Introduce Yourself : Happy IYW~ by Banafsheh Esmailzadeh

Banafsheh Esmailzadeh , three features in one month?! You're certainly not short on ambition! I love that you're drawing inspiration from anime and manga while developing your own voice across different genres. Since you're focused on building your portfolio and taking the next steps in your writing career, I'd encourage you to check out our Career Development Program: https://www.stage32.com/scriptservices/coverage/buy?id=6. It's designed to help writers work one-on-one with an industry professional to assess their material, identify their strengths, and build a strategy for moving their careers forward. I'm curious, of the three features you're working on, which one are you most excited about?

Hi Banafsheh Esmailzadeh thank you for sharing. That is quite a big undertaking getting three features done by the end of the month. Do you find it difficult to work on multiple screenplays at the same time?

Hi Bana! I love that you’re exploring both social satire and surrealism. Those forms can reveal uncomfortable truths about society in really memorable ways. I’m an Ethiopian author, and my book The Pandemonium of Flattery explores hypocrisy, social injustice, hidden motives, and human conscience. It’s great to connect with fellow storytellers who aren’t afraid to explore challenging ideas. Best of luck finishing your three features—I look forward to seeing how your projects develop!

Thanks so much Amanda Toney , I've definitely been thinking of trying the Career Development Programme out. Will take the plunge at some point :) And so far of these three... it's a good question which one I'm most excited about lol they all have something I'm in the mood for (Glass Waltz is doomed love, Marisol and Mezzaluna is my specialty surrealism, and Niveous Reverie is soulmates). I'll admit Glass Waltz is the one I'm probably most nervous about sharing but it's also arguably the strongest sample of my writing ^^;

Thank you, Suzanne Bronson . It's actually not too difficult for me to multitask on creative projects since if I'm stuck on one I can work on another and they often feed off of each others' energies so the key to one's bottleneck can be found in another one altogether. Hopefully one day I'll work a lot faster on several projects than I currently do :D

Thanks so much MESTAWOT SIMA WOYESSA ~ my social satires tend to be smaller in scale but I'd like to think they're still calling out people who need to hear their messages as well as reaching out to anyone who feels they're alone in the world. But your book sounds like a good read, best of luck to you as well, and happy to make your acquaintance!

Hello Bana, happy IYW to you!

That’s absolutely a great challenge. Wishing you the very best of luck with your goal, and yes, I hope you get plenty of double recommends along the way, all the way to seeing those projects actually made and produced.

Thank you, Meriem Bouziani , I'll definitely keep working hard~ will definitely let you know if and when I get that second double recommend~

Welcome Banafsheh Esmailzadeh to Stage 32! Enjoy yourself while here, take a look through previous posts and blogs - they contain valuable info - and connect, connect, connect! Looking forward to seeing your journey!

Thanks so much Mark Anderson , I shall :D

Nice. Hope your works....uh....work. Best wishes for your success.

Hi Bana, happy IYW! Great to meet you.

I love that you’re comfortable moving between genres rather than putting yourself into one creative box. Drama and surrealism is an especially interesting combination.

And three features in one month is quite a challenge! I hope GLASS WALTZ, NIVEOUS REVERIE, and MARISOL AND MEZZALUNA all behave themselves and let you reach that finish line.

Wishing you a wonderfully productive rest of the month. Looking forward to seeing how the projects develop!

Thank you, William W Dilks Sr , will definitely do my best~

Thanks so much Charmane Wedderburn , indeed these three are proving challenging though they are more than halfway done (Glass Waltz is on page 70, Niveous Reverie page 51, and Marisol and Mezzaluna page 52). All have some sort of bottleneck going on so I have to crack those and then we’re really in business lol

I do wanna finish them before my trip at the end of the month but I’m also okay with getting them all to page 75 if I can’t so they still all finish next month. Hopefully I’ll make good on my goal though lol

Banafsheh Esmailzadeh happy IYW, my friend! It's always so good to see you here. I'll never stop being grateful for everything you gave this community as a Moderator, and it makes me so happy to see you still showing up and inspiring everyone around you. :)

Three features mostly done by the end of the month is an ambitious challenge, and I love it! Your projects always sound so intriguing, and I can't wait to see how your anime and manga influences shape them. Building your portfolio one script at a time is exactly the right focus.

