This is another amazing episode at LA Comic-con! We're interviewing writer Jemima Victor. She's a fantasy writer from Boston. We talk about what it's like to write Black sci-fi and fantasy and what that even means.

This is Film Center, your number one show for real entertainment industry news.

No fluff, all facts.

Now, here are your anchors, Derrick Johnson II and Nicholas Killian.

Hey everyone, welcome to Film Center, your number one place for studio news.

My name's Derrick Johnson II and I am here with writer publisher Jemima Victor.

Hello.

How are you doing today?

I'm doing great.

How are you?

I'm doing great.

As you guys know, we take LA we are here at LA Comic Con.

We take the radio show everywhere and introduce you to very interesting people.

Now, what's really great is that she's a fantasy writer.

Yep.

She's an African American fantasy writer.

Yep, Haitian too, for all my zoes out there.

And Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Yeah, so my name is Jemima Victor.

I'm actually from Boston, Massachusetts So we came out just for this weekend And

I would say that I'm a writer by trial by fire Because I never really saw myself

writing when I went to school I went to school for a whole bunch of different

things I switched from like psychology and I went to education and at the

time I was like doing music and French I ended up like Oh, you speak French?

Yeah, so my parents both came from Haiti and they immigrated here.

Oh!

Yeah!

Okay.

I speak Haitian Creole, English, Haitians make such great crab.

Yes.

They do.

Legumes, oh my gosh yes yeah.

You gotta come to Boston.

You gotta come to Boston and get some.

There's no Haitians out here, right?

I don't I haven't really seen too many.

Not really.

When I graduated from Florida State.

University.

And when I was over there, it was a lot of Haitians, but not over here.

I gotta come to Boston and check it out.

Yeah, you gotta do, you gotta do it.

And one of the cool things actually about being Haitian is I have a

lot of influence in my writing and in the style of the humor too.

So if you see like food references, like 90 percent of the food references

in the book are from Haitian cuisine.

Really?

Yeah.

Oh, interesting.

I just repackage it and I like gatekeep a little bit.

I don't, I'm not going to just throw the names.

Like some, especially in pop culture, like one of the ways they make

something like ethnic is just for example, I was reading one of I think

it was like six crimson cranes, right?

Or like one of the books.

by Elizabeth Lim, and she does I think, I don't know, I want to say

Chinese, but I think it's one of the Asian diaspora, but she just

throws in the names of the things.

She's oh yeah, we had these sticky buns, or we had these like They say it

in general, like a general name for it instead of actually saying what it is?

No, like they'll say it like like the actual dish, and just assuming

that the audience knows what it is, so like a lot of the times they'll

throw in Let me give a better example.

Say I think of The only one I can think of where the audience probably knows

what it is Princess and the Frog Yeah.

I made gumbo.

Yeah.

But that's such a general term that they would know that.

Yeah.

Compared to something like Oh, like my mom, she makes a seafood gumbo.

Yeah.

That she calls seaside.

Oh, nice.

And so where she's from in Alabama she's from Birmingham, Alabama, there

if you say, oh, I'm making seaside.

Some people from there, they'll understand oh, okay, I know what type

of gumbo she's making specifically, compared to like you said, if you say

specifics, not everyone might know.

You know what I'm saying?

Being a writer, how do you make sure that your influence, or what you're talking

about, your influences transfer over?

Is that a technique that you use?

You say the general term?

No, I actually describe the dish.

So for example, in one of the books, you'll see them say in the first book,

you'll see them say honeycombed meat.

So we tripe is part of the stomach of of a beef, or animal, right?

So I don't know if it's beef intestines or beef stomach, something about that.

Beef stomach, yeah.

It's like the tripe.

So I just describe it like honeycombed meat and I'll just describe like I'll look

at a picture of it or I'll think about what it looks like when I'm eating it and

I'll describe the sensations I'd be like you know the texture or the smell like

the infusions of this and that versus like outright saying it because also I feel

like there's no real good like English translation for what I'm trying to say or

I don't know it there might be somebody might have it but like for example Cremas

is like a Haitian drink that we have.

It's like rum, it's coconut milk, it's very sweet, it's very

creamy, and it's very thick.

