Go Into The Story Interview: Kristen Tepper

My conversation with the 2022 Black List writer.

Kristen Tepper wrote the screenplay Better Luck Next Time which landed on the 2022 Black List. Remarkably, Kristen’s script made the Black List before she had signed with a manager.

Here is my interview with Kristen.

Scott Myers: Congratulations, Kristen, getting on the Black List in 2022.

Kristen Tepper: Thank you.

Scott: I’d like to learn a little bit more about your background. First of all, I think you’re from the Chicago area. Is that right?

Kristen: I am, yes. I’m very proud of being from Chicago. I grew up in the south suburbs, Oak Forest, Orland Park area. I go back a lot whenever I can. I think the city is just one of the best set‑up cities in the country, so I’m very like ride or die.

I’m in LA now. I don’t know if it’s cold in Chicago right now, but it’s nice here today.

Scott: Were you always interested in movies and television?

Kristen: I think I was always interested. I feel like my mom says this to me all time. She’s like, “Ever since you were really little, you were like, ‘I’m just going to go work and live in Hollywood.’” She was like, “I never brought you to California. There was no reason for you to want to go to that place.” But I really love movies.

I think I saw, I feel like it was probably “The Goonies” or one of those adventure movies that I saw. I was like, “Oh, I want to make that. I want to do that. I want to be a part of all of that.” I still need to go to the rocks that are up in Oregon from “The Goonies.” I think it was one of those. I was just like, “Yeah, that just seems like a better job than a nurse or a teacher.”

I was terrible to my teachers. Those poor, poor people, so I couldn’t imagine being them. From there, I think I was writing a lot of fanfiction online. I was really into reading “Nancy Drew.” I was always a big book person. I think that’s what kind of gave me an idea that this was a career option, at least reading books and then seeing shows like that and movies.

Scott: There was a “Nancy Drew” series on for a while. Were you a fan of that?

Kristen: I never actually watched it. I get really weird about once something of mine, like something that I loved, comes to fruition. I’m scared to watch it because I don’t want to not like it. I have not yet, but I should. I think that one’s not too bad.

Scott: I notice in your script, of course, you mentioned “The Hardy Boys” is a pretty important element in the script. I actually remember reading “The Hardy Boys” when I was a kid.

Kristen: They’re really good. They’re all really good. There was even Nancy Drew computer games that I was really into. Mysteries are big on my vibe.

Scott: You did some fan fiction. I suppose that’s probably floating around somewhere.

Kristen: It is. I don’t know where. There were Nancy Drew fan websites. I don’t remember what my username was, but there’s definitely…I should find it, but it exists somewhere. It’s not good. I don’t know what I was writing about. I don’t think I had any love interest either. I think it was just murder and mayhem.

Scott: Murder and mayhem. Were you doing any of this in high school at all? Were you doing creative writing, taking any classes there?

Kristen: I wasn’t. I was a pretty bad student. I was just interested in my friends. I did gymnastics and cheerleading, so I was doing those. I really wanted to be cool.

I was like, “I don’t think the theater kids are considered cool. I don’t think the kids that are in their writing class are considered cool,” and so I missed out on a bunch of stuff, I think, that I would’ve really, really loved for the sake of thinking that I was too cool.

Now I have nieces and nephews, and I’m like, “Do all of the things that you want to do. You’ll be much happier in life.”

I think I took two classes in college for screenwriting, and that was at Mizzou, or University of Missouri. Then I went to Second City in Chicago after college, and I took some sketch writing classes there.

Scott: University Missouri, Brad Pit attended there, I think.

Kristen: He did. He was a Sigma Chi. He’s on the wall. He looked just as good back then, too.

Scott: Here in Chicago, DePaul University, the film program where I teach, has a joint program with the Second City. A comedy writing program, so students can come and get a BFA or an MFA.

Kristen: That is amazing.

Scott: They get all the sketch writing and improv at Second City in Lincoln Park. Then at DePaul, we teach them screenwriting, theory, the business of screenwriting, and so on.

Kristen: That’s really, really smart because that’s like you took screenwriting or film theory classes, but then you knew all of the information and you were like, I don’t know how to implement yet though. I know all this stuff. Where do I go next? That’s really smart of you guys to do that together.

Scott: So you took a couple of screenwriting classes in college. How did you wind your way to Hollywood?

Kristen: I came home because my parents were not psyched. They thought this idea was going to go away. I got a communications degree, and they were like, she’ll work in marketing or do something. I was like, I’m going to save money and then I’m going to go and, in that meantime though, I’m in Chicago, I’m living at home with my parents because they were nice enough to let me come back.

I was like, I might as well go to Second City and take classes. When I get out there, I’m completely in shock about what’s going on, so yes. Then I moved out. I think, two years later, maybe a year later, I moved out.

Scott: A lot of colleges have programs where students do a quarter or a semester in LA, they get an internship, then hopefully that transitions into assistant position, and that’s the path toward establishing them as a writer. You didn’t have that structure, so what did you do? How did you get your foot in the door?

Kristen: No, it was very unfortunate. Not unfortunate. Obviously, everything has panned out thus far, so everything happens for a reason in that respect. I went on in entertainmentcareers.net, I’m pretty sure it was the website.

I just found every internship that wasn’t a school, they didn’t require school credit and applied to those. I think it was literally 300 applications before I finally got into doing one of those internships.

That was for this really great producer, Matt Rhodes. He does a bunch of action flicks. I think “Cherry” was one of the more recent ones with Tom Holland. That’s where I got all of my experience. I remember, they’re asked on the job internship thing was can you send us an example of coverage?

