Karen Schaffer is a pop culture enthusiast and romcom writer. She is also a career counsellor at a university, where she helps students make sense of their life stories. Karen Schaffer’s passion for stories led her on a journey to writing scripts for yearners.
Karen has always loved film. She studied Film and Cultural Studies at McGill University (“What the fuck is McGill?”), and produced student films that aired on MTV Canada and across Canada at independent festivals. She organized McGill’s first student film festival while the head of Filmmaking in the university’s Film Society.
She shifted gears in her final year, deciding to write a book, interviewing other students about their work experiences and turning her insights into a fun, engaging non-fiction book on how to get a job for students.
About The Screenwriter
When she published Hire Power: The Ultimate Student Job Guide at age 25, it became a Canadian bestseller. Jonathan Torrens (host of Jonovision and actor best known as J-Roc from Trailer Park Boys) gave this blurb for the book, “Karen’s Schaffer’s Hire Power arms readers with an edge and a sense of humour. It is an essential tool for young job hunters”. Jono would quote this for years at Karen when she bumped into him around Toronto and Halifax.
Over the next decade, Karen published two more books the next being The Job of Your Life: Groundbreaking Steps to Getting the Work You Want – a book about finding one’s passion. She received actual fan letters for this book, planting the seed for her script Last Fan Stanning.
This publication led to more TV appearances and speaking engagements.
After university, Karen had roles as a TV story producer, a location manager and location scout, and a yoga teacher.
As a writer, she put her hand to different marketing writing roles such as copywriting, website writing, and market research reports. She consulted on several non-fiction works and ghostwrote a book on how to provide real value in a sales pitch.
Additionally, Karen obtained a Masters of Counselling Psychology at the Adler School of Psychology (Toronto). Her expertise in careers naturally married with counselling to focus on the speciality of career counselling: helping clients tell their career stories through self-reflection and self-discovery, and putting ideas into action.
By the 2010s, Karen had become a full-fledged career counsellor at a university in Nova Scotia. As a counsellor, she has heard and unpacked endless stories with clients, exploring with them their insights, experiences, and motivations.
She also co-authored six Career Work in Action guides for career professionals, which have been shared around the world, and translated into Vietnamese.
She continues to present at conferences, workshops, and other speaking engagements.
After moving to Nova Scotia in the aughts, Karen wrote The Complete Book of Resumes for a US publisher. After editing over 300 resumes for the book, she swore she would never work on resumes again (spoiler, she still does occasionally, but only for people she really, really likes).
She also wrote numerous guest columns for The Toronto Star and The National Post.
Having heard thousands of other people’s stories, by 2018 she felt it was time to create her own with specific focus on romcoms and the romance genre. With encouragement from her mentor, a scriptwriter and showrunner, Karen brought her years of writing and people insights to the craft of screenwriting.
Karen has worked with a production team on an as-yet un-produced elevated Christmas romance (thanks COVID!). She has been commended for being good to work with, as she doesn’t flinch at feedback and knows how to deliver on notes and production requirements.
Karen’s signature story elements are fun characters doing silly things grounded in real world wants. She has a deft ear for dialogue and is stubborn about every beat making sense to the whole.
She loves a meaningful theme, an unexpected surprise reveal, and a romantic coda that gives you one last glimpse of your favourite characters.
Romance audiences yearn to yearn, and Karen Schaffer delivers.
