Opening Image / Backstory
Before I knew the word “storytelling,” I was already doing it.
I grew up in Sardinia and wanted to tell stories before I even learned how to write. The medium came later. The impulse was already there.
Meeting with the mentor
Every writer needs a mentor.
Your characters need a therapist.
Conveniently, I do both.
Every protagonist eventually meets someone who helps them see the road differently. If you’re here with a story in your head, a character who won’t cooperate, or a draft that keeps asking difficult questions: hi. I’m Lisa Camilla La Colla, Creative Writing Coach.
Character description
Meet Lisa, before the plot begins.
I’ve been living inside stories for as long as I can remember. Once I learned how to write, ordinary thoughts apparently stopped being enough: there had to be characters, dialogue, books, films and entire imaginary lives running alongside them.
I’m Italian, an unapologetic Isabel Allende fan, and Billy Wilder has a permanent seat at my imaginary “dead people dinner.” I’m also the person who once argued with a teacher who said fictional characters don’t exist. They clearly had never met mine.
So yes: before I became a Creative Writing Coach, I was already doing what writers do best — paying far too much attention to people who technically aren’t real.
The three-act structure
Plot of my life
If this were a screenplay, these would be the beats I’d circle in pink. The events matter — but so does the way each one changed what I thought the story was about.
ACT ISetup
Inciting Incident
Then screenwriting changed the direction of the story.
At university I fell in love with screenwriting. That fascination took me from Bologna to Paris, where I studied at La Sorbonne and kept following stories across page and screen.
Act I Break
Los Angeles made the commitment real.
I joined the UCLA Professional Program in Screenwriting. The curiosity had become a path: I wasn’t just studying stories anymore. I was choosing the work.
ACT IIConfrontation
Midpoint / False Victory
I got the writing job. Which sounds like the happy ending.
I was working as a screenwriter in Vienna. After years of studying, I was finally being paid to write stories. On paper, it looked exactly like the dream.
Except it was a false victory: I was writing stories, yes — but not my own.
Plot Twist
Then I stopped observing characters from the outside.
I entered acting school in Vienna. Acting changed the way I understood characters because I could no longer analyse them only as a writer. I had to inhabit them — to find intention, contradiction and emotional truth from the inside.
Point of No Return
The contradiction became impossible to ignore.
I couldn’t keep writing only for other people. I wanted to write my own stories, tell them through different media, and teach other people how to write theirs.
ACT IIIResolution
Climax
I left the job and taught my first screenwriting workshop.
The idea stopped being theoretical. I stepped away from the supposedly safe path and created a room where writers could work seriously on their stories without being made to feel smaller in the process.
Resolution
Storytelling With Love was born.
What began with workshops became a way of teaching and coaching: serious storytelling principles, practical momentum and enough care to make ambitious creative work sustainable.
And the experiment kept shaping my own writing too: in 2025 I drafted a novel in 22 days; it later became a finalist in the IoScrittore literary competition. A reminder I still teach: inspiration is wonderful, but structure and a real deadline can carry you much further.
Character arc
Love is not the opposite of discipline. Love is the fuel.
You know the terrifying music teacher in Whiplash? My coaching philosophy grew in almost the opposite direction. Storytelling With Love comes from a refusal to believe that pain is proof of artistic seriousness — and from the belief that ambitious work can be built with both rigor and care.
PAIN
For years I associated artistic seriousness with suffering: more pressure, more perfectionism, more sacrifice. If it hurt, perhaps that meant I was taking the work seriously enough.
→
LOVE
I learned to build a creative practice around care, structure, truth and joy — without lowering the standard. Discipline stayed. Punishment did not.
The mentor archetype
What It Feels Like to Work
With Me.
Part story craft. Part accountability. Part very honest creative conversation.
A little bit “story therapist.”
We can go deep into what is blocking the work, without judging you for having a block in the first place.
Messy ideas are welcome.
Give me the complicated version. Finding the spine of the story is one of my favorite things.
The Muse is optional.
Inspiration gets an invitation. Deadlines get a chair at the table.
