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Reel inspiration

Love of writing leads Pittston woman to win at Pocono Film Festival

JANINE UNGVARSKY For The Times Leader

It was a shot in the dark that brought success to Linda Stanton-Smith, but that success sure didn’t come overnight. Still, winning at the recent Pocono Film Festival has opened doors and let the world see what Stanton-Smith, 50, has always had in her heart: a passion for writing.

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Linda Stanton-Smith is writing a detective romance and would like to write more novels, including some that would draw on her work experiences.

Clark Van Orden/The Times Leader

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‘Those plot bunnies come to you at the weirdest times,’ says writer Linda Stanton-Smith, ‘and you’ve just got to go write.’ She was photographed at Barnes & Noble in Wilkes-Barre Township.

Clark Van Orden/The Times Leader

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Stanton-Smith’s screenplay for “The Eleventh,” a story about a firefighter and a photographer who bond as they try to escape the burning World Trade Center on Sept.11, was a winner at last summer’s festival. Not only was the winning screenplay Stanton-Smith’s first entry in the festival, it was her first-ever screenplay.

It wasn’t her first writing effort, however. “If I had to tell the truth,” Stanton-Smith said, “I started writing when I was four. My grandfather would sit me on his lap and start a story. He would get me to tell him what happened next, then he would tell more of the story and I would have to tell him more.” Though the words weren’t put on paper, the Pittston resident said she learned the art of storytelling from those times on her grandfather’s knee.

The love of telling stories led to a love of writing, though Stanton-Smith didn’t initially pursue a career as a writer. She earned a degree in computer science and worked a few related jobs. There were also a few that had nothing to do with computers, like children’s ski instructor at the former Montage Mountain. Stanton-Smith was working as a Scranton police dispatcher when she developed epilepsy and had to quit working. “All those flashing lights in a dark dispatcher’s room didn’t work for an epileptic,” she said.

Forced to change her path, Stanton-Smith returned to her early love of the written word. “I started to write,” she said, “and I starved.” But she kept at it, writing on all sorts of topics at all hours. “Those plot bunnies come to you at the weirdest times,” she said, “and you’ve just got to go write,” she said. “The accomplishment of finishing a story and going back and saying, ‘That’s better than any (book) I paid for,’ is just amazing.”

Her ideas can come from anywhere, including things in the news or prior work experiences. “My husband and I love to go to flea markets and we love to travel, especially to the West Coast. Traveling always sparks something,” she said. “I can go to Virginia Beach and there’s a story.” It probably helps that Stanton-Smith is playful and comes across as very self-assured and comfortable with herself—the kind of person who names the fish in the aquarium next to her living room writing desk and reports she has no problem walking up to strangers and saying, “Hi, I write.”

Stanton-Smith said she cut her writing teeth on fan fiction, where writers take characters from established movies or television shows and write new adventures for them. It’s a method she encourages for other aspiring writers, so much so that she takes time to edit the work of 15 to 20 writers on her Web site, russellcrowefanfiction.com, a site dedicated to expanding the “lives” of characters played by Russell Crowe. Stanton-Smith said she’s met Crowe a few times, at the premier for “Cinderella Man” and the Academy Awards ceremony where the movie was up for awards, but hasn’t yet told him she’s behind the fan fiction site. She also hasn’t told him the fish in her fish tank are named after his characters. “I think he’d be cool with it, though,” she said.

“People might think (fan fiction) is a little strange, but I think it’s a good way to get started, writing about (characters and settings) you already know.” She said it helps eliminate one of the most common problems faced by writers: how to start a new work. “I always find the hardest part is getting started,” she said. “Once I get started, it’s usually okay, though sometimes I can write 30 pages and other times one page is all I can do.”

She does most of her writing from that desk next to the fish tank in her home. “Normally, I like to be alone when I write. I get a cup of coffee and keep the pot hot, though I need a little Red Bull fix sometimes,” she said. “I put on Fox News or some other news show when I write but I don’t pay any attention to it.”

Whatever she’s doing, it’s been working. She had a few pieces published online on Helium Magazine, but Stanton-Smith said a bigger break eluded her—until she decided to try her hand at a screenplay. “I had been writing for some time and trying to get a book deal but that wasn’t working. I’d been to the film festival a few times just to go and I decided to try a screenplay. I took a short story that I wrote, did some reading about how to format and put together a screen play, and the next thing you know, I’m getting a phone call that I was a finalist. It was just a shot in the dark and it worked.”

It wasn’t quite as easy as Stanton-Smith makes it sound, of course.

Fiction writing involves a lot of creativity, she said. “You get to play all your characters, and you get to make them all different,” said Stanton-Smith, who said she sometimes goes through the phone book to name her characters. “Formatting a screenplay takes away that creativity. You can’t describe, and the actors determine how the characters act. It was different than the other writing (I’d done). I worked hard, did a lot of studying when I was writing ‘The Eleventh.’”

The work paid off with the win, and a chance to do more screenplays. Stanton-Smith is adapting a work called “Retsis,” (that’s “sister” spelled backwards), written by Pocono Film Festival organizer Bridget O. Davis. “She gave me carte blanche to work,” Stanton-Smith said. “We may visualize things differently but I call her and get her or her husband’s approval to go ahead. That’s made it easier.”

Something else that’s made it less difficult: Stanton-Smith’s passion for writing. “I truly love doing this,” she said. “If you don’t love it, it’s going to show in your work.”

She advises aspiring writers to love who and what they write about. That’s one of the reasons she recommends fan fiction for beginners—they’ll be writing about characters they already love. “You’ve got to love all your characters, even if one is a mass murderer,” she said. “You’ve got to get inside them all, play all the parts, and make some of them not good. If all your characters are perfect, it’s very boring and the work’s not going to be good.”

“When you write a story, you have to be able to write the things people think but don’t say,” Stanton-Smith advised. “People don’t talk about reaching into a loaf of bread to take out the two slices in the middle. No one will admit they do that but when you write that into a romance, people can relate to it.”

Stanton-Smith has big plans for having people relate to her work. She’s writing a detective romance and would like to write more novels, including some that would draw on her work experiences and let her get back a bit of the adrenaline rush she used to get from being around stock cars, rappelling, running, racing bikes and horseback riding before epilepsy struck. “I think the Scranton police department will recognize some of their case files in my work someday,” she said. “Writing is a far cry from the adrenaline rush I used to get from some of the things I’ve done, but I can still get worked up about sailing ships and cops running after criminals by writing about them.”

And more screenplays are in her future, too. “A screenplay wasn’t my original goal. It just turns out I’m pretty good at them,” she said. “Hopefully, there are lots and lots of screenplays in my future—and maybe even the Oscars. I’ve got my foot in the door now and I intend to kick it wide open.”

About Linda Stanton-Smith

•Born in Moosic, currently resides in Pittston

•Married to Carroll (she calls him Butch) for 28 years

•Mother of one son, Erik, 25; has a grandson, Collin, 1  1/2, and another grandchild due in June

•Graduated from Riverside High School and the University of Miami, where she acquired a bachelor’s degree in computer science

•Winner at the 2008 Pocono Film Festival in the Screenplay category for her first screenplay, “The Eleventh”

•Some interesting facts: Stanton-Smith is fascinated by ship captains and sailing, and many of her characters tend to have bulldogs as pets, just as she does.