When you need a break from writing, don't miss our two FREE upcoming webinars! Our Austin Film Festival Prep Webinar on Wednesday, October 21st at 1:00 PM PT covers how to make the most of any festival or market: https://www.stage32.com/education/products/how-to-navigate-the-austin-fi...

And on Wednesday, November 18th at 1:00 PM PT, we're breaking down the script for THE PITT: https://www.stage32.com/education/products/the-pitt-free-script-breakdown

If you can't attend live, registering ensures you'll get the recordings.

Cheering you on all the way to the finish line, Bana!

Happy IYW, @Banafsheh! I'm rooting for you to reach your goal!

Thanks so much Ashley Renée Smith for all your kind words, I enjoyed serving as moderator :) Thanks for the resources as well. All of my current projects are challenging me in all sorts of good ways and I've already got the next one more or less decided. Will let you know how I progress :)

Thank you so much Maurice Vaughan , I'll work hard!

You're welcome, Banafsheh Esmailzadeh. I know you will! I think you told me about GLASS WALTZ.

I probably did, Maurice Vaughan . The feature version's love rectangle (or triangle, if you don't count Rachel) is extra doomed :D

Hi Bana! I noticed your comment that all three features have their own bottlenecks, and that Glass Waltz may be your strongest writing sample even though you're the most nervous about sharing it.

That contrast caught my attention. Sometimes the project that feels most personal or ambitious is also the hardest one to evaluate objectively while you're still developing it.

I'm curious: with Glass Waltz, is the main challenge something specific in the story itself, or is it more about deciding when the script is ready to be seen by other people?

Banafsheh Esmailzadeh It’s lovely to connect with you! Your projects sound really interesting, especially the social satires and surreal slice-of-life story. It’s inspiring to see you challenging yourself creatively and building your portfolio. Wishing you lots of success with all three features, and I’d be happy to connect and network with you. Looking forward to seeing where your creative journey takes you!

Thanks so much Aleksei Kriuvochesankov , and you're right, there's definitely a lot of emotions attached which make it hard to be objective. That's a good question, it's probably a bit of both. Right now Glass Waltz's bottleneck is the most annoying but also the simplest to solve; there's a line of dialogue I have to write that's ridiculously subtle and delicate (so much so that every attempt I've made at it results in me saying way too much). I know I'll share it with my script doctor but beyond that I'm genuinely not sure lol. It's probably read to be seen by other people, but I'm not ready for that to happen, if that makes sense ^^;

Thanks so much Ojubanire Aishat , lovely to meet you as well~ can't wait to see where your journey leads as well~

I think I understand what you mean, Bana. There's a difference between feeling that a script is ready to be read and feeling ready to let other people into something you've invested so much of yourself in.

What caught my attention, though, is that you mentioned one particular line that's difficult to get right. When a line has to be extremely subtle, sometimes the challenge isn't finding the perfect wording, but deciding exactly what the character needs to communicate — and what should remain unspoken.

Without knowing the scene, I wouldn't want to guess at the solution. But I'm curious: is the difficulty that the character needs to convey something they can't say directly, or that the line has to carry several meanings at once?

Indeed, Aleksei Kriuvochesankov , and this one is personal in ways the other stuff I've written isn't. It's very much to my taste as well with its central focus being a doomed love rectangle so I naturally have to be selective with who gets to read it haha.

Yup, I know what needs to be communicated but how it's done is the tricky bit so I wonder how many boxes I'll exactly have to think outside of lol. In fairness this line can actually hold several meanings, maybe even from both characters; there's an image in my head that I really want to convey so I need proper leadup to it. Once I crack this bottleneck, though, Glass Waltz's feature version is as good as finished (it's on page 71 right now).