I was like, I don’t know what that is and so I’ll Google it, and then I’ll just make it up off a movie I saw recently. I did that and I went in for this interview and the kid that was interviewing was so nice.

He’s like, “Interesting that you did it on a movie that’s already out. Normally it’s like a movie that you just read the script for,” and I was that’s definitely what I was going off of. What?

I’m like, oh, my God, I’m so silly. They were really excited to have some female energy around reading these action scripts kind of thing and getting that point of view. I went and worked there and it wasn’t paid. I worked a from home job where I was doing websites and doing social media and marketing.

That’s how I pay my bills still, and from that internship, I got invited into a Facebook group of assistants, which is a private group out here. Once you get to meet all of these people they’ll let you in, and that has a ton of job postings.

I invited my friends because I was like, “Oh, this is nice for all of us.” My friend tagged me in a post for a personal assistant that was part‑time. I was like, “That’s great because I’m kind of making good money. I want to write still.”

I did not think I was made out to be the in‑office exec assistant role. That is just so demanding and their hours are nine to seven. I was like, “I don’t know if I could do it, I have so much flexibility in my life right now. That would be really hard.”

When she saw that personal assistant thing. She was like, “This would be perfect for you.” Went in, interviewed, and it was Brian Kavanaugh-Jones, who I still work with today. He hired me on the spot. He was like, “I really need somebody and you seem competent enough, and let’s go for it.”

That is how I got in. It was entertainment careers and a lot of internship posting and then that Facebook group. I feel like my path was much, not more straight‑lined, but a lot more streamlined than some people’s. Some people have 12 different jobs and assistant things before they meet people that are good to stick around with.

Brian and Fred Berger, they both run Automatik, are really, really good people to work under, really take care of you. They were just randomly talking about how they needed more marketing work. I was like, “I don’t want to be your personal assistant forever. I would do film marketing, that’s cool, you get to meet more people and that sounds up my alley.

They let me run their social and then Alma Har’el was dong “Honey Boy.” She saw it, and she was like, “That girl’s funny. I want her to work on my social for the Honey Boy campaign.” Then from there it was just referral jobs since that, which has been really fortunate for me.

Then I get to meet, I do lookbooks now, like pitch decks for people, and I get to meet directors and producers and other writers. That is how I have a wide network of people that I could send my script “Better Luck Next Time” to…

Scott: Sounds like your college degree actually helped you, too.

Kristen: It did, it did a lot. I think a lot of the business skills I learned from working at home paid off completely. Just like email etiquette, and all of these things that I think, “I did not learn that in college.”

No college course was like, “This is how to respond to an email appropriately, always answer within 48 hours if you’re trying to be polite or on top of it. Here’s how to organize a to‑do list to make sure you don’t forget.”

No class taught me that. The company I worked for right after college, learning that type of business side, and I think to this day people really appreciate. It is the entertainment industry and people are really creative and some people don’t have those soft skills, I don’t know what you call them.

It helps put me a little bit above when it’s like, “Oh, she answered her email right on time. I don’t need to worry that she’s not going to do the thing.” That’s, to the networking, where people are always like, “I’ll always go to Tepper because she’ll always get it done. She has the wherewithal of how this business runs and timeliness.”

I think that’s helped me a lot, but the networking is tough.

Scott: You start off by writing coverage and not even really knowing what it was, to now, the point you’re writing a screenplay that’s making the Black List. Maybe fill in some of the dots there about how you learned the craft.

Kristen: I am a very must‑do learner. I really started taking it seriously when COVID started. I had written shorts before and I had ideas, but it’s really scary the first time to type into my keyboard and say, “I really want to be a writer.”

I just started reading a lot of scripts. Working at that production company, and then working for BKJ and reading, all of the time, what was coming in for them really did help me figure out the common things about scripts that screenwriter Twitter could have a field day on, “Whether you build the slug line or you don’t,” or, “Do you capitalize the person?”

All of those things, I could see themes and consistency in all these scripts. I was reading them and I was like, “Loved that one, hated that one.” I’m like, “OK, if this person can do it and this script can be not the best thing I’ve ever read in my life but it’s in the hands of all these very fancy producers, I should be doing this.”

I took the “Dead to Me” script, the pilot. I loved that show. It was the perfect mix for me of dark and funny. I took it and I put it, I have two screens. I put it up on my one screen. I had had an idea for a while that I outlined in a Google Doc. I just started writing it. I think I used Celtix or WriterDuet, I don’t remember which one.

I was emulating the flow. If the scene was one page, “Maybe I should do my scene in that one page, what does that look like?” That was my first real go of understanding what I wanted to write, or how to write.

From there, for “Better Luck Next Time” specifically, me and my, she’s my roommate, she’s my best friend, I don’t know when it was, but we were toying on ideas like, “What really is sticky and what would make people stop?” It was this idea of a “Hitch,” but horrible. It was like, “Yeah, everyone thinks that’s funny.”

Because “Hitch” is a great movie, what would happen though if you were unhitching people? It was a TV series, and I was like, “This is not working this way. No one’s going to give me a bunch of money to make a TV series, no one knows who I am.” I was like, “Whatever, I’ll do it as a feature.”

It got rewritten a lot. I went through probably 14 drafts. Up until the week before it was the Black List, it was still getting changed because I was like, “This could be different. This could be different.”

At that point in June of last year I had started sending it out to my friends, because I was like, “This is the idea that’s sticky.” Everyone gets it, I could say it in 30 seconds and people are excited about it and it makes them laugh. I was like, “That’s how I want my first pitch to be.”

