Crafting stories, my whole life, has felt like solving puzzles, and I love puzzles. “What She Wrote” began as an almost entirely different idea, and I adjusted the pieces over and over again until they all fit together like a full board of Tetris blocks. I am a professional killer of darlings: no darlings are too precious to replace with a story element that works better. That’s why it feels almost disingenuous to say any one thing inspired me; my driving inspiration was the desire to feel the satisfying click of a story that means something to me coming together.

Besides crying as I edited Stella’s more emotional voice lines, I’d say the award for most notable memory goes to more (figurative) crying over drawing the first background of the library scene. Clocking in at taking almost 10x longer than all other backgrounds, drawing stacks of books reaching towards a domed sky scratched at my need for correct 4-point perspective like nothing else.

Conciseness, clarity, and lake of context made writing this script its own special hellish place in heaven. I needed to get through a lot of content to tell the story I wanted, but I had limited resources, so it had to stay short. I reconciled my conflicting interests by not actually compromising on any of them and instead sacrificing my sanity as I slaved over every word in the script. My final decision to fracture the scenes and have the dialogue bridge locations (ie, Stella's stories) propelled the script to a succinct and fast-paced narrative with a stable emotional core.

I’m posting my comic “Love and Lightning” to Webtoon beginning in March 2025, so come visit me! I’ve also got several pilot scripts for TV series, animated and live action.