Banafsheh Esmailzadeh Three features in progress ambitious in the best way! Glass Waltz and Niveous Reverie already have me curious. I’d love to hear what inspired them, and if you ever want a fresh pair of eyes on a script, I’d be happy to help with feedback or coverage

Banafsheh Esmailzadeh Hi Bana! I love that you’re challenging yourself to develop three features across such different styles. Social satire and surreal slice-of-life can offer so many interesting ways to explore human behavior and emotion. I’m especially curious about Glass Waltz and Niveous Reverie. With several projects moving forward at once, how do you decide which ideas need more development and which are ready to take shape as screenplays? I’d love to hear more about your creative process!

Happy to have you here Banafsheh Esmailzadeh! I'm also a fan of anime and manga! What are your goals for 2027?

We're also inviting you to a FREE live script breakdown of THE PITT Pilot with Michael Schulman (Story Analyst, Amazon MGM Studios; Stage 32 Executive, Thought Leader, and Educator) on Wednesday, November 18th at 1:00 PM PT. You can register here: https://www.stage32.com/education/products/the-pitt-free-script-breakdown

And if you want a personalized experience or assistance, don't hesitate to email us at Success@Stage32.com and Edu@Stage32.com

Hi Banafsheh! Three features in one month sounds like an ambitious goal. I agree that multitasking projects can work. I often find myself having writer's block when writing some stories and I'll set them aside for about a year or so and then come back to it and sometimes find it easier to write an ending. I think it's wonderful that you write in more than one genre. That's very multifaceted!

Good Evening Bana. Hope all is well. From one otaku to another, all the best in your projects. Discover what works best for you, and build upon it. Feel free to drop us a manga / anime recommendation. I've actually got City Hunter running in the background as I type this message. Classic from the 80s. Be good.

Bana, something you said made me wonder about a question that might be worth exploring before trying to solve that line.

Who is Glass Waltz really written for? Not just who might eventually watch the film, but who you most want this story to reach — and what you want it to do for them.

Sometimes we write for a broad audience, including people who know nothing about us. Sometimes we write for a particular circle of people. And sometimes a story is, at its heart, a conversation with one specific person — someone close to us, someone we've lost, or someone we wish could understand something we've never quite managed to say.

Of course, these purposes can overlap, especially when we're writing a screenplay intended to be produced. But I wonder whether clarifying whom you most want to reach, and what you want them to experience or understand, might help you find the right balance between what that delicate line needs to communicate and what should remain unspoken.

I can't know whether this will unlock the scene, but I think the question is worth exploring.

Thank you, O Mercy , for your kind words. I don’t remember exactly what inspired them, other than the fact that they’re the kinds of stories you can’t really find anymore (Glass Waltz is about a man who continues to hold a torch for his dead girlfriend and her twin sister has feelings for him as well, and Niveous Reverie is about two soulmates who are desperately trying to get over each other but fate keeps bringing them back together). I was hoping to get them all mostly finished but these bottlenecks are rough lol. Hopefully I’ll still finish them all before the end of the year, though.

Thank you for your kind words as well, Maverick Services , and lovely to meet you. I always come up with the title, protagonist(s), and general storyline before I begin an outline, and of course I need a spark really set me off. All of these particular ones are ideas brewing in my head for years that I finally felt I was ready to start and make screenplays rather than novels or comics. I typically decide this with how much control I want over the experience; if I want to describe and let the reader construct the image in his head, novel. If I want you to see the story, comic. If I want you to see AND hear the story, screenplay. It’s also to make it easy on myself to write screenplays since by default of course every story idea I have is a novel and I simply can’t write 60+ novels yet. That all being said, though, some of them are only meant to be novels or comics so I wouldn’t make them screenplays (like my second life’s work series, Petal, I wouldn’t want most of its novel or even comics entries made into screenplays because I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be possible lol).

Hi Jaz Lagrimas , pleased to make your acquaintance, fellow anime and manga enjoyer :) for 2027, I think I really just want to finish Finding Elpis’s last three sequels and maybe six other screenplays (though two of them could become comics instead).