And you have it over ice, and that kind of, as the ice melts and you

mix it in your drink, it becomes more of like a sipping drink, right?

I would like the, you don't just chug it, I would akin how you experience

it, it's like an old fashioned, you have it in a rocks glass,

with the ice, you pour over it.

But then on Google they say Haitian eggnog.

Haitian eggnog?

Haitian eggnog.

Eggnog!

Yeah.

Just because it's the same color?

It's so different.

I feel like I actually, I've actually never heard anyone

say Haitian eggnog before.

If you Google Kermas, a good amount of search hits will say Haitian eggnog.

And I'm like, you're lying to the people.

That is not what that is.

It's, no.

It just looks like it.

Like that, so it's just, yeah, that's what I'm saying.

It just only looks like in texture and yeah.

Yeah.

But I feel like the experience is different.

Yeah.

So you have all of these very interesting roots and they

branch off into your writing.

And you said that you didn't start off wanting to be a writer.

It's interesting because I'm a screenwriter myself.

And I also, I started off in science.

I was studying to be a geneticist all the way until I was in

college and things like that.

Before I decided, oh, maybe I want to do something else.

What was that point for you where you were like, you know what?

I think I'm going to go into writing.

And not just I think this is what I'm going to do.

Yeah that point for me was when the experience in school didn't

match the experience at work and not even just like the environment.

A lot of people are like, yeah.

When you mean like college?

College, yeah.

So I went to university.

I went to Boston College and we studied accounting and it's funny

because everyone thinks it's so dry.

But I.

was fortunate enough to have really great professors.

Like a lot of the professors that I had won like their department

award of the year of being the best professor or whatever.

Oh, that's awesome.

Yeah.

So I had this one tax professor.

And he was great.

Ed Taylor.

Listen, he was a Taylor.

Shout out to Ed Taylor.

He literally just made it make sense in real life.

Like he would relate.

And I don't know, I feel like he was also a tax practitioner as well.

And he was just like, go golfing every weekend.

The guys flew back from Miami.

Yeah.

But he would just So even just how, like, when you're going shopping, the reasons

why you have better deals in certain ends of the year is because a lot of businesses

want to meet their quotas and they'll have sales and after Christmas, it's if you

want to go shopping, go after Christmas because everyone is calendar year.

The details.

The details.

You explain.

Explain the cycle, like a calendar year is January 1st and to December,

that's when like at December 31st, like whatever sales, whatever money you make

after that doesn't count for the year.

Do you bring some of that accounting knowledge, because you're

running your own business here.

Yeah.

Do you bring some of that accounting knowledge you

think into your own business?

Yes and no.

Yes, in the sense I know what I need to do, but no, in the sense I don't do it.

I just find someone to do it, or I put it off until I can hire someone to do it.

I think with self publishing, the hardest thing is that you're always juggling.

And it's you ever see those circus acts where they just throw another

ball to the clown, and he keeps juggling to throw another one?

You throw another one until he can't stop juggling?

That's what self publishing feels like.

On this show, we talked previously with other professionals who start off

professional, then they go indie, or start off with the studios, and stuff like that.

Then they might go indie, because they see something they don't like over there,

and then they go, eventually always go back to the studio, but with their

new indie project and stuff like that.

Where would you say that your, I don't want to say training, because that

might be a little too far, right?

But where do you say, where was your writing experience come from, before you

say, okay, this is what I'm going to do.

For example, my writing background, I, I used to just write for myself

a little bit, but not, it wasn't what I really cared about, right?

And then when I actually started saying, okay, I'm gonna start doing this, it

came with screenwriting, I was in film school, it was a whole thing, right?

For you, when, where did your experience with novels come from?

Was it just straight up reading, or you were like, yo did you take Any classes

or any training where you're like, okay, this is how you start writing?

Yeah, for sure.

So I like to read a lot.

Especially growing up I read devoured the whole Twilight series in like a weekend.

I think the biggest thing for me is like a, something captivated me.

I just want to read and read.

And then high school I feel like also messed up reading for me because

there was like a lot of mandatory reading and I didn't like it.

Yeah.

Mandatory, like you like doing something until someone tells you to do it.

