What ‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’ Can Teach Screenwriters About Finding Their Voice

Jane Schoenbrun has become one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary American filmmaking. Over the last few years, they have built a body of work defined by emotional truth, personal experiences and a deep fascination with how media shape identity. Their films blend genres like drama, horror and comedy while exploring character confusion and vulnerability, adding in some popculture nostalgia and a coming-of-age element.

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is their latest movie. It’s not a slasher film by any means, but certainly has those elements. And you can’t quite call it a meta commentary on campy slasher films from the 1980s, even though it is. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is an exploration on what fandom, sexuality and creative freedom mean in the modern cinematic world. Schoenbrun also shines a light on how we find ourselves inside the movies we love.

For screenwriters, a movie like Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is a perfect way to understand what “voice” actually means in storytelling. A filmmaker like Schoenbrun doesn’t hide their influences or try to write for everyone; they follow their obsessions, transform personal experiences into artistic endeavors and create a conversation.

And that’s a strong lesson for screenwriters to take away. Filmmakers tend to want to be other filmmakers. Film schools and budding screenwriters say things like, “I want to be the next Quentin Tarantino or Christopher Nolan or Aaron Sorkin or Sofia Coppola…and on and on.”

Those filmmakers already exist – Schoenbrun proves that your voice is one of the most important parts about being a screenwriter, not copying another filmmaker’s identity. Using your voice can shape what you write and how you write it.

Here are 5 lessons screenwriters can take away from Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, including how to develop your own unique voice, finding your obsession and the importance of being specific in your writing.

1. What Are You Passionate About?

One of the easiest ways to find your voice is to simply stop worrying about whether you’re being original. Instead, pay attention to what you can’t stop thinking about.

Schoenbrun’s three feature films (We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, I Saw the TV Glow and Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma) all have certain ideas that resurface even though they are different stories: alienation, identity, desire, horror, fandom and how people use movies, TV or the internet to help themselves understand their place in the world.

Think about some of the many filmmakers with distinctive voices.

• Kevin Smith – His debut film Clerks features characters who talk about comic books, pop culture and sexual complexities of their world.

• Quentin Tarantino – His obsessive fascination with movies and cinematic history are evident in his filmmaking with stories borrowed or remixed from movies that influenced him.

• David Lynch – He often explores dreams, identity and sexuality.

• Greta Gerwig – She uses humor, honesty and the complexities of being female in a male-dominated world in her movies.

It’s unlikely these filmmakers sat down and deliberately created a signature style. Instead, they followed the topics that fascinated them.

That’s the underlying question: what fascinates you?

• Class

• Marriage

• Technology

• Religion

• Competition

• Family

Take “family,” for instance. That could be the underlying passion behind Toy Story where a group of toys act as a family and are there for one another. Or The Godfather, which Francis Ford Coppola has repeatedly stated is a movie about family and not the mob.

Now, look at Schoenbrun’s work and their obsession with media:

• We’re All Going to the World’s Fair uses internet culture to study isolation and identity

• I Saw the TV Glow turns TV fandom and a fictional series to explore identity and repression

• Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma uses slasher movies and filmmaking to take a deeper look at sexual identity, media fascination and over-capitalism

What ideas have you come up with? What screenplays have you written? Do you see any patterns? Maybe your protagonist is always the outsider or maybe it’s about people trying to escape their ordinary life. Do you find your stories have a sports, movie or pop culture element?

These patterns can help screenwriters discover their voice.

2. Use Personal Experiences, But Don’t Write Your Autobiography

Greta Gerwig was never Barbie, but she can take her personal experiences and perspectives to tell a story using the most popular doll of all time. Barbie wasn’t autobiographical and neither is Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma. Instead, these filmmakers used personal experiences in genre stories and metaphors.

I Saw the TV Glow can be interpreted as an allegory for being transgender.

“TV Glow is about something I think a lot of trans people understand. The tension between the space that you exist within, which feels like home, and the simultaneous terror and liberation of understanding that that space might not be able to hold you in your true form,” Schoenbrun said in a New Yorker interview.

But most viewers might not get that from watching it. Yet, Schoenbrun was able to put their experiences, emotions and understanding of a world into a story that wasn’t about them.