Sent it out to a few friends. I had a lookbook because I love lookbooks. These are all the people that I met from doing their pitch decks or helping on different projects or they worked at one of the production companies I was working with.

They were like, “I love this. What are you doing?” I was like, “I’m not doing anything.” It’s just a project that I like, and I think something could happen. This is the famous Hollywood thing and it’s the packaging conversation where everyone’s like, “Well, let me know if you get anyone attached or this happens or this happens.”

You’re like, “Yeah, I don’t know how to do that part. I thought that was what you guys do.” I think the other thing, everyone’s all so busy, everyone’s got their passion projects. You were flinging this thing in and being like, “Maybe they’ll like it.”

The best note is that they all do like it, but they’re like,” I just don’t have it on it and there’s nowhere to slate that exists for me for this,” so I just let it go. I kept writing. I think 48 hours before Black List voting ended, my friend Kirsten, who had read it, was like, “I’m voting for you for Black List.”

I was like, “What?” She was like, “Yeah, and I sent it to a few other people. I think that you could get on the Black List with this. I don’t know who else is going to vote but go tell people. Remind them that you have this script. Do a lookbook update and send it back out and tell them.”

I was like, “I don’t know. That feels weird.” She goes, “That’s what all the agents and managers are doing right now. They’re pimping everybody out and showing off their client’s work because they want to get on the Black List. That’s a salesman’s game. You don’t have anyone, so I’ll help you. You go figure out some of those people.”

I did. I literally sent a lookbook out, sent the deck, and the script. I was like, “You remember this one? You read it back in May or in August.” People were like, “Oh yeah. My God, I haven’t voted for Black List yet. Let me put this on there.” I was like, “Maybe I’ll actually get it.”

You don’t know until that day. You’re just like, “Maybe, maybe I didn’t, maybe I did.” Luckily enough, everyone pulled through, or most of them did. That was how that came to be.

Scott: Wow. It speaks to the proximity, the fact you’re there. It speaks to your perseverance and it speaks to your personality and your professionalism and, frankly, courage, just put stuff out there.

Kristen: Definitely the scariest part. I was in a huge slump a year ago. I was like, “How do I get in? How do you break into this industry?”

Black List was not what I thought was going to help me. I was like, “I don’t know how you get on the Black List. I’m not a huge feature writer either.” When he said that last night, I was like, “That’s the most accurate thing I’ve heard in a while.”

Scott: Is this the first feature script that you’ve written?

Kristen: It is technically the first feature I have written, and that was in January that I started writing this one. It’s probably the second or the third, but it’s the only one that is something that I would show anyone.

I’ve been very fortunate that I’m good with idea, so I can work around an idea. My first pilot was on the Black List. It was just on the other site.

Scott: The Black List website.

Kristen: It got an eight on the reviewed site. I was like, “I have an idea, and I have an inkling of how to structure things.” I’ve been fortunate in that regard.

Scott: Did you do any reading, any of the how‑to books, or going to any classes in terms of story, not just format and whatnot?

Kristen: I actually have a writer’s group that I think has been the most helpful thing to me. All the things you read when you’re starting. I still to this day, though, will Google, “What is the three‑act structure?” When I’m restarting something. I’m like, “What is…? What does do I need to do in this?”

I do a lot of Craig Mazin’s podcast and the “No Film School” or my things that I like to keep in unknown of some sort. Mine was a lot of doing. Mine was very trial and error and writing a whole script and then being like, “That’s not right at all.” Whatever I was thinking, I was doing was wrong. “Let me re‑write it.”

The writing group being able to give notes has been the biggest thing that I think has helped steer what I want to do, and outlining. I outline for a long time.

Scott: I have this working theory that we’ve read, seen, and heard so many stories in our lives, that a lot of this is intuitive. No matter all the various paradigms or whatnot, I don’t think you move too far away from Aristotle and this idea of beginning, middle, and an end.

Kristen: I know.

Scott: I’d like your reaction to something I tell my students. “Okay, you’re in Los Feliz or downtown at a club. And you bump into a producer. They ask what you do. You say, “I’m a screenwriter.” They ask, “What you got?” You’ve got about 5–10 seconds to get their attention. You need that single thing that hooks their attention.

With your script “Better Luck Next Time,” you’ve got that hook. “It’s ‘Unhitched.’”

Kristen: Exactly. It’s really hard. I think loglines and pitching yourself are two of the hardest things about writing.

Scott: Yes, absolutely. There are people that have classes that they’re teaching how to write a logline. It’s simple if you come up with a great idea. If you don’t come up with a strong story concept, it can be problematic.

Speaking of strong story concepts, here’s how your project was summarized for the annual Black List:

“Two best friends run a successful underground service taking women’s toxic exes on humiliating dates, but their friendship’s put to the ultimate test when an old mark plots his revenge.”

Let’s break that down. I want you to go back, you touched on this a bit. Do you remember the first initial thing, where you thought, “That’s it.”

Was it the revenge part? Was it the toxic masculinity in contemporary culture? Was it literally looking at “Hitch” and doing the reverse of that?

Kristen: I don’t know if I remember the exact, but I feel like it was very much the revenge thing. The first kernel of this idea was…Before “Do Revenge” and before “Promising a Woman,” being an idea and never being pushed out anywhere.

It was me and my best friend being like, “How funny would it be if you just made XYZ’s life miserable because he was such an XYZ to this friend of ours.” That was, I think, where that stems from. That was always the basis. There were a lot more dates. I have pages of the bad dates that didn’t make it.

