Writer Colleen Hoover finds new life as screenwriter

Once she got into it, she understood: “It was nerve-wracking.”

“Writing the book was easier, but only because this was my first screenplay,” she says. “It was a learning process” and one she wouldn’t mind repeating. “I love writing books, but I also am now a huge fan of scriptwriting and filmmaking.”

In her story, a woman who has served seven years in prison returns home hoping to be reunited with her daughter. Her late boyfriend’s mother, however, won’t allow it. The ex-con hangs in town, gets a job and befriends a local bar owner — who could be her conduit.

Hoover says her past as a social worker helped inform the story.

“All through my 20s and into my 30s, I saw a lot of things you can’t really help with,” she says. “You’re there to guide your clients through things.”

In the film, friends and coworkers help the young woman through the trauma and bring about the inevitable reunion.

To make sure the story resonated with audiences, director Vanessa Caswill peppered the author with questions, then embraced ideas from her own life.

“There were times I felt Vanessa knew the material more than I did,” Hoover says. “I was impressed with how deep she went into the story and the characters.”

Caswill says she felt the emotions Hoover had written and “wanted to distill each one” so the audience would relate the same way she did.

Even Lauren Graham’s character — the unyielding grandmother — touched an emotional chord.

“I understood why she was like that,” Caswill says. “And yet she does relinquish (her position), and that’s a beautiful journey she goes on.”

Leads Maika Monroe and Tyriq Withers brought the kind of “dualities” they mined in horror films.

“You need both a vulnerability and a hardness (in horror films) and that worked well in our film,” Caswill explains. They also needed an openness that would work well with Zoe Kosovic, who plays Monroe’s daughter.

“We got tapes of loads of little girls, and there were so many great ones,” Caswill says. “But (Kosovic) really stood out.” During an in-person audition, “she was just so in the moment, so alive and passionate about what she’s doing. I was worried with a kid that age that she wouldn’t remember her lines, but that wasn’t the case at all.”

While Hoover has written sequels to certain books, she makes no promises about “Reminders of Him.”

“If you give me structure, I will crumble,” she says. “I write when I’m in the mood and, sometimes, that happens every day for a couple of months at a time, and sometimes I can go six months without writing a single word. I just listen to my creative side and (do it) when I feel like it. I don’t want this to feel like this is a job that I have to show up to every day.”

Hoover has three sons who frequently ask to see her novels before they’re published. And, yes, they do offer advice.

She had them watch “Reminders of Him” with their friends.

“We had a theater full of guys in their 20s and a lot of them cried … which was fun to see,” she says. “This film translates to anyone with a heart.”