And I feel like sometimes too, I feel like it's just like

the way they like approach it.

Cause even I feel like senior year in high school, I started liking to read again.

Because I always felt like overwhelmed, like I had so much thrown at me.

I would just cliff note everything.

Cliff note everything.

Like I just need to know the bigger picture.

I need to know the why and where things are going.

And I'll just finesse from there.

So I think I feel like that part of me, having to like finesse and try

to take little things and make it together to make sense, is what really

fueled my writing because I ended up APing out of English, so I didn't

have to take English in college.

But I'm just like, oh wow!

But I feel like it's a lot of it's, I feel like it's really bad, but having

to do things at the last minute and just having to like, Get these essays

done, cause the thing is though, like my learning, cause before I did accounting,

I was in psychology, education, so it's a lot of writing, a lot of research

papers, a lot of designing studies, and making, breaking things down

for people, and just writing it up.

A lot of essays.

Since you didn't always want to be a writer per se where does that,

where did that really start from?

Or like looking back, cause like me now, I'm older and I am a professional

writer and things like that.

And I write for studios and write movies and television

shows and all this good stuff.

I look back, even though I was like, I didn't want to become

a writer until I was like 24.

I had never read a script before until I was like 24.

I had done some plays and stuff like that.

Yeah.

But when I look back on my history, I'm like.

Oh, I made this newspaper comic book when I was in middle

school, that one time, right?

I did one too in middle school that one time, yeah.

So is there a time back in the past, now that you're a professional

writer, you're like, Oh, okay, I see where this kind of came from.

Yeah, definitely Loved journaling.

I feel like I process through writing, like I would always just like, and

it's funny too, because I always had an idea like after I get through a

couple of books of a hidden script, I want to do one off, like one hidden

script book, one non genre book.

And one of the ideas for a book that I have is like a dual perspective

where you see the girl's journal, and then you see her experience in life.

So that's where I always see myself processing things through

writing or even like, When I was like, autographing a book.

Some guy's oh, you really like to write, you put a paragraph in there.

And I'm like, oh, I didn't realize that.

Yeah.

I was just, I had a lot to say.

Yeah.

So I think it's just like clues like that.

And even in middle school I used to like to make comics and stuff.

, I made actually a book and stuff.

Like a little yeah, like a little like 20 page thing, like

a little world I character.

I used to write jokes and things and then I would force

my artist friends to draw it.

Oh, nice.

I'd be like, oh look, this is true.

We made it was called Random World.

We made this comic book.

We made we took, I don't want to say stole because that's not what happened.

We took it out the printer that was in the homeroom and we folded it in half and

stapled it and put little comics in there.

Okay yeah.

You know what I'm saying?

All those small things, they transfer over to who you are as an adult.

However, there's not a lot of African American fantasy writers.

Even the writers that I speak to when in my own industry, it seems like the

only thing Hollywood is greenlighting is either black pain when it comes

to slavery or something like that or drugs or gangsta stuff or, actually,

that that's the, really the main thing, even when it comes to you.

Luke Cage, I say, is a little bit different because he's a superhero,

but he came from that era of what's going on and things like that.

Compared to the updated Black Panther, it's not really focused on that.

Yeah.

Being an African American female who's writing in fantasy, you don't have a lot

of, compared to possibly other races, you don't have a lot of people that

you're looking up to who look like you.

Is there any writers that you were, when you were younger, you were like, I love

this style, at least when it incorporated.

Oh, yeah.

Oh my gosh.

It's funny, because my friend had just asked me like, why

didn't you tell people this?

So basically their eyes were watching God by Their eyes were watching God.

Yeah.

Oh my gosh.

I don't know why her name is Blink.

It's always when you're on the spot, you blink.

It's always when I'm on the spot.

It's always when I'm on the spot.

And she did Jonah's Gourd Vine.

She did She writes in the prose, like the dialogue style that I'm thinking of.

So she has phonetic.

I can't remember That book was inspirational to you.

That book was really inspirational.

Okay, it turned into a movie, Halle Berry, Michael Ealy.

Yeah, all of them It was really good, but that just it was just beautiful because

it was just about her trying to live her life Janie she's like this young girl and

she gets married off and stuff like that.