Scott: Let’s talk about some of these characters in the story. I don’t want to give away too much of the plot because it’s quite complex in a good way, it’s got some interesting twists and turns.

You got these two friends. BJ, I think your lookbook describes her this way. “28 years old, quick‑witted and rough around the edges but fiercely loyal with a huge heart.” Here’s how she’s described when she’s introduced in the script: “She lives on the short‑term winds and prefers the fast lane.”

Unpack BJ for us a little bit, what was the inspiration for her character?

Kristen: BJ is who me and all my friends are on our wildest, loosest night out. Where we’re living for whatever’s happening at that time.

That might be a Midwest thing and I think Annie is just her fold. In a way that I think women in their late 20s go to those opposite extremes. You’re either living it up and you’re like, “I’ll have kids when I’ll have kids” or you’re Annie and you’re ready to settle down.

My friends are not ready to settle down. She is a culmination of everything I like about all of those people, even her less‑perfect attributes.

Scott: She did have, in her past, the passing of her mother.

Kristen: Yes.

Scott: Unresolved?

Kristen: I think unresolved in the way that both of these characters have dads who didn’t know how quite to deal with them. That manifests in so many different ways. Once you lose your wife, it’s like “What kind of parent am I? Am I both parents, I’m just the dad?” I think women have a very specific relationship with their mom.

When you don’t get that fulfilled, you don’t see what the path is to what you’re supposed to grow up and be like. What are those next steps? I think it just stunted her in a phase of “I just want to have fun. I don’t want to think about everything serious that can go wrong, because it always does go wrong, so I’m just going to ignore that completely.”

Scott: There’s always layers to good characters, multi‑dimensions to them. It’d be interesting just to think about her character in terms of this desire to have fun. How much of that is just trying to avoid certain things.

Kristen: Just running. I think at some point in the script her aunt, BJ, and her auntie have it out. It’s just like, “You just would rather avoid it and pretend like everything’s fine even though something’s on fire” because if something’s actually on fire you have to deal with it. I think that’s really hard.

Scott: You have a three‑page blow‑out scene, we’ll talk about that in just a bit. I was going to ask you how much fun that was to write, I mention the part too because it’s a lot of really honest interaction. From a writer’s standpoint, it must have been kind of a hoot.

Kristen: It was, yes. [laughs]

Scott: Let’s save that because we’ve got to meet Anne first. Annie is the other one. Now, they’re childhood friends. They’ve known each other a long time.

Annie, the lookbook describes her, “29, whip‑smart, ambitious, precocious, and since she was six, she’s been ready to grow up. She loves being the brains of the Better Luck Next Time operations, being the brains, but she knows her fiancé Jesse would not approve. Jesse cares about appearance and this is not an appearance‑appropriate organization.”

Maybe unpack Annie a bit. How did that character come into being?

Kristen: Just in the way, not the opposite of BJ because I think they both like to have fun, I think that’s something that tends to get missed a lot. You just have one character with a stick up their butt and then you have one who’s wild.

I think though Annie is just a lot of my friends who always were like, “I want to get married” and, “I want kids.” There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just such a different life, at least for me. I am not an Annie.

I’m an Annie maybe in that I like lists and organization, but everything else is very much like knowing what you want, and being so confident and comfortable with that is very appealing to me, because I don’t.

I have friends like that, that just always knew. My mom has always said, “I just always knew I wanted to have kids and a dog and this is good enough for me.” I was like, that’s insane. I don’t understand how you can be content. I want that but I don’t have that, and so I think that’s Annie made into one little character.

Scott: But she’s not honest about it with Jesse. In fact, she’s got this whole other…I work at this really, I forget the name of the company but it’s a reliable financial institution. Where did that come from? Was that always part of Annie’s development as a character?

Kristen: A little bit. Annie thought this was funny, and then things just grow and they grow until you don’t have control of them anymore. I think meeting Jesse and being like, “Oh, I’m going to marry this person,” is the push point of being like, “This person wouldn’t like that side of me.”

Which is something people do in relationships a lot. Like, “I always make my bed,” “I always put the dishes in the dishwasher.” They’re much smaller scale things, but this was just like, “I don’t think this person would like that version of me, and I don’t know if I want to be that version of me, so that’s not part of this conversation when it’s you and me. This is the idealized version of me.”

Scott: When I was reading this, and as soon as she said something about moving out to Naperville, I was going “OK,” because I have quite a few friends who live in Naperville. I go out there like, “I don’t know, man.”

Kristen: That’s a very specific lifestyle choice. [laughs]

Scott: Oh yeah. No knocking them. They got kids and stuff that are of age, that’s definitely the suburbs. What’s interesting to me about that is I think that stories, fundamentally, are about characters, particularly protagonist characters, who are trying to find themselves.

They don’t know this necessarily, but it’s about self‑identity. “Who are you?” In fact, at some point, I think you even have in one of your, enter in a big blow‑up fight, basically. It’s like, “Who the fuck are you?” Both of these characters are distanced a bit from that question. They’re not being honest with each other, or themselves.

Their job is like that too, they put on these masks to do this thing. How much of that synergy between this gig that they do where they put on these schemes to sting these guys, which is make believe, make‑up, masks, metaphorically. Yet also at the same time they’re doing a similar thing with their own lives, whether they realize it or not.

Were you aware of that synergy when you were writing it?

