Sense and Sensibility (film) the same time, Thompson wished to avoid depicting "a couple of women waiting around for men"; gradually her screenplay focused as much on the Dashwood sisters' relationship with each other as it did with their romantic interests. With the draft screenplay, Doran pitched the idea to various studios in order to finance the film, but found that many were wary of the beginner Thompson as the screenwriter. She was considered a risk, as her experience was as an actress who had never written a film script. Columbia Pictures executive Amy Pascal supported Thompson's work, and agreed to sign as the
Sense and Sensibility draft of the novel in the form of a novel-in-letters (epistolary form) perhaps as early 1795 when she was about 19 years old, or 1797, at age 21, and is said to have given it the title "Elinor and Marianne". She later changed the form to a narrative and the title to "Sense and Sensibility". Austen drew inspiration for "Sense and Sensibility" from other novels of the 1790s that treated similar themes, including Adam Stevenson's "Life and Love" (1785) which he had written about himself and a relationship that was not meant to be. Jane West's "A Gossip's Story" (1796),