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Tuesday, October 18, 2016

Spotlight On 2016 Pilot Launch Contest Winner Nicole Quinn



By Naomi Beaty
October 14, 2016

Nicole Quinn’s script An Act Of God has been named the Web Series winner in the 2016 ScreenCraft Pilot Launch TV Script Contest and we recently asked her to discuss her past, present, and future in writing.
A varied and prolific writer, Nicole’s feature film Racing Daylight, a love story across time, stars Melissa Leo and David Strathairn. Her short plays are published by Playscripts inc. The Gold Stone Girl trilogy, a feminist-dystopian fantasy, is available for Kindle and on Audible and iTunes.

ScreenCraft: Can you give me an overview of your writing experience and background? Where and when did your storytelling roots begin?

Nicole: I’m a storyteller.  It was confusing for me as a child because my stories were often called lying, which is maybe why it remains a guilty pleasure. I’m adopted, and because I know little concrete information about who I might have been, I’ve allowed myself to be anything. The abandoned child of clandestine spies was a favorite at age five. Pretending proved muscle building for my imagination. Convent boarding school and UC Berkeley added humanities to my understanding of the craft.

I was an actor first. I came to writing after the birth of my first child. I found that I liked it, and I could play all the characters in the piece without ever leaving home.  I got my WGA card in 1993 and collaborated with some amazing artists in the studio system at the time, John Singleton, Jodie Foster, Meg LeFauve, Carol Polakoff, while never getting anything made.

It’s hard to get anything made in the system, and stories that don’t fit a mold are even harder to get financed.  I didn’t want to spend my time issue rigging stories about race and gender. My interest is human stories, where those issues are part and parcel of the plot and not just gratuitous tokens to inclusion.

ScreenCraft: Tell me about your writing community…

Nicole: Our region is rich in artists, the Hudson Valley, specifically Ulster County, so it’s a wonderful place to collaborate. I sit on the board of the Rosendale Theatre Collective, a community owned single screen movie theater, and co-chair its programming committee. I belong to Actors&Writers where I get to perform in new works by talented professionals. The Woodstock Film Festival is here, BCDF Pictures, as well as Storyhorse Theater. Many theater, film, and television professionals make their homes here. It’s been possible to host table reads with some of the best talent in the world. There’s much cross pollinating, and it’s a bucolic landscape to boot.

ScreenCraft: Where did the concept of your Pilot Launch contest-winning web series, An Act of God, come from? How does it fit in with your body of work?

Nicole:The idea for An Act of God popped into my head when I was wondering how to get what goes on in someone’s head, while they’re thinking and not speaking, center stage w/o voice over. I was thinking about the short form model and what content might hold me on a small screen. Not an intimate and niche story, but something fast moving and set on the world stage. I was also considering how we consume media now, and how a story told in 10-10 min bites, when seamed together, would make a reasonable 100 min movie when consumed as long form on a larger screen, if you considered the scene breaks from the beginning. And so I was off.
I often write with actors in mind for the principal roles. Usually they are people I know, but not always. I didn’t know Giancarlo Esposito, but then a friend was working wardrobe in Texas on a film he was in and she asked him if I could send him a script, and he said yes. Two years later he showed up for his first costume fitting and I was totally shocked and amazed that this incredible artist responded to the work and came to give me the gift of taking my characters and making them his own. You never know if you don’t ask.
I write in whatever medium the story demands. I intended to write The Gold Stone Girl as a screenplay and eight years later I had a trilogy of novels. It was too big a story to be a movie, it wanted a longer form.  So now, I’m puffing it up as a limited series.  I like the whole story series, much more familiar on the BBC. A finite number of episodes to tell a great strong story, then it’s over and on to something new and equally engaging.

ScreenCraft: How do you typically approach stories? And can you give an overview of what your writing process involves?

Nicole: I’m a complete story nerd. I think story is everything. It’s history, it’s art, it’s human nature. Sometimes I think writers are like fly paper, or like flowers pollinated with memory as story floating around in the ether. Sometimes it’s a place, or a scent, a sound, a breeze. I tend to think in pictures, so I write what I see in my head. It’s word music, painting a landscape of language.

ScreenCraft: In your career as a screenwriter thus far, what craft or business lesson has made the biggest impact or was the hardest won?

Nicole: Believing in myself, my work, that’s been my hardest battle. Not giving up. When someone says you can’t do that, now it automatically translates in my head to, okay, you can’t do that. That doesn’t mean I can’t.
I like learning new things, and I find that if I think like a beginner there’s more possibility for genius. The more I think I know, the more limitations I tend to put on myself. Once I unshackle myself from doubt and fear, then anything is possible. It’s not like I’m inventing the wheel after all, they’re just stories.

ScreenCraft: What was your experience at ITVFest?

Nicole: ITVFest is yeasty. So much energy and excitement for media storytelling in all of its aspects. It’s also world inclusive and very diverse, not what I expected when I read Dover, Vermont.  So shame on me for my assumptions, and congratulations to ITVFest.
I’ve had meaningful conversations that were not all about the economics of the business, but about the bones of the craft, which is so much more interesting to me. I’m sure business conversations were to be had, but I tend to run from them. My tragic flaw.

ScreenCraft: Did you glean any surprising or useful storytelling or business insights from your time at ITVFest?

Nicole: Yes absolutely! I loved the VR, panel, where I learned a lot of useful info about this new landscape I’m considering how to write for. I loved the TV tent where I watched amazing short content both comedy and drama. All well produced and often introducing me to worlds I didn’t know. Exciting!

