Go Into The Story Interview: Sam Boyer

My interview with 2023 Black List writer for his script Foragers.

In 2022, Sam Boyer received a Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting for his original screenplay “Ojek”. In 2023, his script “Foragers” made the annual Black List. Quite an accomplishment in back to back years. Recently, I had the opportunity to chat with Sam about his Nicholl experience, writing the script which eventually made the Black List, and writing in the action genre space.

Here is the complete interview with Sam.

Scott Myers: In 2022, you received the Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting, that award for the script “Ojek.” That logline, just as a reminder:

“In Jakarta, a local motorcycle taxi driver struggles to build a better life through a deadly new business that tests his transporting talents and inner humanity think drive in Indonesia.”

I look at that script, which is really great, and I see it as more of a drama with action elements, but with “Foragers,” this script that made the 2023 Black List, that’s a full‑on action movie.

I’m just curious, was this something you had been wanting to do, move more into straight‑ahead genre type thing, or was this like, “This is just a story idea I really like and I’m going to write it”?

Sam Boyer: Man, it’s a great question. I think as part of the Nicholl Fellowship we had the opportunity to speak with some members of the committee. A few of whom were writers that I looked up to and admired, and I was figuring out what to write next after “Ojek.”

I posited this question to some of those working writers and one of them was very upfront and said, “Look, you’d be a fool based on what you’ve written here if you didn’t go and at least try to write another action movie.

“You’ve demonstrated a facility for it, and in this industry, a lot of things can be back solved from action. Action is such a component of so many kinds of film because it’s a moving image that might be a really interesting place to start.”

I toyed around with ideas for a little while and I’d always wanted to write something set in Portland. That’s where my mom lives right now, that’s where my sister lives. I did my last couple years of high school there.

I worked as a photographer for the public school system for a little bit, so I knew the whole city like the back of my hand, so was always an area I’d been interested in exploring. I thought that the rainy woodlands of the Pacific Northwest had its own noirish quality.

I just settled on a story about motherhood. I think ultimately that is what the theme is for me. I’ve had two mother figures in my life. My mom and then my grandmother, and my grandmother passed last year, so I’ve been thinking about her a lot. We were really close.

She basically lived with us and they both had dueling styles because my grandmother’s an immigrant from Indonesia and came over here as an adult, and my mom came here as a young kid, so she’s much more American and modern in her style.

I wanted to do something about two mothers or dueling approaches to motherhood, but set in the context of a genre that I really love, which is the action thriller. I love John Wick. I love a lot of those action‑centric movies and ones with their own inner mythology. I think so many of them are like societies of assassins or killers.

I thought it might just be a would have wish fulfillment for myself of, what if we did a secret organization that does not exist, but it’s about helping people or people who slipped through the cracks?

It was something I think in society we feel at points that we are not being looked out for. It was kind of like an amalgamation of all those things put together, and just a lot of jumping into final draft and trying to see where the story takes me.

I didn’t do as much outlining for this as I usually do for other things, and it’s not best practices. I wouldn’t advise that. I totally had that sinking feeling twenty pages in where you have no idea where you’re going.

Then, the beauty of that Nicholl Fellowship, and I can’t thank them enough is they give you so much. They give you this benefit of time through financial support, and then also pairing you for a mentor.

It really put me in a position to just go full steam ahead into this. I don’t think without the Nicholl Fellowship I would have been able to write this script honestly. That’s the long version.

Scott: “Foragers,” because the Nicholl, they give you I think it’s like 30,000 or 35,000 dollars, then they want you to write another script. Is “Foragers” that?

Sam: Yeah, it was that. Truly, you can’t ask for stronger incentive. You’re paid in installments towards the next script rather than some lump sum for the script that you “won for,” which is a really good. Of course version of me a year and a half ago would have liked the money in a giant check upfront.

I think it’s a great incentive because it really motivates you. I think at one point you have to come up with the idea, then like the first half of it, then a first draft and then an entire revised draft.

You’re supposed to do it in some amount of time and there are deadlines, actually. It was a slightly stressful thing for different members of our group.

Scott: Particularly if you didn’t do as much outlining for this as you usually do.

Sam: Usually, I’m a more intensive outliner. For this one I really was working off of like a rougher outline just because I wasn’t sure what shape certain things would take. That’s not to say I’m like some dude who rolls in without any outline at all.