But it was just it's very beautiful and it's just I love, I never really see

phonetic language like that and it not be like, I don't know, like hood derived or

like the gangster aesthetic of writing.

So do you have any other influences?

I don't know, that inspired your style?

Yeah, for sure.

One of my favorite books that I had read I had read it when I was younger and

then I went back to reading it older and watched the movie and everything.

It's Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston.

Oh yeah, okay, so yeah.

Yeah, it's really, listen, it's so beautiful and like she has so she's from

Florida and she's based in a small town near the area that she was in and one

of the cool things about it is that It just wasn't like, a lot of times when

I had read other books that used like slang or African American vernacular

or just like even phonetic spelling.

It doesn't feel genuine, does it?

Okay, one, it does feel genuine, but two, it's always the same perspective

of being in this the hood or a basketball kid trying to like, I feel

like it's love and hip hop on repeat.

Something that you've seen a billion and a half times.

Yeah!

I think that's so interesting to bring up.

And struggle love.

Like this one was struggle love, but a different perspective.

Like she had money.

She was married off young when her husband was like, married May or whatever.

But I feel like you focus more on the woman's experience, on Janie and

her life and what she's thinking.

And even when she fell in love with Tea Cake, it was like he was

like, I don't need your money.

You live off my dime.

Whatever I go, you go.

I don't know.

Just the way that the story was constructed in this even

how she had descriptions and everything was just so beautiful.

So beautiful.

And so I loved the movie too, it was such a, it had me crying.

But I just loved the fact that it was, even though it didn't have a

happy ending traditionally, like I still felt like a warm catharsis.

You still felt satisfied.

Yeah.

Still felt satisfied.

Yeah.

There's such a lack of African American female fantasy writers.

I myself, I'm working with a couple different projects and some of

them, there's not black female writers because there is, Shonda

Rhimes is a big hero of mine.

Yeah, she's great.

Isha Rae is really great.

She's not a personal hero of mine like Shonda is, but like

she's also really wonderful.

However, they're not writing fantasy.

Yeah.

And, you think about things like Lovecraft Country.

Yeah.

These are heavy fantasies that's made by Black Fantasy.

I really think that Black, you think that Black Fantasy is being pushed away,

not pushed away, but needs more light?

Yeah.

I definitely think so.

I feel like it's a weird pull where it's if it's a hot, popular

thing right now, we're on it.

For example, I think it also has to deal with, like, all the

different medias intersecting.

Because right now, Afro beats is the hot thing.

You'll have people who never stepped foot in Africa, people who don't know

anything about any black people trying to have that beat in their song.

Nigeria is popping, which you also see a lot of just Afro centric

fantasy popping right now, too.

Children in Blood and Bone, a lot of just Nigerian writers Stay with

me by Adebayo Adeyemi, something.

I might be butchering their names.

I'm doing this on the fly, but there's like a lot of things that are, people

are always writing these things, but they weren't getting as much attention.

I feel it's so interesting.

You bring up the pan Africanism.

Yeah.

I just heard this term yesterday here.

They call it Afro made.

Afro made?

Afro made.

African American and like anime.

Oh!

So Afro samurai.

Yeah.

The boondocks, things like that.

Oh, I didn't know that.

Yeah, and it seems oh it only came out because now it's popular.

Yeah.

But it's always been there, though.

I know, but the boondocks, they didn't like the boondocks.

And even what is it?

Was it samurai shampoo or something like that?

Someone was saying like, it's like the ghetto boondocks.

I don't know.

Someone was like, Samurai Champloo does have a lot of hip hop in it.

There's another one that was like Was it Afro Samurai?

I think so.

Yeah.

That's the one with Samuel L.

Jackson.

Yeah.

They're like, that's a cheap knockoff of anime.

I was like, whoa.

Whoa.

Wow.

Even though they're made by anime studios.

Yeah.

The same studios make the stuff they usually like.

Yeah.

As a, as someone who writes fantasy, what are some of your

Oh, that's a good question.

I'm not really sure.

I feel like the first one that comes to mind right now is

Red Queen by Victoria Avellar.

But just because of the fact that It's YA, so it's, I feel another

thing that people have to realize is that Do you write only YA, or?

