Writing the Characters For Millie Bobby Brown's Netflix Film - Part 1

Annotated Pages: Why Is Elodie so awkward at the start of DAMSEL (the novel)?

Evelyn Skye

Feb 06, 2024

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Hello, lovelies!

I have another treat for you today, some annotated pages from Damsel (the novel), with my handwritten notes about what I was thinking as I wrote this scene. Here, I explain some of the differences in writing a novel versus a screenplay, as well as why I chose to embarrass Elodie at the opening of the book.

One challenge I faced when writing Damsel was that I already knew Millie Bobby Brown was going to play Elodie Bayford in the movie, but I wanted to make sure that the book version of Elodie could stand alone. In other words, Elodie had to be Elodie. She couldn’t be Millie.

Why does this matter? Well, Netflix and I agreed that we wanted both versions of Damsel—the movie and the book—to be fully realized stories on their own, even though they are based on the same source material.1 So I played a little mental trick on myself to get Millie out of my head in order to focus solely on Elodie:

I didn’t make eye contact with Elodie while I was writing her. Instead, in my mind’s eye, I always looked slightly to the right or left of Elodie’s face, so that I didn’t see her features too clearly.

Maybe this trick only makes sense to writers, but it worked for me. And that’s how I was able to make sure that Elodie in Damsel the novel was wholly her own person, and perfect for this version of the story.

» pdf version below if you prefer