Interview: Neil Drumming — Part 5

Neil Drumming is a filmmaker, screenwriter, and journalist. He is a former staff writer and editor at Entertainment Weekly, and his work has appeared in Wired, The Washington Post, Vibe, Rolling Stone, Essence, and Vanity Fair. He wrote and directed his first film Big Words, which the New York Times describes as “weaving race, class, sexual orientation and politics — as well as the evolution of rap music — into a wistful tapestry of male disaffection.”

Recently I had the opportunity to interview Neil. In Part 5, Neil talks about some key aspects of the screenwriting craft.

Scott: How about some craft questions here?

Neil: Sure.

Scott: How do you come up with story ideas?

Neil: A lot of it is based on people. Someone like John in Big Words is very similar to a person like my brother or my roommate from college. I am interested in that person, and the essence of that person or some idea about that person. Then I structure a circumstance that I want to see them in. A lot of times it’s that. Then there’s the other things. Like the whole homosexuality and hip‑hop idea. Usually, it starts with a character and where I want to see them at. What environment would bring most out of that character’s experience and would illustrate the most universal themes.

Scott: I read a quote from you where you said, “For me, I usually start with characters, someone who really just stands out in my mind, and then build the story around them.” How do you go about developing your characters? Are there some tools or tips that you find yourself regularly using when you’re digging into characters?

Neil: I have a tendency to write characters that are flawed in a way that I know or I feel familiar with. I like characters who have a journey to make even if it’s not a vast journey. Usually that encompasses them having something dark about them, some problem. Then the movie, the story is getting them to wherever that journey ends. I don’t like to use the word revelation because that implies something big and, for me, it’s usually never anything big. It’s just something little. They learn something about themselves or they open up a little bit.

I like closed off people. I don’t know why, I just do. I like people who live in deception who are not entirely true to themselves. I think most people are not very true to themselves, they don’t know exactly who they are. That struggle is one of the motivations for me as a writer. Just getting that person through that journey is usually the way I structure the story.

Scott: How much time do you spend doing prep writing, brainstorming, character development, plotting, research, outlining?

Neil: A lot. Way too much. I pick a place, usually a bar, sometimes it’s a coffee shop. I hang out there a lot, and then I write the draft there. I usually write a draft in a place that feels familiar. In that place, I try to absorb from people, personalities, conversations. It also just becomes a comfortable place to write. The barista or the bartender gets to know you. There are parts of Annie [in Big Words] that relate very specifically to a bartender who worked at a bar in Brooklyn and it just grafted onto the character.

Scott: Will you literally choose one location for one story, or are you bouncing around between different bars or coffee shops?

Neil: I try to be in one place for, at least, one draft for the most part. I don’t want to be trying to think about where I should be. I just want a place where I can get out of the house, go there with the laptop. People know I’m there, leave me alone and I write. I don’t write well in a vacuum. I don’t write particularly well in my house. Although I will say the script I just wrote, I wrote at home because I was very much into listening to soundtracks. I needed that environment. I needed to turn up the soundtracks, really loud That’s the first time I ever picked my house as the place for keeping a focus on it, and I don’t know if I’ll ever do that again.

It’s like I try to get into a place where it feels familiar. I don’t really know why it works that way. It might be because I feel like writing is particularly insular and it makes me lonely, so if I can take that process outside of my home, it helps a little bit. I don’t know if I can actually say I enjoy the process that much. I enjoy the results, but writing is painful. At least being surrounded by people who are enjoying themselves sometimes helps.

Scott: What about dialogue? How do you go about finding your character’s voices?

Neil: Big Words is like dying to jump out of me because I know people who talk like that. Sometimes, I talk like that. I’d never seen anybody do it the way I wanted to do it on screen. There’s a very East Coast way of talking. Like if you’re a youngish black man, a hip hop fan, it was a style, a sound that nobody had done yet. I knew it was real and I wanted to do it. A lot of it is John. James is slightly different, but John and Malik, they definitely talk that way. I’ve always wanted to try and put that on the screen in a way that felt real to me. Because Dorian [Missick] just ate it up because he’s from that…He knows that sound. He talks that way anyway so when he read the script, he was like, “I can do this.” He’s incredibly talented.

Scott: How about this idea of theme? How important is it to you? Is it something you start with or something that evolves as you’re writing a story?

Neil: Like I said, it definitely starts with character and then theme becomes a very big part of it. Like Big Words is definitely that loss, regret thing, which it really comes with the character. It’s hard to separate them, but if not immediately, very soon after. With what I’m writing, right now, themes are like faith. Faith is a big part of it. Honestly, in that one, the character and the theme work simultaneous. I grew up very religious, and I’m almost 40. I turn 40 next year and for a long time people had pressured me to write about my relationship to religion, which is very boring, and my relationship to faith. I had not been able to find a way to do it so I’d always wanted to do it. I felt like it would be somehow a release in terms of writing about it.

I had a character and an idea about technology that I wanted to write about. Then I realized, “OK, this is the perfect way to address this theme of faith,” and so they merged.

Tomorrow in Part 6, Neil offers words of advice to aspiring screenwriters and filmmakers.

For Part 1, go here.

Part 2, go here.

Part 3, go here.

Part 4, go here.

You can follow Neil on Twitter: @neildrumming.