I actually don't write YA.

I write YA friendly things, as in kids can relate to it, and I also

try to steer away from a lot of the current trends is to push heavy sexual

content, and they call it spice.

Yeah.

I don't do that.

I try to set people's I level people's expectations right now.

There's no spice, there's no none of that.

But, one of the things I really liked about it is just

that I liked the characters.

I liked the pacing.

It's like one of those things where I left, I was like, Oh, I

want to see what happens next.

And it wasn't intimidating to approach.

I feel like sometimes the fantasy books the way that when you open it,

it's just Oh, wow, this is a lot.

But it didn't really feel that way.

And I just liked the feeling that it had throughout it.

I don't think she has anything super graphic.

I feel like whenever Another thing too I'm like, I think it's weird for me,

I don't really like a lot of explicit stuff in my reading either, so I picked

up a book and this girl's like dropping F bombs, and I was like, oh you know

what, I'm just gonna put this down.

Put it down real fast.

Oh yeah, I kinda feel like that just takes me out of the story, and I know

people are like, oh just cause you're Christian doesn't mean you can't have

swears, and I'm like, you couldn't even make up swears of your own world you

could've called him like, I don't know, you cockroach eating something I don't

know, you could've made something up.

I like that in my own writing where I try to be more creative than cursing.

Not saying that I don't have anyone who curses at all in any of my

writing, but it needs to be because the character is simple minded like

that, that it wouldn't be as creative enough to come up with something else.

I could say some of those insults on this radio show.

I'm not going to.

Even though there's no cuss words in them, they're a little, they're a little

crazy, so I'm not going to say it.

But if you find So as a fantasy writer do you find that sometimes studios don't

really build their worlds correctly?

Something that, so I do a lot of transmedia stuff too.

And something that we've noticed is that, and people have heard this for

years and years, Oh, the book is better.

Oh, the book is better.

The book is better.

Only in very few instances are people like still happy with the transition over.

Yeah.

One of the biggest flops when it comes to fantasy was Aragorn

going from the book to the movie.

And your book you want to tell us a little bit about it first,

though, before we get into it.

Yeah, for sure.

My book is called The Hidden Script.

It's about four friends who go on an adventure to be kings

and queens in a new land.

It's fantasy, slice of life, so it starts them at orientation, and things go wrong,

so they're scrambling to get to the crowning ceremony, and then once they

get there You see all of the chaos that they have to deal with and it came out in

January, not January, February 28th this year, it came out, the e books dropped and

then I had a little trouble with getting the publisher to, the printer to bring the

books, so I ended up getting the hardbacks in April and then the next one is coming

out in July, but one of the things that like is glossed upon is that the kingship

is conditional And that they have to actually perform works and earn ranks.

So they get a test trial, they get to have a palace.

They get to have some of the perks.

But if they don't comply, it gets all taken away from them.

Yeah.

That's really cool.

You have a really rich world that you've built here.

What do you think is part of the issue when bringing that

richness to the world onto screen?

Two things.

I think it's production.

But I feel like that's a little bit easier now with CGI.

But then also time.

Because I feel like It takes time for the character, because you

have a whole, 200, 300 pages.

So one of the things that they tell us when you're writing is

you don't want to just info dump.

You don't want to just have a whole paragraph where it's this is a

guy, this is the precedent, this is the time, this is the money.

Like you want to have them like, read through it and explore.

So I feel like a lot of the times you get it visually, like

you get to see different things.

But the issue with visual is that, did you get it to match the description?

And is what I'm imagining what you're imagining.

Because we're going based off the creative director's imagination.

The colors he chose.

When I say something is a sea blue green, that's seven different shades

you can choose from, like hex colors.

Yeah.

And so I choose light green, you choose dark green, but then you pair

that dark green with another color.

So then that sets the mood differently because they tint everything to match.

And so that's how like when the movie you have in your head is not going to match

the movie of whoever's directing it.

You know what I'm saying?

And it's also even as a writer, when someone's directing your own writing,

That director is going to have a different vision than you possibly did.

Yeah, the director has a different vision, even the editor has a different vision.

So true.

Movies are made three times, by writing, the directing,

and then in the editing room.

Yeah, post op.