I chatted with John Rhodes and Dominique Holmes, with women writers from the workshop tents, stimulating and creative.

ScreenCraft: And what’s next for you, career- and project-wise?

Nicole: I’ve adapted Shakespeare’s As You Like It into a contemporary gender bending romp which I plan to shoot in my meadow (Arden) summer 2017 – Like You is the title. I’ve applied for funding to make the pilot of An Act of God, while I work on the pilot and series bible of a three season limited series adapted from my trilogy, The Gold Stone Girl, a feminist-dystopian fantasy.

I also narrate audiobooks, which is another form of storytelling I suppose. I have a new one out on October 18th, The Next, by Stephanie Gangi, a wonderfully literate modern ghost story.

Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Like You Reading

Will Rosalind find true love with Orlando after she becomes Troy?

Like You, a new screenplay from Hudson Valley writer/director, Nicole Quinn, (Racing Daylight), will be read as part of the Rosendale Theatre’s Artist’s New Work Forum.

reading cast includes: 
Mary Stuart Masterson as Rosalind, Jeremy Davidson as Orlando, with Michael O’Keefe, Emily Donahoe, Julie Novak, Sophia Skiles, and Wayne Pyle along with Actors&Writers company members, Denny Dillon, Mikhail Horowitz, Adam Lefevre, Nina Shengold, David Smilow, Joe White, and Lori Wilner(subject to availability)

Adapted from Shakespeare’s As You Like ItLike You is a contemporary gender bending romp set in the pastoral forest of Arden. A summer 2017 local movie shoot is planned.

Disguised as a man, Rosalind, and her cousin Celia, escape forced marriage and religious persecution to find sanctuary among hippies, red necks, and realtors in the forest of Arden. 

Come and participate in the development of an indie film script. Then follow the project from script to screen!

At the Rosendale Theatre, 408 Main St, Rosendale, NY, Tuesday September 27, 2016, 7:15 p.m. Admission is FREE! 



Thursday, September 15, 2016

THE NEXT


OCTOBER 18, Hardcover and audiobook, narrated by Nicole Quinn




Is there a right way to die? If so, Joanna DeAngelis has it all wrong. She’s consumed by betrayal, spending her numbered days cyberstalking Ned McGowan, much younger ex, and watching him thrive in the spotlight with someone new, while she wastes away. She’s every woman scorned, fantasizing about revenge … except she’s out of time.
Joanna falls from her life, from the love of daughters and devoted dog, into an otherworldly landscape, a bleak infinity she can’t escape until she rises up and returns and sets it right – makes Ned pay – so she can truly move on.

Thursday, August 25, 2016

Will Rosalind find true love with Orlando after she becomes Troy?

Like You, a new screenplay from Hudson Valley writer/director, Nicole Quinn, (Racing Daylight), will be read as part of the Rosendale Theatre’s Artist’s New Work Forum.

reading cast includes:
Mary Stuart Masterson as Rosalind, Jeremy Davidson as Orlando, with Michael O’Keefe, and Julie Novak, along with Actors&Writers company members, Sarah Chodoff, Denny Dillon, Davis Hall, Mikhail Horowitz, Adam Lefevre, David Smilow, Joe White, and Lori Wilner. (subject to availability)

Adapted from Shakespeare’s As You Like It, Like You is a contemporary gender bending romp set in the pastoral forest of Arden. A summer 2017 local movie shoot is planned.

Disguised as a man, Rosalind, and her cousin Celia, escape forced marriage and religious persecution to find sanctuary among hippies, red necks, and realtors in the forest of Arden.

Come and participate in the development of an indie film script. Then follow the project from script to screen!

At the Rosendale Theatre, 408 Main St, Rosendale, NY, Tuesday September 27, 2016, 7:15 p.m. Admission is FREE!


Wednesday, May 18, 2016

Farm Stand

 e-book and audiobook, coming soon!

A month in the country, it sounded restful to Adelaide. A month out of the city, just she and the kids. Farmers, the salt of the earth, good food, anonymity. It was hot that August, when racial tempers flared and lust flamed  across the corn fields. It was a summer that altered many lives connected by the Farm Stand. 



Thursday, April 21, 2016

Modern History Sourcebook: Napoleon Bonaparte: Farewell to the Old Guard, April 29, 1814




http://legacy.fordham.edu/Halsall/mod/1814napoleon.asp

A speech by from April 20, 1814, by Napoleon Bonaparte, after his failed invasion of Russia and defeat by the Allies.

Soldiers of my Old Guard: I bid you farewell. For twenty years I have constantly accompanied you on the road to honor and glory. In these latter times, as in the days of our prosperity, you have invariably been models of courage and fidelity. With men such as you our cause could not be lost; but the war would have been interminable; it would have been civil war, and that would have entailed deeper misfortunes on France.
I have sacrificed all of my interests to those of the country.
I go, but you, my friends, will continue to serve France. Her happiness was my only thought. It will still be the object of my wishes. Do not regret my fate; if I have consented to survive, it is to serve your glory. I intend to write the history of the great achievements we have performed together. Adieu, my friends. Would I could press you all to my heart.
Napoleon Bonaparte - April 20, 1814

This text is part of the Internet Modern History Sourcebook. The Sourcebook is a collection of public domain and copy-permitted texts for introductory level classes in modern European and World history.
Unless otherwise indicated the specific electronic form of the document is copyright. Permission is granted for electronic copying, distribution in print form for educational purposes and personal use. If you do reduplicate the document, indicate the source. No permission is granted for commercial use of the Sourcebook.
(c)Paul Halsall Aug 1997