Kristen: No, I think now that you say that, I definitely see that. I was so hyper‑fixated on their relationship and the idea of not knowing who you are in your late 20s, and thinking I need to know this. This should be figured out. If I can’t then I’m going to keep running and not stop to think about it.

It’s the way that I can’t sit in a room and just think, “I have to be looking at my phone,” even if I don’t realize it I pick it up. It was this avoidance of self that I think a lot of people feel, especially now that we have technology to allow us to do that.

That was my hyper‑fixation with them, but I love that because I guess that is that when they’re in their job they are so focused on they commit on this bit. They committed to this bit beyond belief and I think they’ve just done that in their lives too. I’m committing to whatever this version of me is, whether it’s good or bad.

Scott: That probably explains in part why they’re good at it, because they do have practice at it because they practice it in their real lives, unconsciously or not.

I can see how Annie because she likes to do things and do them well, and she is good at it, where she could over time been sucked into this. Then once she started to lie with Jesse how that just built. She’s trapped in a way, in that web of business and life with Jesse, at the beginning.

Kristen: Yeah. I think definitely they obviously need to make a certain amount of money in this, but I think that’s also a thing, it’s like what I was saying, “I don’t want to be an assistant and work for $15 an hour when I’ve got a decent gig over here. It’s scary out here with money and funds and where’s it coming from next?”

Scott: You make a critical narrative decision, which is they lose the money they’ve saved. That’s BJ’s fault. That was probably intentional on your part to put pressure on them, right?

Kristen: Oh, yeah. I think this is the part when sometimes I don’t want to put a hat on a hat, but I’m like, “You want to make it as terrible as possible for these people.” You need to put them in a hole 30 feet in the ground and figure out…Then they have to climb out themselves, whether they use each other or they use anything else.

I don’t know what writer said that, but it’s like, “If you think it’s bad, make it worse.”

Scott: Sure. We want to see our protagonist characters go through one obstacle or another after another, tests, reversals, and that sort of thing. You get them into a real big mess in the story.

How much of their focus on this gig, where they’re getting back at these jerks, they call them “dicks”, how much of that is business opportunity and the general sense of toxic masculinity and the patriarchal system, which exists horribly in Hollywood.

Kristen: In the TV version, there is a whole backstory as to BJ being very wronged in college and the college doing nothing about it. That’s the precipice of Annie and BJ. Annie’s like, “He doesn’t know me. I’m going to go off him up.”

It’s Annie in this made‑up world, that doesn’t exist, in the prequel, where all this happens. That’s why they start it, but we see them a little bit more down the road where it’s BJ, I think she might say Jeff Bezos, I don’t remember who she calls out in this, but she definitely has this chip on her shoulder about getting back at men, at large, for what has happened.

It’s her baggage that she’s carrying. “I want to keep getting back at people, these men deserve it.” Then, it becomes just more of the business to Annie, and I think that’s when Annie also gets a little bit less…She falls out of love with it. She’s like, “This can’t be how we solve this problem. This isn’t it.”

Scott: Let’s talk about some of the other characters, there’s a mystery man. You drop us in, there’s an immediate sting, which is fine. Open a thing, we can see what they do. BJ’s just very clever at it. There’s this mystery man tailing them and it turns out later to be Ben. When he’s introduced later, he’s got a name now.

Meet, Ben Reynolds, 32, up‑and‑coming junior detective from Chicago P.D. What’s his basic deal at the beginning of the story.

Kristen: Yes, Ben went through a lot of iterations. There were a lot more characters which is one of my guilty pleasures in scripts and I have people that are cut three. Like, mesh two, cut three. I don’t care, get them out of there.

Ben, he was a lot more dopey in previous versions. He was kind of haphazard and hapless and didn’t really know what to do, but the more that I started writing it, I think he changed.

I had to go back into act one and be like, this isn’t who you are. You’re smarter than this and you’re not a bad guy because that can be a really easy thing to fall into, all men are bad.

The essence of that makes sense, but for these characters and real people, he’s not. He really does want to do something and he’s confused by his boss. He just grew to being the call you need when you need to fix a scene. You know what I mean?

When you’re like someone needs to call and break up whatever’s going on. It was always Ben being he’s perfect for this. He can put the mic on them and he can listen in the car and he can make the funny comment. Then becoming the love interest, I didn’t want to go too rom‑commy, it’s just not my specialty, but I couldn’t help it.

These two characters just vibe together, whenever they’re near each other or something happens. That’s where he ends up coming into play and I really like that it turned out like that for him.

Scott: Well, if he’s a cop and he’s spying, he’s tailing them and putting microphones and all this stuff. He’s a little bit living on the edge. BJ’s got that thing going on there too. I can see where there would be an instinct that would maybe draw them together.

Of course, it’s very convenient for you, and I’m sure it speaks to your writing skill that you do have him as a cop with this guy, Dennis, who is the police chief.

Kristen: Dennis is like…I don’t know. I don’t remember how I used to describe him. He’s like the epitome of every problematic dude that you know at an office, like Steve Carell’s character in…What’s on at Apple right now, not “The Newsroom?” Maybe it is The Newsroom. Like the Harvey Weinstein. He is that guy who has gotten away with it because he can. He’s way too smug and comfortable.

One of my favorite lines is still when he’s…I think Ben goes like, “I have a lot of missing persons cases.” He’s like, “Those aren’t going anywhere though, are they?” Like murders, he’s like, “They’re not going anywhere.” It’s the most self‑serving character that I had a lot of fun writing him, though. He’s a little bombastic.