And and sometimes they'll have conflicting interpretations.

I feel like with production it might be a little easier because whatever is shot.

But like you always have Cutscenes like for example in the second

Black Panther and Wakanda forever.

Yeah, I can't believe they cut out the romance scene I had a feeling, I was like,

I thought Yeah, it felt like something was missing and then I saw the cutscene

I was like who was that test audience?

I want to drop kick all of them.

I know y'all said no to this It just I feel like it was actually like an editing.

I thought it was a studio call Really?

Because like I don't really know a lot of people who've seen that extra

part who are Confused or they don't love it or something like that, right?

Yeah.

The scene by itself just works.

Even if you've never seen the movie.

It works!

It works by itself.

It's in isolation, that's why I'm so shocked.

Yeah, so I really think it was some sort of studio time, where they're like,

Oh, we want to come in by the seconds.

Let me ask you this.

When it comes to There's a lot of writers who say, I don't want to make I don't want

to transfer this book into movies anymore.

They say I want to transfer it into television because it's more

time to stay with the characters.

Okay, yeah.

Yeah.

Do you, it's not the 1950s.

We don't make Ben Hurs anymore.

You know what I'm saying?

We don't make these four hour epics.

There was the Irishman.

Marvel's trying to push it up to those hours.

Yeah, Marvel's trying to push it up.

But it still doesn't satisfy possibly 13 episodes that are an hour long.

Yeah.

That's completely different.

Yeah.

As someone who has written a book that is, I think your book's

about 500 something pages, right?

So it's, there's also illustrations, but it is quite thick.

It's a little thick.

She's a little thick, yeah.

Would you say that something of works of this size would be best told in

theatrical or best told in a television?

Because a lot of times when you look at things that are, some books can't be TV.

Yeah.

Some things can't be TV.

Yeah.

Because the engine isn't there.

Yeah.

It's just, oh, and a lot of escape stuff, a lot of escape,

it just needs to be a movie.

Yeah.

So would you say that your, the hidden script is more of

a television style or more?

It's funny because when I imagined it as a TV, a movie saga, so you'd have Star

Wars Yeah, Star Wars, but also I feel like more how you have different movies, like

Marvel, how they have different movies for Oh, like the connection universe,

like the new universe yeah, but instead of each movie be a different character

and then you see them in Avengers, like each movie would be the next installation

It's just Avengers, yeah Avengers Oh okay I think it also depends because I know

it's hard with TV because if there's no interest, it can get cut any way through.

So Shadow and Bone got cancelled.

And they have a petition on change.

com, or whatever, org.

Oh, let's bring this show back, but what if they don't bring it back?

So it's a tough either way, but at least with the movie You know once it's out.

And you always have that.

People can buy it.

People, but then if you had a show cut halfway.

Yeah.

There's no resolution.

I tell a lot of creatives this especially I can't talk about it

right now on the show because of NDAs.

But.

I've worked with some writers where they've created something and now the

studios get interested and they want to make it and they're like, What

does your first season look like?

Studios always they very rarely say, Oh, we want one season.

Obviously, a lot of times they want multiple seasons.

They want one season to test it, right?

And then if it gets past that, they're like, Okay, let's do

multiple seasons this and that.

However, sometimes you get cancelled.

Netflix is famous for cancelling shows that people like.

Yeah.

How do you think that some of those writers can handle Because I always

tell them, go all out the first season.

Yeah.

Because you don't know if you're going to get another one.

Exactly.

Just go all out.

And then try to resolve it.

That's what, yeah.

But you're saying that, you would imagine yours as the Avengers.

Yeah.

How would you tackle that problem, knowing that you might not get

a second one, but you want the first one to still be satisfying?

Yeah, so with this one, I would actually put the first book

and the second book together.

So the reason why this book is the way that it is because it's just production.

I didn't have enough money to write everything that I wanted

to say and get everything edited and get everything printed.

Funding is a big thing for indie creators.

Listen, they charge per word, and I was like, I could not get a

reasonable quote to save my life when it was like originally the original

you're talking about line editing, you're talking about everything.

So the original manuscript for the hidden script was supposed

to encapsulate their whole month.

So you see them their first week, you see all the drama that they go through, right?

