Real Life Villains with Stephanie Perkins and Sarah Enni

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. 
SUBSCRIBE TO FIRST DRAFT WITH SARAH ENNI

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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