Thank you for the invite, I’ll try to make it if I don’t have anything planned that day :) vacation officially starts tomorrow and I’ll be away for most of November (but I will have internet access).

Thanks so much Haley Mary , I agree, writing in multiple genres is great, I never did believe in limiting myself to just one or two. Writer’s block sucks, I’m still blocked for novels as of 2022 and I desperately wanna get back to them T_T I’m sure eventually it’ll happen, so for now I’m trying out screenwriting :)

Thank you and nice to meet you, Arvel Benicour . I’ve heard of City Hunter, never watched it. I’m more into shoujo anime and manga personally, I’m still trying to be a little more like Kunihiko Ikuhara in terms of craft (might even rewatch Revolutionary Girl Utena once more, actually). My chosen niche is definitely drama and surrealism, bonus points if it’s a school-life haha

Excellent question Aleksei Kriuvochesankov , all my stuff is happily niche so arguably for me by default but Glass Waltz in particular is for my uncle who passed two years ago, as well as the few true romantics still standing in the world. When I shared its short version for coverage, of course a recurring note was why exactly Richard refused to get over Rachel and give Rylie a chance, and I always felt it was obvious. In this feature version, I’ve made the central love triangle even more doomed by elevating it to a rectangle by adding a character I’ve even named after my uncle (he’s still my character, though lol). So if I ever let it leave its containment, I hope the few romantics of the world feel a little less alone knowing someone still believes pure love is beautiful.

Something else occurred to me while reading what you've shared about Glass Waltz.

You mentioned how personally connected you are to this story, how one of the characters carries your uncle's name, and how difficult it sometimes feels to show the script to other people.

I wonder whether, at some point, the personal meaning of the story might make it harder to look at it independently as a piece of dramatic writing.

I don't mean that personal experiences should be kept out of fiction. Quite the opposite — they can give a story its emotional core. But there's an interesting challenge in transforming something deeply personal into an independent fictional world, where characters and events can be questioned, changed, or even completely reinvented if the story requires it.

Do you feel you have complete creative freedom to change the characters and events in Glass Waltz, even when those changes might depart from the real-life experiences that inspired it?

Hi Bana! It's nice to connect with you. I found your introduction interesting, especially your work in drama and surrealism. Your three feature projects sound exciting! I'd love to learn more about your writing journey and how you're developing your screenplays. Looking forward to connecting and sharing insights!

Best regards,

Phillip Noel

Aleksei Kriuvochesankov great point. The story isn’t personal because it fictionalised actual events (or even people) in my life, it’s really because it’s about my own feelings on love and romance. I’d like to think I conveyed everything as best I can so far in the story, so my reluctance to share it is mainly because I know it’ll get lost in translation for sure lol. Richard is kind of an old school romantic (at least in my view), whereas Rylie is more modern, and my uncle’s namesake is kind of a happy medium of the two. All events in it are products of my imagination and genuinely wouldn’t work any other way.

Thanks Goodness Marcus , happy IYW!

Hi Phillip Noel , thank you so much :) lovely to meet you as well~

Banafsheh Esmailzadeh

Thanks for clarifying, Bana. That distinction is important. So the events themselves are entirely fictional, while the personal element lies in your own feelings and beliefs about love and romance.

I wouldn't dismiss that as a starting point at all. Personal feelings can provide a story with a very strong emotional foundation. The interesting dramaturgical challenge is how those feelings become distinct positions embodied by the characters.

There's one thing in your description that particularly caught my attention: Richard is an old-school romantic, Rylie represents a more modern outlook, and your uncle's namesake is somewhere in between.

I'd be interested in understanding what you mean by a "happy medium" here. A middle position can certainly work, but it needs its own clear dramatic logic. Otherwise, it can simply soften the contrast between the other two positions.

Is your uncle's namesake primarily a mediator between Richard and Rylie, helping them understand each other? Or does he represent a genuinely different third perspective on love — one that actively changes the conflict between them?