I always have a general idea of what I want that third act to look like. I don’t know how people do it without that, honestly.

Scott: You had “Ojek,” which did have a lot of action to it. “Foragers” is a full‑on action‑genre film. Have you found that people in meetings perceive you’re an action writer?

Sam: That’s a great question too. I’ve had the pleasure of going to a few different meetings. I genuinely don’t think I am an established enough name in this industry to have me too solely associated with any sort of genre, but if anyone was to pick one, it will most certainly be the action thriller space.

It’s not a comparison that I mind at all. It’s fun to meet about those ideas. I’m not writing something that I don’t already really enjoy. It’s a blast to explore that and I should be so lucky to be pigeonholed in any way.

Scott: That’s actually can be quite beneficial. I tell my students, I say, “Make sure the thing that you’re writing is something in a space you’re passionate about.” It’s the path of least resistance for agents and managers. They send you out, and they say, “Oh, you’re on the Action List.” It just makes it easier for them.

Sam: If we were studio executives, we’d do it the same way, most likely. They have limited time with you beyond these pages and an hour meeting. Of course, they want to make associations quickly. They’re meeting a bunch of people every week. That makes sense.

Scott: Okay, Monday, December 11th, 2023, which is the big Black List rollout day. Were you paying much attention to this?

Sam: I was totally. I think they do a video where they had a very deliberate calligrapher slowly write every name, and it took a while before they got to me. My fiancé and I, and a friend who was staying over with us just spent our morning watching that for 30 minutes until it came up.

My managers had told me there was a possibility that it might happen, just because there had been solid buzz and they were telling their own friends about it, but it was totally not a certainty.

It was something I was absolutely hoping for because I’ve been reading Black List scripts for over 10 years now. It was cool to be in this situation to be on a List with some really wonderful writers. It was so cool.

Scott: Let’s jump into “Forager.” Summary here:

“When the illegitimate daughter of a Portland billionaire goes missing, her loved ones turn to Juno and Andi, local homesteaders and members of The Foragers ‑‑ a grassroots network of experts dedicated to finding the lost and bringing them home.”

You’ve already talked a bit about the inspiration for it. You wanted to do something in Portland. You wanted to do something thematically that was around motherhood. You like the idea of having two female protagonists, co‑protagonists, perhaps inspired by your mother and your grandmother. There’s a kind of a hyper‑reality to this thing.

You set it in 2025 in Portland, but it doesn’t quite seem like Portland’s going to quite get there by 2025. Could you maybe talk a bit about how you’re constructing the city and that environment?

Sam: Yeah, totally. With hyper‑reality, the way I’m interpreting it is there’s a level of greater saturation to everything in there. I think I want whoever’s reading to really viscerally feel what’s going on.

Screenwriters, we have such limited time. I picked a sub‑genre within the action thriller that is slightly noir, where things are a shade and a half darker and a shade and a half stormier. There’s not a location, at least in that original Forager script you read, that does not exist in real life. They’re all real places.

They’re all places I’ve been, or loosely renamed places that I’ve been. I worked from memory. I wasn’t living in Portland at the time when I wrote this. I went back to visit my mom once and went to a few of these places just to make sure they existed or to be totally real.

If you’re somewhere on a sunny summer’s day, it’s not going to feel the same. It’s trying to make the audience feel how I felt when I was a really short and scrawny 15‑year‑old from the East Coast, who had arrived in this place where it felt like it rained every day and things were dreary.

I think that’s behind it. I wanted to make the world feel as visceral as possible and as brief in time as possible. That’s probably what led to that hyper‑reality. It wasn’t punctuated with action‑thriller violence in any way, my time there, but that’s just more of making an entertaining film.

Scott: In the preface before Fade In, you’ve got a quote from Euripides: “Come back. Even as a shadow, even as a dream.” Reading the script, I’m thinking, “Well, that’s got multiple layers of meaning.”

Of course, there’s the obvious one with the Foragers, where they’re trying to find these lost people and bring them back, but then there’s also a meaning in relation to one of the two protagonist characters, Juno, in particular, because of the recurring thing that happens.

Let’s talk about the characters and start with Juno. Why is that quote relevant to her as way to open up her backstory?

Sam: I’ve never put a quote in a script before. I’ve always seen in other scripts these quotes compiled on the first page. I genuinely thought to myself, “Oh, that’s so pretentious. I’m never, ever going to do that. I’d never…What does that have to do with the movie?”

