears.

• Most of Stephanie’s horror background comes from Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton as well as Stephen King novels.

• There’s Someone Inside Your House is a very traditional thriller but Stephanie wanted to keep the killer's point of view out of it. Since our society celebrates villains like Hannibal Lecter and Freddy vs. Jason (movie) she wanted to take that element out of the story and focus on the victims.

• Netflix has purchased There’s Someone Inside Your House a year ago and Stephanie has received the script! Henry Gayden is the screenwriter for the project and also the screenwriter for Shazam! (movie) as well as the Spider-man: Into the Spiderverse sequel (movie).

• Judy Blume’s books talk about Belted undergarments and are dated but still end up being universal and timeless. So Sarah doesn’t worry about her books becoming dated and writes about what is relevant to her book now.

• Sarah Enni’s First Draft Podcast episode in which she talks about her positive high school experience which also inspired the high school in Tell Me Everything.

• In the eighth grade, Sarah realized her favorite movie Rushmore was her favorite movie and Radiohead was her favorite band. And she still goes back to that person to check in to make sure she’s still in touch with it and that’s were her pull to the YA genre came from.

• Sarah loves NPR and started this podcast because she always wanted to be Nina Totenberg.

• Sarah and Stephanie podcast recommendations: How Did This Get Made, Welcome to Nightvale, Truth and Justice with Bob Ruff, and My Favorite Murder.

• The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis was very influential to Stephanie to the point where she named her cat Mr. Tumnus.

• When writing Anna and the French Kiss, Lola and the Boy Next Door and Isla and the Happily Ever After, Stephanie wanted to take elements of fairy-tales and even paranormal romance and pull that off with a realistic ending. She wanted the idea of two teenagers who are meant to be and will be together forever.

I WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!

Have a question about writing or creativity for Sarah Enni or her guests to answer? To leave a voicemail, call (818) 533-1998. You can also email the podcast at firstdraftwithsarahenni@gmail.com. 

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Every Tuesday, I speak to storytellers like Veronica Roth, author of Divergent; Linda Holmes, author and host of NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast; Jonny Sun, internet superstar, illustrator of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Gmorning, Gnight! and author and illustrator of Everyone’s an Aliebn When Ur a Aliebn Too;  Michael Dante  DiMartino, co-creator of Avatar: The Last Airbender; John August, screenwriter of Big Fish, Charlie’s Angels, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; or Rhett Miller, musician and frontman for The Old 97s. Together, we take deep dives on their careers and creative works.

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