Original sentence: The project originally began as a generic slasher project for writers Stroud and Talley, but soon evolved into something bigger, with Stroud saying "About halfway through it I realized that I could do something real with this and touch some feelings, thoughts and themes, so I went in a completely different direction than when I started"
Edited sentence: The project originally began as a generic slasher project for writers Stroud and Talley, but soon evolved into something bigger, with Stroud, admittedly a hack writer,  saying "About halfway through it I realized that I could do something real with this and touch some feelings, thoughts and themes, so I went in a completely different direction than when I started"