I was finding myself in a strange place with this particular script and story that I did want to set the stage in some sense, which is probably what inspired that. I worked through a lot of quotes from different authors and dramatists before settling on the OG of tragedy, Euripides, there.

I feel like Juno, in the same way that I was coping with a loss last year of my grandmother, I wanted to embed that in her character. The idea that grief is something you, in a lot of cases, just live with for the rest of your life.

How you cope with and how you accept that ghost in the background is something I thought would set this apart from maybe other action thrillers and would keep me interested and invested during the writing of it.

Even the very first draft of this, where things come out totally messy, there are plot points that don’t make sense, I cared really deeply about both of these characters.

I wanted Juno to go on this journey of living with her loss. Accepting might not even necessarily be the right word because tragedies happen to us that are unacceptable, but we learn to bear them in a certain way.

I wanted an action thriller but with that grief at the core. I thought that it would also translate strongly to the A story of it all, which is that it’s about finding lost children and would explain their entire motivation and why someone might get into a vigilante‑esque business like this.

Scott: When you introduce her: “Juno, 40s, like the undertow of the Columbia River ahead of her, quiet, powerful, propelled by an endless energy.”

Parenthetically, you’ve got these natural elements that you associated with their introduction, but she’s lost Lucas. Maybe you can talk a bit about that.

Sam: This is a story about two mothers who’ve lost their son, and for reasons that are only almost hinted at beyond an explosive argument that the two of them have, but they’re on this…have lifelong journey to right this wrong that feels existential.

There’s this question of any kid they save could have been Lucas. They’re making that right for anyone else in the state, but there’s this flip side to it of no child they save will ever be Lucas. That is a loss that is solely unique to them.

They’re grappling with it throughout this, and they’re both processing their pain differently. Juno feels that Andi has completely moved on. Andi feels that Juno is totally fixated on a single aspect of this loss, and is not understanding how it’s affecting her.

I think it’s the way that grief or tragedy can cut people in a bunch of different ways, and they’re all unique to them. That’s what’s going on with loss of Lucas. You can tell I clearly was at a university last fall, the way I’m diving way too deep into this thematically.

Scott: Juno sees these images, sometimes she’ll see people and think they might be Lucas. Clearly, that’s a representation that she has not processed her grief, that it’s still quite present, whereas Andi is trying to move forward, right?

Sam: Yeah, exactly. Though, for her, it manifests in this literal thing that she and the audience can see. Then for Andi, it is truly this unseen thing. There’s a brief moment in the second act where you get a sense of what that might feel like from her perspective.

It’s truly…I’m trying to render aspects of that loss or the ways that she might be haunted in a way that everyone can see.

Scott: You threw in a little detail about Juno’s background, where she was on Team USA 2004, and she was a javelin person. That’s one of those little bits of business I wonder whether, did that come up and you went back and reverse engineered, “Oh, she’s going to be a javelin thrower,” or was that something that was part of her backstory and then you paid it off later on when she does the throw with the rock?

Sam: It’s entirely the latter. I really, in figuring out these characters, wanted someone who represented an athletic archetype versus an academic archetype.

I didn’t necessarily want her to be a team sport athlete, something that could pertain to how you interact with the world. Catching, throwing, something like that could be useful in this profession, from her angle. That’s all there is behind that.

Scott: Let’s talk about Andi. They’re a married couple, Andi and Juno?

Sam: Yeah.

Scott: You introduced her this way: “40s, like the massive ‘widow‑maker’ cones of a Coulter Pine ‑‑ sharp, with a thousand facets, full of life.” How would you describe Andi, and maybe unpack a little bit more her background and her personality in contrast to Juno?

Sam: Andi is the planner of the two. She’s a former elementary school vice principal. The vice principals are the ones who do all the work. She’s used to managing a million things, dealing with very different personalities, and knowing the street, actually, because all these students grow up and they become adults.

She had a chance to remember and interact with all of that. She brings a lot of street‑smart reconnaissance, and then a certain level‑headedness to everything. She’s also dealing with a chronic, neurological illness that has only given her a greater empathy for both other people and then understandings of her own limitations.

She knows her limits in ways that Juno doesn’t, because she hasn’t encountered them physically, maybe, in the same way. Between the two of them, I love doing these natural descriptions, I totally had a ball with it, and it was a chance for the Oregonian me to pay homage the different aspects of the state.

