WVU Parkersburg adjunct professor wins first place in screenwriting competitions

Adam Stover, WVU Parkersburg adjunct professor of English and Theatre Appreciation, has a secret talent – one that has recently been nationally and internationally recognized.

Stover began writing screenplays in graduate school where he served as the producer and secondary writer for his first creative team. As the team pursued other ventures, Stover began writing smaller pieces and gradually transitioned to longer ones. “It takes varying amounts of time to produce a finished screenplay,” Stover said. “It usually takes me one to two months depending upon the amount of time I can dedicate to the project and can take longer to develop original concepts depending upon the amount of research necessary to successfully build the world in the story.” 

“I’m actually a transmedia producer at heart, and writing is one of the things I do to generate projects,” Stover said. Before this year, Stover had only entered the West Virginia Writer’s, Inc. 2015 Annual Writing Contest, and placed fourth in the screenplay category.

“I went through a project generation phase last year that’s resulted in a number of promising scripts,” Stover said. The Shadow of Frankenstein was entered into four screenwriting contests and has two first-place finishes – the 2020 Los Angeles Motion Picture Festival Best Feature Screenplay and Royal Wolf Film Awards Best Screenplay Feature for April 2020. Stover also received a second-place finish in the Pinnacle Film Awards and a fourth-place finish at Mindfield Film Festival.

“We’re obviously happy about the start,” Stover said. “It’s (The Shadow of Frankenstein) been entered into a number of European film festivals, so I’ll be curious to see how it does overseas.” Although the film has not been recognized internationally yet, it has been a hit all over America and Stover says they will find out how the film does in Europe in July.

John Johnson, actor, producer, director and writer, released two plays that Stover produced in the previous four years with Johnson’s company Astral Theatre Collective. In 2016 and 2017, two of those plays were brought to WVU Parkersburg, Sherlock Holmes and the Beast of White Chapel and Carmilla. Johnson and Stover served as co-writers on the project.

Stover continues to work on his current project, Pinpricks, an anthology animated film based on the graphic novel of Charleston, W.Va. author Jason Pell. “It’s reminiscent of ‘The Twilight Zone’ if it were set in West Virginia,” Stover said. “It’ll premiere later this year and have its own run on the festival circuit.”

Established in 1961, West Virginia University at Parkersburg is regionally accredited by the Higher Learning Commission. Academic credits earned at WVU Parkersburg are transferable to any institution in the West Virginia higher education state system as well as other accredited institutions throughout the country. WVU Parkersburg is the only public community college in West Virginia accredited to offer baccalaureate degrees.
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