Interview (Part 5): Elizabeth Chomko (2015 Nicholl Winner)

Elizabeth Chomko wrote the original screenplay “What They Had” which won a 2015 Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting. Recently I had the opportunity to chat with Elizabeth about her background as a writer and her award-winning screenplay.

Today in Part 5, Elizabeth describes what it was like to win a Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting and reflects on some key aspects of the craft:

Scott: You mention the word “amazing.” I’m pretty sure that’s an adjective you would use to describe to your experience winning the Nicholl, and meeting all your fellow screenwriters.

Elizabeth: Amazing is an understatement. I don’t know if there are words.

It’s such a profound honor. Not just that phone call of “You won a Nicholl,” but the whole community, their outreach; it’s Greg and Joan and all of the people who make the decision, how warmly they embrace you; it’s your fellow Nicholl fellows of that year, then your fellow fellows from the beginning of the time for the Nicholl. There are no words appropriate to describe that tremendous gift or how intensely emotional that kind of affirmation is.

Scott: Are you hoping to direct, “What They Had?”

Elizabeth: Yes.

Scott: What’s the status now?

Elizabeth: We’re in pre-production. We’re casting. We’re hoping to shoot. You know how it is. Everything can push, it can take ten years, it can fall apart. I have an incredible producing team and we’re hoping to make a movie. Sooner than later.

Scott: Are you going to have a role for yourself as an actor or just direct?

Elizabeth: No. I need all my focus to be on the picture, the people, the places, all of that. I’m just wearing the writer and director hats. That’s plenty.

Scott: Again, congratulations and good luck on the movie. I’d like to ask some craft questions of you if you don’t mind. You were mentioning this thing before about story ideas, this 10 ideas a day. Could you go into that a little? I always like to ask writers, “Where do you come up with your story ideas?” How do you do that?

Elizabeth: Oh, that’s a new thing I just started doing in the last few months. I’m a big Quora fan. One of the regular contributors shared this exercise called 10 Ideas A Day. He’s not a writer, he’s an entrepreneur, and he either came up with this exercise or read it somewhere.

It’s just writing down 10 ideas a day. 10 ideas about anything, like what Airbnb can do to up their sales or things your mother could do to solve some problem at work, whatever, just 10 ideas a day. It works the muscle of idea generation and creativity. I try to do it daily. I think it’s probably helping my writing, thinking about what a character could do in this situation or that.

I don’t know if this is true for all writers, but my process is a work in progress. Each story is like a child — they all have their own ways of coming into being and are shaped by the world around them. But I will say that it has historically been impossible for me to know what the story is before I have characters talking to each other.

Maybe that comes from playwriting. I love playwriting because you stick two interesting people in a room and give them a problem, and you’ve got a play. You get to sit there and let them talk to each other, it’s a blast.

Writing movies is like surgery. Every moment needs to be crafted; threads need to be implanted early and woven through out, it needs to be tight and lean and agile and full of diverse authentic bits. It’s tough to hide like you can with a play — the film audience is inches away, sniffing for lies. There are restrictions and yet anything is possible. There’s so much opportunity in the cinematic art form. You can storytell with a camera move, or the way the light is, or juxtaposing two simple images.

In terms of story creation… I get haunted by stuff. I’ll see or hear something and it’ll give me goosebumps. It bats around in my mind for a long time. I always try to write that stuff down now, because it kills me how many things I’ve thought “this is so genius I will never forget it” and then five minutes later it’s vaporized.

Scott: It sounds like your process, it’s important for you early on to get into those characters, engage your characters, and get them talking.

Elizabeth: For sure, yes.

Scott: If you ever do delve into my blog a bit, you’ll notice this is my thing. There are so many formulaic approaches to screenwriting out there. How do you go about doing that? Are there any tricks, or tips, or techniques that you go about getting your characters engaged and talking to you?

Elizabeth: I’ll write short stories about them. Or a monologue, about anything, shoelaces or breakfast or even “I was born in…” — just getting them talking, developing their voice. It’s almost always voice before image. I’ll ask myself questions about the character. What do they wear to work? What would they die for? What are they most afraid of?

Then I’ll just start writing. I’ll open up Final Draft and go, “What’s the first thing I wanna see?” And then I put the character in and just write whatever comes next. A lot of times, I’ll write the first 30 pages six times before I keep going.

And the characters develop as I write. I’ll need some conflict for my protagonist and a great character will come from that. Or I’ll take a nugget from someone from my past, the ponytail swing of this girl I worked with in a restaurant ten years ago, or the car my first boyfriend drove, and stick that into a character.

And sometimes, when I’m very lucky, characters come straight from that channel. They come from that power greater than yourself, and you go, “I don’t know where the hell you came from but welcome and thank you.”

Scott: What about this idea of theme? It seems like it’s an important subject, but there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of unanimity about what it actually is. I tend to think of it as the emotional meaning of the story. Are you one of those people that starts off with a theme up front, or do you discover your themes along the way?

Elizabeth: I think of theme as what the story is about in one word. I think one of the Sydneys, Lumet or Pollack, described it that way. But I have never set out to write something about loyalty or whatever. With What They Had, themes are something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, but it’s as a director. It’s not something I considered as a writer. I start with who the people are and what the hell their problem is, give them something to deal with and go from there.

Scott: It emerges organically.

Elizabeth: I think so, yes. It’s also dependent upon each story — again, they all have their own way of becoming. I could see being inspired by a theme and going from there, it could be fun. I don’t think anything could surprise me in terms of source of inspiration.

Scott: What about when you’re writing a scene? Do you have specific goals in mind or is it an instinctual thing?

Elizabeth: I would say that it’s instinctual, but I also think every scene has to deliver something. It’s got to deliver some character information, or some story information, and ideally both.

I also try to think about each scene leaving something unresolved that the next scene picks up, and leaving something unresolved that the next scene picks up, and so on. Then, hopefully, with the last scene you have a resolution that is satisfying.

I sit down and write, trying to relax, trying to align myself with that greater power, to relish it, and I always try to stop in a place where I have something I’m looking forward to coming back to. I read that somewhere, some piece of passed down writer wisdom. The next day I’ll reread all that I’ve written so far, tweak, cut, add things, change things, and write a bit more new stuff. And do that the next day. So that by the time I hit the third act, I’ve read the first 60 or 70 pages fifteen times and feel pretty solid about them. I know the rhythm of it and where I am emotionally, I can feel what needs to come next.

Tomorrow in Part 6, Elizabeth provides some advice to aspiring writers

For Part 1 of the interview, go here.

Part 2, here.

Part 3, here.

Part 4, here.

Elizabeth is repped by ICM Partners and MXN Entertainment.

Twitter: @elizabethchomko.