I care about “The End.”
And yes, there is a very real chance I’ll get emotional when you complete your first draft.
The theme
Serious about the story.
Gentle with the storyteller.
The name is the mission — and the method. Storytelling With Love grew out of enormous respect for craft, paired with a refusal to believe that cruelty makes creatives better. Love, here, does not mean lowering the bar. It means creating the conditions in which you can actually reach it.
Value 1
Craft
Professional storytelling principles: structure, character, pacing, dialogue and the practical tools that make an idea work on the page.
Value 2
Courage
Self-trust, creative confidence and the willingness to make choices before certainty arrives.
Value 3
Care
Emotional safety, humane feedback and a coaching space where the story can be challenged seriously without diminishing the storyteller.
Character file · Lisa
Lisa Camilla La Colla
What's your name?
Lisa Camilla La Colla
What's your job?
Creative Writing Coach, Actress, Singer, Business Owner, Writer
What's your goal?
To tell stories throughout my entire life, no matter the medium.
What do you need?
To trust that discipline can support creativity without turning it into punishment.
What's your obstacle?
Perfectionism — and the old belief that serious art has to hurt.
What's your flaw?
Perfectionism.
How do you drink your coffee?
Cappuccino in the morning, Espresso after lunch (I'm still Italian, even though I live in Vienna).
What's your backstory?
See Acts I–III above. I did, after all, spend years studying structure.
Character study
Lisa, according to the questionnaire
You have seen the plot and the arc. Now for the character questionnaire — the part where we stop describing a person from a distance and start asking better questions.
Now do this to your characters.
You have just met me through a character study. If you want to put your own characters under the same microscope, the Character Questionnaire is the natural next page.
Subplots
The things that are not the main plot — but definitely affect the character
Subplots are the side stories that give the main character texture. Mine tend to involve stages, songs, films, books, impossible deadlines and fictional people I insist are real.
On stage
Acting & singing
Acting changed the way I write characters because it forced me to experience them from the inside. Singing belongs to the same lifelong instinct: if there is a way to tell a story through another medium, I want to know what it feels like.
On the page
Writing under a real deadline
In 2025 I drafted a novel in 22 days. It later became a finalist in the IoScrittore literary competition — a useful reminder that inspiration is wonderful, but a loving structure and an actual deadline can take you much further.
Permanent obsessions
Allende, Wilder & company
Isabel Allende and magical realism have my heart. Billy Wilder has a permanent seat at my imaginary “dead people dinner.” Sunset Boulevard, Some Like It Hot, La La Land and The Phantom of the Opera are never very far from the conversation.
Off script
Business, Friends & Atomic Habits
Building Storytelling With Love turned me into a solo entrepreneur who somehow learned the technical side too. Friends still works on me like the first watch, and Atomic Habits is rarely very far away.
My favorites
The stories I keep coming back to.
ALL-TIMES FAVORITE MOVIES
Coming soon.
TV SERIES I BINGE-WATCH ON REPEAT
Coming soon.
BOOKS THAT MOVE ME TO TEARS
Coming soon.
ALL THE SELF-HELP BOOKS ON MY SHELF
Coming soon.
MUSICALS I'LL ALWAYS SEE
Coming soon.
PLAYS I DRIVE INSPIRATION FROM
Coming soon.
Backstory
The unapologetic academic bio.
Because warmth and rigor can coexist — and my coaching is grounded in seven years of studying how stories work across page, stage and screen.
01
University of Bologna
MA in Cinema, Television & Multimedia Productions
02
University of Bologna
BA in Drama, Art & Music
03
UCLA
Professional Screenwriting Program
04
La Sorbonne, Paris
Exchange in Cinema & Film Studies
05
CUNY, New York
Exchange in Media Studies
06
NYFA + VETA
Acting studies in New York & Vienna
Call to adventure
I’ve told you my story. Now
what happens in yours?
If there is a novel, script or play asking for your attention, you do not need to become a different person before you can write it. We can find the story, build the structure and create a process that gets you to the next scene — and eventually to The End.