Thank you, Aleksei Kriuvochesankov ~indeed, Richard for me is representative of pure love even in the face of crushing reality (Rachel died over a decade ago and he’s still holding onto her), while Rylie is representative of denied love/unluckiness (she is after all the spitting image of Rachel but entirely different personality-wise, so this is of course a major source of conflict in their relationship). Meanwhile uncle’s namesake is a happy medium in that he knows full well where Richard is coming from in not letting go of Rachel while also still being open to new relationships/not letting them tie him down, similar to Rylie. He instead loves both of them and doesn’t care if it destroys him. I’d like to think he helps them but really more as a listening ear than a pair of hands pulling either of them out.

Banafsheh Esmailzadeh

Thank you, Bana. That helps me understand Richard and Rylie's positions much better.

Now I'm particularly curious about your uncle's namesake, the third character. From what you've described, he seems to occupy a very interesting emotional position: he loves them both, wants things to work out for both of them, and may even be willing to sacrifice himself for that.

But I wonder what his dramatic purpose is beyond being the person who listens to them and helps bring their different views into the conversation.

If his role is mainly to serve as a mediator through whom Richard and Rylie express their thoughts, that can certainly be a perfectly valid storytelling device. But it risks making him more of a narrative instrument than an independent character.

I think there's a potentially much stronger character here. If he genuinely wants these two people to find happiness, what does he actually do to make that happen? What is his own objective, and what actions is he willing to take to achieve it?

In other words, I'd be interested to see how his love for both of them translates into agency — how he actively influences the story rather than simply witnessing their conflict.

Does he have a plan of his own for bringing them together, or does he approach it differently?

Thank you, Aleksei Kriuvochesankov . Actually I didn’t mean he ships them together, rather he has romantic love for both Richard and Rylie, even though both are unrequited.

Banafsheh Esmailzadeh

That helps me understand the character much better. I can see now that he isn't simply a compromise between Richard and Rylie. He seems to represent a different way of approaching love: understanding both of them, loving them without trying to change either of them, and remaining open to life himself.

What particularly caught my attention is your phrase that he loves them both and doesn't care if it destroys him. That introduces a potentially tragic dimension to his position. He may be the one who understands everyone, yet he could also be the most vulnerable of the three.

I'm curious about one thing: even if he doesn't actively try to pull Richard or Rylie out of their situations, does his presence eventually change something between them or influence the direction of the story? In other words, what becomes possible because he is there?

Thank you, Aleksei Kriuvochesankov ~ yes, he is somewhat tragic like that but then again the same thing can be said about most of my characters; they love totally, not logically, so if the love they feel doesn’t threaten to destroy them, it’s not real and therefore not worth it. Richard and Rylie are like that, too, but of course Rylie is the most grounded (and arguably suffers the most). So really I guess it’s up to you to decide who’s the most vulnerable, it could also be Rachel because she’s not able to defend herself.

As for your question… I really just wanted the central triangle to be more doomed as a love rectangle lol. But he does kind of force both Richard and Rylie to separate their chaotic feelings towards one another, by making things complicated between them, if that makes sense. The conflict in Glass Waltz is primarily internal anyway even if the feature version is more melodramatic than the short.

Banafsheh Esmailzadeh

That's an interesting distinction, Bana. I think it gives your uncle's namesake a rather particular dramatic position in the story.

He seems to understand both Richard's inability to let go of Rachel and Rylie's openness to new relationships, but he doesn't necessarily try to resolve the contradiction between them. Instead, he accepts both perspectives and remains emotionally involved with both characters.

What I'd be curious to explore is whether his position as a listener is also an active dramatic choice. In other words, does his decision not to intervene actually affect the course of the conflict, perhaps even making him vulnerable to its consequences? Or is his main function to provide an emotional perspective from which we can better understand Richard and Rylie?

Neither approach is inherently better. They simply create different kinds of dramatic relationships and different possibilities for the character's development.

I find this especially interesting because a character can have a very strong emotional presence in a story without necessarily having an equally strong influence on its events. The relationship between those two dimensions is always worth examining.