Texan-born Jonah Lisa Dyer and Stephen Dyer are a married writing team who craft screenplays and novels. In a partnership exceeding twenty years, they’ve made lots of amazing things together—the films Hysteria and Away and Back; a cozy home in the mountains of Idaho; a family; and most recently, the YA novel The Season.

LONE STAR LITERARY LIFE: Jonah Lisa and Stephen, I’ll start with the question that every couple gets. How did you two meet?

JONAH LISA DYER: We met in Dallas in 1993 at Deep Ellum Theatre’s Christmas party. Stephen’s sister, Dallas screenwriter Gretchen Dyer (The Playroom, Late Bloomers) had seen me in a play and kind of picked me out as a match for her little brother. She invited him to the party so she could introduce us. We weren’t her only introduction that ended up getting married. She had a gift.

Maybe it’s because I, too, am a coauthor of a series of novels, but I seem to run into more and more people working as coauthors. How did you two start writing together?

STEPHEN DYER: We were living in New York in the early 2000s. I was producing indie films, and Jonah Lisa was acting but was dipping her toe into standup comedy. We started out writing her standup material and realized we worked really well together. She would come up with something, I would build on it, she would build on that, or vice versa.

JONAH LISA: It was fun at a time when we were both feeling sort of burned out on producing and acting. Also, right around that time Stephen had this great romantic-comedy idea that he’d been trying to get his sister to write, and she just wasn’t interested in it. Finally I said, “Stop trying to give away your idea! She doesn’t like it! WE should write it!" And we did.

STEPHEN: It didn’t sell but it made people laugh out loud, and that got us a bunch of attention with production companies and studios. That’s when we really decided to transition into writing full-time.

Then you and Stephen moved to Idaho to chart your course as screenwriters. What was that like?

JONAH  LISA: Yeah, that was completely counterintuitive, but we actually moved to the mountains very soon after we decided to focus on a screenwriting career. We were ready to get out of the city and figured it would be a short-term move to decompress before shifting to Los Angeles. We were working on some spec scripts, and Stephen was still commuting to New York City for his producing job with director Tanya Wexler (Ball in the House, Hysteria), and I was looking for a day job. I actually answered an ad in the Jackson Hole News & Guide for a writing assistant and ended up landing a job with screenwriter William Broyles.

STEPHEN: We decided that was the universe telling us to stay put.

Jonah Lisa, you mentioned that experience of working with screenwriter William Broyles, widely known as the screenwriter for China Beach and Apollo 13. But in these parts, he’s known as the first editor of Texas Monthly. What was that process like?

JONAH LISA: It was amazing. Bill is a wonderful person and an incredibly talented writer. He has a very convivial and inclusive process—probably because he’s from the magazine world and used to that collaboration between writers and editors. Producers and directors loved working with him, and so did I.

He really taught me how to collaborate. I got to eavesdrop on his notes sessions with Robert Zemeckis, Sam Mendes, Steven Spielberg, and producers at the biggest studios. And even more, he was always open to my ideas and participation in the process. I read and gave notes on every draft. I really honed my own narrative skills doing that on high-quality screenplays like Flags of Our Fathers, Jarhead, and The Polar Express. I learned how to stay open and listen to other creative people, how to interpret and incorporate notes, and how to stand up for my creative vision when it’s necessary. I also learned a ton about the film business—contracts, the Writers Guild, working with agents, hitting deadlines, all of it. My years with Bill were like an MFA in Hollywood screenwriting, and I use things I learned from him every single day as a professional writer.

You each grew up in Texas. How did that influence your writing?

STEPHEN: Texas definitely has its own culture, and we were both born and raised in it. When you write what you know, there’s an authenticity that comes through. We know the people, the places, the history. In The Season, Texas plays a big role in the story beyond the setting. It’s almost a character.

JONAH LISA: As a reader, I love the elaborate world-building of fantasy and sci-fi. Writing about Texas is like our version of world-building! We get to introduce people to this strange new world where things are just a little bit different from everywhere else.

What’s your writing process like as collaborators?

JONAH LISA: It’s evolved over the years. In the beginning it was fully fifty-fifty, shoulder to shoulder. I’d write three scenes, he’d edit mine and write three more scenes, I’d edit his and write three more, back and forth. The longer we’ve worked together and the more trust we’ve built as collaborators, we have the security to split the work load differently. Adding kids into the mix also forced us to change. We generally work very closely on a long treatment or synopsis and really nail down the story, characters, and plot points. That’s work we do out loud and on our feet. Then one of us sits down and types that out while the other one takes care of the kids and makes dinner!

STEPHEN: Then we each do separate editing passes and hash out our differences until we are both happy with the blueprint and in complete agreement on the tone.

JONAH LISA: The tone is the key. We have to stay together on tone so we’re writing in one voice.

STEPHEN: It’s the same when we move into the first draft. The longer we’ve been doing this the more we’ve embraced the idea of a crappy first draft written as fast as humanly possible. So one of us usually feels slightly more connected to a story and that person does that down-and-dirty draft so we can get to the real work—revising. Once we have something to edit we pass the screenplay or manuscript back and forth, dialing it in a little more each time. Sometimes we still work side-by-side on difficult sections or when we’re at the very end making final decisions.

JONAH LISA: We also record some of our working sessions if we’re talking out a section and discussing notes because, as an actress, I tend to speak in dialogue out loud.

Right now, you’re getting rave reviews for The Season. Would you tell our readers what that book’s about, and how were you inspired to write it?

STEPHEN: The Season is a modern retelling of [Jane Austen’s] Pride and Prejudice set during the Texas debutante season. Our Elizabeth Bennett is a college jock named Megan McKnight. She’s a soccer player with Olympic dreams, but she’s a late bloomer socially and, like Elizabeth Bennet, she thinks she knows everything. She makes snap judgments and pops off at the mouth in a way that gets her in trouble. Her mom is a socialite who expects her to make her debut because it’s a family tradition. Megan reluctantly agrees to do it to help her Dad save their troubled marriage. It doesn’t go very well.

JONAH LISA: We’ve both always loved Pride and Prejudice. It’s a wonderful story and we thought the themes were still important and relatable and fit perfectly into the culture of Texas high society. The real trick was deciding who Elizabeth Bennett would be today. We loved her brash earthiness and thought that making her an athlete allowed for that to be fully expressed in a modern way.

Any possibility The Season might be a movie?

JONAH LISA: We hope so! Doesn’t it feel like a movie? Coming from the film world, I think we naturally write lots of dialogue and big filmic set pieces.

STEPHEN: Megan would be a fantastic starring role for a young actress, and the debutante balls will be outrageous to see on film. People have asked us if the parties are really that extravagant. I assure you, they are.

JONAH LISA: There are definitely things in the works. We hope to have exciting movie news to share very soon.

What advice would you have for aspiring screenwriters? Or for aspiring novelists?

STEPHEN: It’s all about revising, so the advice is the same for both mediums. Don’t be careful about the first draft. Just get it out and get to the revision process. Also, don’t be precious about material that doesn’t work. You can enjoy a character, or a scene, or even a sentence, to the detriment of the overall narrative. Don’t be scared to dump what’s not working. Trust that you’ll write something else that’s just as good and serves your story better.

Last (and maybe most important!): What do you miss most about Texas?

STEPHEN AND JONAH LISA: Tex-Mex! Idaho is not a big Tex-Mex hub so we’ve learned to make our own. It also makes trips home even more special. We always hit Matt’s El Rancho in Austin when we visit.

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