Interview: Nikole Beckwith (2012 Nicholl Winner, 2012 Black List) — Part 5

Nikole Beckwith’s original screenplay, the gripping drama “Stockholm, Pennsylvania” won a 2012 Nicholl Fellowship and a spot on the 2012 Black List.

Nikole was kind enough to agree to an interview and we had a probing conversation about her background, her award-winning screenplay, and her unique insight into the craft of screenwriting given her background as an actor, musician and playwright.

Today in Part 5, Nikole shares some insights into her approach to the writing craft:

Scott: The people who read the blog love to hear from more experienced writers how they approach the process. Particularly given the fact that you have a background as playwright, I think you probably have some really interesting thoughts. So if we could begin some questions related to the craft with this one: How do you come up with story ideas?

Nikole: Oh geeze, I don’t know. I really think that ultimately any story idea I ever come up with comes directly from an emotional experience. It just like manifests itself in different ways. I think that’s true of writers. I try not to worry about thinking of interesting story ideas. I hold onto the things that affect me and churn them over and over and over. At some point they reveal themselves as “Stockholm Pennsylvania” or whatever is next. I have a play about teenagers digging their way out of their hometown, or coworkers trapped in the artic debating on whether they will eat their friend who froze to death…regardless of the actual story it all comes from somewhere inside of you, so your perspective and your story will reveal itself…you have it. Your stories are already in you. You don’t have to press yourself for them to appear. They will appear if you just let them, I think.

Scott: It’s interesting hearing those three things you just rattled off there, when you talk about the importance of emotion, but all three of those ideas, the characters are right up front and center. Would you say that you think more in terms of character versus, say, concept?

Nikole: Yeah, I guess so. The best, most amazing concept doesn’t mean anything if you don’t have characters that people want to spend time with. Circumstances and concepts are only interesting to me based on what the characters are doing within them.

Scott: How much time do you spend at prep writing, brainstorming, character development, and that sort of thing?

Nikole: That’s kind of vague. I’ll take little notes here and there but I’ve never written an outline or anything like that. I envision my mind as the rock tumbler. I throw these little rocks in and these ideas and I tumble them around and every once in awhile, one of them will get shiny enough for me to take out and really look at. When it’s ready to really look at, that’s when I start writing and I write in sequence from beginning to end. I don’t write out of order. If I’m stuck on a scene, I don’t move on to the next scene. I wait until that scene reveals itself. I will stare at the blank computer screen for three whole days and not write a single line. I get very stubborn and I like to write sequentially.

Scott: That’s interesting. I worked one time with a veteran TV writer Roy Huggins. He wrote the pilot episode of “Rockford Files” and “The Fugitive,” and he had the exact same process. He would write it scene‑by‑scene and he wouldn’t go forward until he figured out the next scene.

Nikole: I’m always hesitant to be like, “This is my ultimate process” or “this is how I do things” because I think that might change. It might not, but I’m still learning myself in that way, which I think is great because it gives me room. But currently I have two modes in which I work, One is doing the time. I will sit at my desk and if nothing comes out I still sit in front of that computer screen from nine to five even, if I am staring at a blank screen the entire time. I don’t give up on it. I set up work hours for myself and stick to them. The other mode is thinking time. That’s important time too. It’s important to get out and see people and overhear conversations and go to a museum and read a book and things like that. That’s equally as important. It’s great to read books and go to museums and eat cupcakes all the time, which is wonderful, and sit at dog parks. But it’s also important to temper that with an even more committed share regiment.

Scott: I like that articulation. Share time and thinking time, that’s great. How do you go about developing characters? Are there specific tools or techniques, monologues, biographies, that sort of thing, that you go in developing characters?

Nikole: I’m not sure. For Leia in Stockholm, very, very early, maybe three pages into the play when I was very first learning her, it occurred to me that she’d never seen a dog before. I put on a post‑it note, “She’s never seen a dog before,” and I posted it on my computer. That, to me, informed a lot about the kind of life that she had lived and how removed from the world that I inhabit she was. There was never a scene in the play about a dog at all. It wasn’t about that. It was just something about her that was important to me. Of course, in writing the film I was able to write a scene where she sees a dog for the first time which is great and wonderful to have that opportunity and to get to explore that, especially since I thought about it so much.

I feel like when I’m writing a character it’s not all that different from meeting an actual person, you learn them as you go. If I think I will learn more about a particular character if I get them talking, I’ll head for a monologue, if I think I’d learn more watching them in an empty room, I’ll do that.

Scott: It’s like when dealing with characters, it sounds like you’re of the mindset where they exist in their own story universe and your task is in some ways to immerse yourself in that universe and engage them somehow.

Nikole: Yeah, I like to think of it that way. I think that for me writing is definitely I get to live in a different world. As much as I might be the creator of that world, I definitely often feel like a guest in it, so I like to step in there and see what I see. I think that every human being starts out with a really intense pretend muscle, a really intense imagination muscle, as evidenced by every child ever. Writers are just people that have really hung onto that somehow. For instance, I still have my childhood stuffed animal. I have a lot of respect for him. He’s older and wiser than me. He gave me advice when I was a child. I’m invested in the world where Snowball talked me off a few ledges while I was in the single digits. Imagination-muscle memory.

Tomorrow in Part 6, Nikole provides more observations about her approach to the craft of screenwriting.

For Part 1, go here.

For Part 2, go here.

For Part 3, go here.

For Part 4, go here.

Please stop by comments to thank Nikole and ask any questions you may have.

Nikole is repped by ICM Partners and Manage-Ment.

Twitter: @nikolebeckwith.