Scott: There’s an interesting twist on a twist because while you’ve got BJ and Annie who are…They’re the sting masters in terms of their gig. Well, they’re going to be stung because there’s this whole other plot going on. There’s this woman, Cassondra. What’s her role in the story?

Kristen: I think like day one, she was like the Midwest Gwyneth Paltrow. That’s why she’s got her chain restaurants and she’s this weird, out‑there, outlandish, all very much…It’s so absurd that you’re aware that this is absurd, campy. She initially was the main person pulling all of these strings.

She was like, “I need this done, and this is how this is going to happen.” She’s one of my favorite. I write a version of her as a female character into a lot of things because I think women like this are MLM. Women are fascinating and women in power who are into thinking like the crystals are going to solve everything for them.

I love those people. They’re so interesting and they have so many layers in how did you get there. That is where she came from. She does remind me a little bit of my best friend. Not in the bad ways, but more in the [inaudible 43:40] ways, and wearing a cape that would be all of those things.

Scott: You got a lot of dramatic irony in this story. Certain people know things that other people don’t like, Jesse doesn’t know the truth about Annie and the sting people. People getting stung, don’t know about what BJ and Annie are doing.

They don’t know that Ben is, at first. They don’t know what’s going on with Dennis and Cassondra. All along the way, you’re planning these things so that we, the reader, know these things. Maybe you could talk to about dramatic irony. What do you see as the value, as a writer, of working with things like that, where you’re setting up the dramatic irony in play in the narrative?

Kristen: I guess I go two ways when I watch something and this might be a personal preference of…I saw “Scream 5” and I love Scream and I love that you have no idea who this killer could be until they come out at the very end and they explain some absurd reason for why they’re the killer.

I have always had a lot more fun as an audience member, knowing that things are going to go wrong and being like but how. How is it going to go wrong and when is it going to go wrong? Who’s going to find out that it’s wrong?

Are these people going to put it together and I think the knives…I’m not as smart as Rian Johnson, but I love his like “I have dropped things here and here for you, and then I will go back and explain more of it.” I don’t think I’m that skilled yet.

This is my version of that being like, “You’re going to know everything that’s happening and we’re going to see if these characters can figure it out or if they don’t or how bad it gets.” It’s a viewer’s preference for me, what I like to watch.

Scott: That’s interesting because within the story, it’s like a ticking bomb because each one of these things you never know. At some point you know Jesse’s going to find out about Annie, but it plays out underneath everything. Every scene is emotional subtext.

Plus, it puts pressure on the people who are telling the lies not to screw up. That both of those things are in play in your story. Richard is the guy that they’re going to…That’s the big thing.

Kristen: He’s my Hardy Boys man.

Scott: I don’t want to get into the complexity of the plot because it’s a lot of fun, but I would like to talk about your narrative voice. That’s why I say to my students, the genre and your style needs to match up. Whatever you’re doing in terms of scene description, it’s got to have some personality.

You’ve read a lot of scripts, you know this language. You’ve been around online. You know about bold sluglines can start a flame war online. What’s your attitude about that in terms of the freedom to provide that personality and scene description?

Kristen: I used to struggle. You learn the rules and then you break them. I was very previous on any practicing’s, just rigid about this. Then as I was going back into my script, I was like, “This is boring me, it’s boring me and I’m the writer.” What I want to say is, this guy’s an idiot and I want the reader to have fun with that, because reading a script is tough.

The people in this industry have to read 10s, 20s, 30s, 100s a week. You do want it to be this adventure for them to flip the page and want to know what’s happening next. This was definitely throughout all of these iterations.

I was like, “Do I care about being exactly what a book told me to do?” Or “Am I going to put what I think in this and so people know the point of view that I’m going for?” I don’t think every page is worth that, you scatter them throughout.

I also will say, what you were saying is accurate, knowing what you’re writing, because my pilots are almost all very dark thriller mysteries and that is a very different tone. When I was sending out to managers after Black List, everyone is, she’s not wrecked, come, I want to see your stuff.

I appreciated the managers who were like, I…Because I would send better luck next time and I would send a pilot and be like, “Hey, I’m doing two different things. I know some people are adamant about staying in your own lane, but that’s not me, so if you can’t do that for me, this isn’t it.”

A lot of managers responded and they were like, “I love that you can melt into a different voice because that means you can get picked up on a show.” A showrunner will know that you can match their tone and their voice. Knowing to what you said, the genre you’re in and the world you’re in, and what can be given away in comedy, is a little more.

It’s very structured and you could stay the same difference in all of that, but in those little lines, I was like, “This is worth it to me. This is making me laugh, it’s making my friend laugh, it’s staying.”

Scott: That scene where Annie and BJ go at it, they light into each other. Of course, it’s on the heels of a disaster in terms of…I won’t get into the specifics of it.

What was that like writing that? Did you always know that there was that moment?

Kristen: Yeah. It was always there. It was one. At one point it was way longer and at one point it was way shorter, and it’s always been there because when you have friends like that and you’re going in opposite directions, it’s scary.

At least for me, my scared reaction, which I should work on with a therapist is like, I get angry. When someone scares me or jumps from behind, my thing is anger, that’s how I respond. Both of them are in this fight or flight response and it’s the last straw on the camel’s back.

This is the all‑out thing that I’ve been festering on this for months, year, it’s time to say everything I was thinking about you and what else is there to say. It was so fun to write. It was very cathartic because I was like, you’re with these characters for a while, and I’m like, “This is what you want to say to this person.” [laughs]

Scott: It’s great because it’s like, they finally say the truth. Stuff that’s been festering there and it is cathartic and it’s timed perfectly because right after they get done, boom, there’s Dennis and it’s like, “Okay, now we’re into the Final Struggle.”