And because they were so negligent their first week, they don't realize they

have a mission that they have to do.

So that's what book.

Two opens.

They have a mission, they have 48 hours.

They gotta snag a mission.

Yeah.

They gotta do the mission, complete it, come back and they end up

picking up some last minute.

Think it was the only thing that they had.

. Why did they not get something earlier?

'cause they were messing around the first week.

Yeah.

Not paying attention.

And then at the end you see the consequences of all of that.

And so that's in my head, that's movie one.

So even though technically it's two books, that's that's

enough to fill up three hours.

Okay, you're talking about what the manuscript originally was, and now

it's been edited to this version.

Yeah.

Obviously there's been some change in story structure a little bit, right?

Yeah, oh yeah.

We're entering this zone now, and the consensus is Oh, not only

movies are looking visually starting to sound, feel the same, right?

But also in the story structure they're starting to sound the same.

Wish that came out recently, We Wish, a lot of people watched it and

they said, It's just a Disney movie.

Instead of saying, oh, I love it, or this is it.

I'm like, eh.

The trailer was giving that too, yeah.

It's just a standard Disney movie.

Why do you think that people are these studios are starting to go

into this standard storytelling mode?

Not saying that everything, needs to be, pants.

That there's two methods, do you buy pants on your skin and just write whatever.

Or, you're going to do outlining.

So you told me a lot about, your world and the book and things

like that with screenwriting.

Why don't you tell some of our listeners, because we have a lot of industry

professionals, but also some people who want to get into the industry.

Do you have any advice for people who just want to start to get writing?

Yeah I would say, you know what's funny?

A lot of the times when I see people ask me, they're like, Oh

should I do self publishing or should I do traditional publishing?

And my first thing is just get the draft done.

I feel like for me, that has been the biggest hurdle.

And, it's also hard for me, like, when I was first starting, I always really

wanted to be perfect, and at first when I was thinking it was going to be

a movie, I feel like the ideas flowed a little easier, because I was doing

bullet points, I was like, this is going to happen, then this is going

to happen, but then once I realized I wanted to make my novel an actual

prose written novel, I was like, man.

How do you describe things?

Oh my gosh!

You're gonna need more detail and things like that.

Yeah, and so I like, had this weird struggle where I had like either

passages that were like really sparse and had no explanation.

It's like dialogue.

But in my head I just saw them talking.

I'm sorry, did you start off as a screenwriter?

Yeah, the hidden script, I had imagined it to be an animated movie.

Oh, so that's like where the origin was, on that sector, and then

you decided to move to the next.

Yeah, it's funny because the opening part, it's called Intruder, is because

I in my head, I heard the song Intruder by Takeoff, the mixtape, on YouTube.

Intruder.

And that's I'm like, Oh, wow.

And I just saw like the opening, like scene happening as if

it was like the soundtrack.

And this is how it opens.

Some guys like raining.

And I just saw like all the things like it's like a dark setting.

I just like the camera panning and everything.

So that's so cool.

Yeah.

So what's next for you?

Next for me is writing book two of the hidden script.

I have it set to publish July 9th, 2024, which is exciting.

And then more conventions.

And Hopefully getting the word out and just keep pushing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's fantastic.

It's been a great talking to you with you here do you have any

work find out what people can listen to you or find you socials?

For sure You can find us at the hidden script.

com and you can find us on instagram at the hidden script series on

facebook At the Hidden Script Series, Tik Tok, At the Hidden Script, X,

I mean I keep saying Twitter, but it's X now, the Hidden Script.

You know it's quite interesting, it's do you usually make tweets or he makes X's?

I don't know.

Cause someone who makes X's, that's, that sounds like that

might be a problematic person.

Yeah.

Alright, cool, thank you so much.

Guys, this has been Film Center, my name's Derek Johnson II.

And I'm Jemima Victor.

And we'll see you next time.

Bye guys.

This has been Film Center on Comic Con Radio.

Check out our previous episodes at FilmCenterNews.

com Sign up for our newsletter and get the Hollywood trade straight to you.

You can follow the show at Film Center News on all major platforms.

Tune in next week for a fresh update.

Until next time, this has been Film Center.