Having a voice doesn’t mean writing about what happened to you. A better way to look at it is, How did this experience make me feel and where else could that feeling exist?

Your experience is the emotional truth. Your imagination is what provides the story.

3. Embrace Your Influences

Schoenbrun isn’t relying on a single influence but several influences that are blended together and filtered through their own perspective.

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma makes its influences apparent almost immediately with an opening sequence showing how a campy slasher film franchise lost its way over the years. Influences throughout the movie, include possible inspiration from other filmmakers with distinctive voices like Sam Raimi (so much blood!), David Lynch (Mulholland Drive) and Wes Anderson (camp backgrounds).

As a screenwriter, you can combine influences to help tell your story.

The End of Oak Street was heavily influenced by Jurassic Park, 1980s suburbia and cosmic science (Carl Sagan is mentioned multiple times). The Fast and the Furious was influenced by Point Break and fast cars.

Remember, you don’t have to find new passions for every story you want to tell, you can explore different influences and approaches. As we’ve seen, Schoenbrun often has the same elements of alienation and identity in their stories but the influences change.

4. Use a Familiar Genre

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is actually two movies in one.

There’s the story of Kris (Hannah Einbinder), a filmmaker coming off her first indie picture tasked with rebooting a film franchise she loved as a child. This story includes her meeting Billy (Gillian Anderson) who starred in the first “Camp Miasma” movie and the relationship that forms between them.

The second story is the first “Camp Miasma” film, which Kris and Billy rewatch together. The film-within-a-film deliberately uses slasher movie tropes and elements while the two comment on what’s going on – more Kris commenting than Billy.

Schoenbrun didn’t reinvent the slasher movie, but instead they used that genre for the broader personal story they wanted to tell.

For screenwriters, it’s important to know you don’t have to invent a genre nobody has ever seen. Good luck trying. It also means you don’t have to reinvent something that already exists, but rather consider what it is about that genre that fascinates you. From there, create your own unique version with your voice.

Scream didn’t reinvent horror movies, it just found a different way into the genre. Then Saw came around and changed it again. Each genre has subgenres worth exploring too. Consider horror:

• Slasher (Scream)

• Body Horror (The Substance)

• Supernatural (Insidious)

• Horror Comedy (Shaun of the Dead)

• Internet Horror (Backrooms)

• Children’s (Goosebumps)

And there is so many other types of horror subgenres to use.

5. Being Specific is Universal

What do a comic book superhero, the father of the atomic bomb and a king on a decades-long odyssey have in common? They’re all highly specific characters and situations, yet audiences can still find something universal in them and the journeys they’re on.

When you try to appeal to everyone, it can end up being one of the fastest ways to lose your voice.

Schoenbrun’s stories are highly specific in their interests, references, sexuality and worldview, and those qualities may make some viewers uncomfortable. But that specificity is also what makes the work recognizable and even relatable.

Beginner screenwriters may remove the strange characters, obscure references or uncomfortable ideas because they believe people won’t identify or understand them, or worse, judge them. But those details are what set storytellers apart from one another. By making a story specifically yours, it reveals your voice and helps turn individual ideas into universal themes.

Could Somebody Else Have Written This?

That’s perhaps the most important question a screenwriter can ask. Why? Because if anyone could write the story you want to tell then you’re not using your voice.

Knowing this, it’s time to ensure you’re putting more of yourself into the story. Ask yourself:

• What am I obsessed with or passionate about at this moment?

• What experiences have shaped me? Include small moments too like a rejection or heartache of a breakup or the joys of finding out you got the job.

• What movies, books, filmmakers, music, etc., have influenced me?

• What do I see differently than other people? Jerry Seinfeld and Wes Craven will see flying in an airplane in different ways.

Schoenbrun writes the stories they needed to tell, how they wanted to tell it.

Don’t hide your voice as a screenwriter, share it with the world.

Watch Our Exclusive Interview

Outstanding Screenplays sat down with Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma stars Gillian Anderson and Hannah Einbinder for an exclusive five-minute conversation at SXSW London.

They discuss Jane Schoenbrun’s screenplay, creating their characters and their complex relationship, Anderson’s The X-Files legacy, and the freedom and playfulness they found in making the film.

Watch the full interview below!