Scott: What has happened subsequent to the Black List. You’ve been sending it out to managers, agents, and whatnot. What’s been going on that front?

Kristen: It’s been fun. Basically what had happened was I obviously didn’t have anyone. There was no contact information for me on the list. Franklin’s [Leonard] good about, if people were asked, I was still a new writer. I was very scared because there ended up being a Google drive of all the scripts.

I was scared to have mine on there because I was scared of the Reddit people and the screenwriting Twitter. This isn’t a normal Black List script. This is a very silly out there bonkers like‑girl comedy.

The Black List leans a lot of the biopics and the cool concepts and this wasn’t breaking any mold. I was like, “Oh, I don’t want people to shade me.” It wasn’t out in a lot of places. I had people just DM, a lot of Instagram DMs, a lot of Twitter messages. I was like, “Oh, OK. I’ll send it to you people. You’re telling me which company you work at or why you want to read it.”

Then from there, it was just the emails of different production companies and different studios and like, “You’re the one of the only repped people on the list. I want to meet with you before break.” That was really fun.

Over break, a lot of people were reading all the material from the Black List. When I got back, it was the meetings to managers and agents. That was a lot of time. I’m really lucky that the producers I work for, they are really big partners with the management company called Grandview Management.

I have a mentor. His name’s Josh. He’s a partner. He reps only really bigwigs, so that would not be my guy to go with. He’s really great about giving me advice and who I should meet with and who I should talk to.

I got all these meetings, and I was like, “Are these all the ones I should go on?” He was “You always take a meeting. You always take a meeting.”

Scott: Always.

Kristen: “You’re going to learn something from someone, and it’s worth it.” He’s like “You never know. Someone with no social media presence and nothing else is going to be your best friend or know someone that wants to make your film. Don’t dismiss anyone.”

I went to all these meetings, and I signed with managers. Agents, to me, are a little bit more on the business side. Go them, they really know it. I definitely wanted someone ensuring that my career path that I envision for myself is the route that they’re taking with meetings and everything like that.

Since then, there’s a lot more meetings. There’s a lot of meetings, general meetings where people check your vibe. They’re like, “Do I want to work with you? Do I like this person?”

I don’t know his last name, Barrington? I can’t remember. He was in an article, quoted, where it was the water bottle meeting. It’s like, “They tell you how much they loved your script, but not enough to make it. They do love you, and they might have an open writing assignment,” which is something I’m excited about.

Another company was like, “We do a lot of script. We get the rights to a lot of books. If you want to write the script version, we can figure that out.” I’m a big reader, so that excites me a lot. It’s very fun, very new.

Scott: General meetings. They’ll say, “I like your script.” Then the next question is, “What else you got?”

Kristen: Always. Oh, my Gosh.

Scott: Who did you sign with, what management company?

Kristen: Artists First. It’s Maggie Haskins and Haley Jones. I really loved them from the get‑go. They were emailing, following up, and they were like, “Hey, just wanted to check on how you’re doing.”

I was like, “If you’re chasing me this hard after a meeting that we had, I feel like that’s the kind of attitude you go in with for everything else,” so I am very happy.

Scott: It’s great you get two women, right?

Kristen: Yes, and Maggie’s from Chicago.

Scott: There you go. Beautiful. Well, congratulations.

Kristen: Thank you.

Scott: Okay, so we have to talk about this. You’re on TikTok. Talk to me a bit about because you do some screenwriting stuff and talk about the business and whatnot, right?

Kristen: I do. I actually think TikTok helped me so much. I think you said it earlier, where it’s a confidence to say that you’re a writer or the confidence to go out there and ask people to read your work. I actually think TikTok helped me be more comfortable in myself and saying that about myself.

This probably goes back to Chicago. I love Chicago so much, and there’s so many talented artists. I think they miss out on the business side. They don’t get to experience it or learn it. It’s such a niche thing, like, “What is rolling calls?”

It sounds so dumb, but it does matter that you get this person’s coffee right because they are really busy. When you’re that busy, you’re going to know what it’s like. All these weird things that you learn in an office that’s like, “How in God’s name can you do that?” I think those are all so important.

I was like, “I don’t think anyone in Chicago knows how intricate the film business is.” The art side is cool. I love it, but it’s a business. There’s so many rules and games to play. How can you play the game until you get to make the rules?

I just wanted to make it and start talking about what I had done and what I know my friends have done. I think demystify it, but also I remind everyone that you don’t need to be like Gary Oldman’s daughter, and you don’t need to have a million dollars to do this.

I have a ton of benefits that I would say, but a lot of people are proving that you can do it. Kyra Jones went to Northwestern, and she’s from Chicago, and she was on Coverfly and did Wonder Pitch Week, and then it was a writer in the Doper? I think Dope.

Yeah, but it’s just like that. It’s like all these different ways to do it, and I think some people get really paralyzed with how. I’m just trying to tell them how a little bit.

Scott: That’s great. Let’s ask a few craft questions. It’s a natural segue from what you’re talking about in terms of TikTok. How do you come up with story ideas?

Kristen: I’m really fortunate. Things inspire me in the most basic kernel of things. If I’m ever stuck, I will make a list of 40 random ideas I’ve been thinking about.

I have a note in my phone that’s just brainstorm list. It’s like whenever I see something that sparks my interest. I saw a video about Pat Tillman, and I was like, “Wow, that’s a really interesting story.” I wonder if someone’s done it. He goes on the list. I don’t do any more research than that. It’s just like, that’s his list.

Then I’ve been really obsessed lately with the YouTube parents and all these kids starting to speak out about. They didn’t sign up for this life. They’re on camera and they’re everywhere. I’m like, “That’s really interesting to me. That goes on the list.”

I read a book about “The Rise of the Alt‑Right.” There was one little sentence about this small town in Virginia, and I like that. That’s like a whole script I have now. It’s just from all over the place. I really just try to keep my brain open. It’s a skill. It’s like a practice skill.

Before, I couldn’t come up with any idea. Now, I have too many of them.

Scott: Yeah, Stephen King’s got that idea. The ideas are like fish floating over here overhead. You just pick your net, but you got to have the net. You got to have that awareness.

Do you test them out? I would imagine you do. Do you think commercial viability? Do you think how much of it is? How much is it…? I’m personally passionate about it. What’s the combination there in terms of how you’re testing?

Kristen: I guess I’m also fortunate in that I’m a pretty quick writer, so I can balance my…Here’s my really commercial idea, and here’s my really weird indeed, that I don’t know who would ever make this, but I really want to write it.

I try to go back and forth on those, and I do really think about the zeitgeist and just what feels very in and what…I don’t, though. I avoid when people are like, “Oh, you know, ‘Game of Thrones’ is ending, what’s the next Game of Thrones?”

I’m like, “Someone’s already made that, that one is gone.” What’s next after that? I do a lot of, “What if this movie and this movie were made?” Or, “What if there was a dark twist on ’50 First Dates’?” I take things like that, like “Unhitched.” What’s the opposite of that? Things that I’ve liked that I’m like, “That could be done very differently.”

Scott: Yeah, it’s all been done before. It’s just like…

Kristen: Oh, yes.

Scott: That’s how Hollywood operates. Similar, but different. It’s more similar really than it is nowadays than different because everybody’s afraid to do anything, right?

Kristen: “Everything Everywhere All at Once” is a nice, glimmer reminder of hope in the wildness of people’s brains.

Scott: Hopefully, it’ll blow out the multiverse for the next 10 or 15 years because they’ve pretty much just did it all.

Kristen: They rocked it. It’s already done. It’s perfect.

Scott: How about this: You get the idea. Now, you got to get to an outline. How do you do that?

Kristen: I try and write out, stream of conscious write out what I think is going on in my head where “This person ends up here, then they end up here, and then this is what happens.” From there, I usually do grab my Google act one, act two, act three, “Re‑explain this to me again, Google.”

I lay those out on the sheet, and I’m like, “This has to happen here, so that at the end of act one, this can happen and go wrong, and then this can happen.” Then I do a lot of character work. I do a lot of character outlining, and like, “Who are these people? What do they like?”

I think at the beginning, I spent a lot more time on…There’s all these character beat sheets, where you could ask your character a million questions. Whenever I’m stuck, I go back to one of those, and I’m like, “What would you answer this question?”

That allows me to think of different scenarios that I would place them in to get to, from A to Z. Outlining is my favorite. It’s the best part of writing.

Scott: Really?

Kristen: I love it. I love it.

Scott: It’s a hard work, right? You said that, in this script, you had multiple characters, and you can press to combine and cut. Is that a process that you continue to do? Like, “I’m just going to write a first draft and just see where it goes, even though I’ve outlined it.” Then maybe start tightening it, is that how that works?

Kristen: Yeah, I just write whatever’s coming, and even my most recent one, I wrote it, and I was like, “I think there’s too many characters.” I was like, “Whatever, I’m just sending it out to my writers group, they’ll break the news to me, and confirm what I’m already worried about.” They did confirm what I was worried about.

I just think the throw‑up draft is my friend now. I’m just like, “I got it out.” It can be fixed. It exists on a page and the idea is good. I’m a fan of editing as well, like, “Cut this, move it here, move it here, what can this person do? Push these two together.” Editing is also…I like which I’m fortunate about.

Scott: How big is your writer’s group?

Kristen: It’s only three people. It’s small, it used to be four, and then it was five, and then those people who were working on shows and they were like, “I got to dip out, I can’t…I don’t have…” which is also the bummer thing where they’re so busy on someone else’s show that they don’t have time for their own stuff. It’s three people right now. It’s a tiny one.

Scott: Do you meet in‑person, Zoom, or how’s that work?

Kristen: It switches off, last week, we met in person, I think at a bar, and then tonight, I think we’re Zoom. It’s Monday nights. Tonight, I think we’re zooming. Then, whenever I’m in Chicago, we Zoom. It goes back and forth.

Scott: One last question for you. What advice would you have to someone who’s learning the craft and wanting to be a TV or film writer?

Kristen: I would say make friends with everyone around you. Really make your friends with the people around you, with your peers. You’re going to grow with those people. That’s what I’ve learned at least being on the industry side of that. The friends that were assistants are now coordinators, and some of the people are execs, and some of the people are heads of development at different places.

That’s really why it makes so much of a difference. You know those people, you trust those people, you like those people, and you want to work with who you like. Patience. I think someone says in LA, “It’s like a seven‑year overnight success,” is the name of the game. Plan on 7 to 10 years of things not working out and then one day they might, and they will.

Scott: I think you answered them by saying “And watch me on TikTok.”

Kristen: That would be. I’m not great on the plug yet, but that would be a way to do it.

For my interviews with dozens of other Black List writers, go here.