They are, to me, this classical fire and water pairing. Andi is more cool and relaxed, and go with the flow. That sort of I think what the tragedy of their lost son has brought upon them.

Scott: Of course, the Portlandia reference to Fred Armisen.

Sam: Yeah, that was fun. [laughs]

Scott: That was fun. I could see him doing it.

Sam: Any famous Portlander, it doesn’t necessarily have to be Fred Armisen, but I thought a lot of my favorite action films have these little moments punctuated with humor levity. I wanted that at some point in the script.

Scott: Let’s talk about this Forager subculture. You made that up. There are bounty hunters and there are people private detectives and whatnot, but this is like a loose association of people who do this thing. They have a code. The code is eight words, “Only the helpless. Only together. Only in silence.”

Could you talk about how this emerged in your mind and then how this idea of this subculture with this code where that came from?

Sam: I really love subcultures in general. I knew I wanted them to be involved with something along those lines. Like I said earlier, one of my favorite things about the whole John Wick franchise is really this community of assassins that they’ve built up.

It’s got like its own esoteric rules. It’s one of those things that gets your gears turning even after the film ends and imagining what that kind of world looks like.

I wanted to do, I think, a similar sort of a world‑building, it’s a word that’s thrown around a lot. I think that’s what I was looking to do in a way. I wanted to do something that felt, I guess, more purely altruistic rather than maybe like a society of people who kill people for hire or something like that.

I thought finding lost people and lost children could be a really interesting application of that. The purpose of the code is…I think you know this from having read multiple drafts, Scott.

Anytime you try to make up a new world, or a new culture, or a new society, the number of ways for things to get blown out of proportion or confusing and trying to keep things tight and streamlined so an audience can really understand through the very first watch is such a bigger challenge than I possibly could have estimated it being.

It’s really hard to remain concise while introducing people to a new world. The code is one of those tools that helps make it digestible and reference‑able for The Foragers and Juno and Andi to use themselves, so you can understand what motivates them and what guides them.

Scott: That was one area that you did address in rewriting the script, was to try and streamline that, not simple in a bad way, but simple in a way that people could download and get this as quickly as possible.

Sam: Yeah. Everyone I spoke to about this was interested in the mythology, but was either confused, or wanted to know more, or wanted it set up clearer at the beginning. In writing, I try to be as diegetic as possible. I want characters to say what they’d really say. I try to avoid exposition at all costs because it just doesn’t feel fun to me.

I found myself in rewriting this that, at certain points, it’s on you as a screenwriter to make the act of conveying this information upfront fun, even if you think it would be best given at page 70 after this moment and that’s what would really happen, no.

You can try that over and over again, but I think doing things early and clearly is something I’ve definitely learned through this experience.

Scott: There are skip tracers like in Blade Runner or bounty hunters like in The Hateful Eight. There’s that, but then for Andi and Juno, you do have that personal loss of Lucas, where you can see why their motivation would be to get involved in this type of activity.

Sam: Exactly. People enter a profession like that for different reasons. You have limited time in a script, but it’s fun to explore more of them, and not everyone is necessarily motivated by loss.

Scott: As I was reading the script, I thought that in combination, Andi and Juno, they brought to mind the Coen brothers’ take on Rooster Cogburn in True Grit, because they had that homespun ruffian philosophy. They only remain lost when we stop or there’s something. You know what I mean?

Sam: Yeah.

Scott: There was a saying. I can’t remember the exact quote: “They’ve got grit”. They get put through the ringer physically, and then they are committed to doing the right thing, then seeing it through to the end. Does that comparison ring true to you at all, Rooster Cogburn and the Coen’s version of True Grit?

Sam: Totally. I’m a big fan of both True Grits. I might even like the first one more. I love just as a singer too.

He is fun. Yeah, I totally see the comparison there. I want things to feel in a way that’s like hard scrabble. The Coen brothers often, they’re inevitably very stylized in the stuff that they do.

I try to do some of the same stuff. I want things to feel stylized or a little different from the exact reality of this world because I’m taking a huge swing and departing from things that actually happen. Society does not exist. I’ve totally been in meetings with people where they’re like, “Is this a real thing?” It’s absolutely not.

I’m playing in the world of fantasy, in the same way that True Grit what brought a certain level of, not to borrow from the title, but like a really grounded style to the Western that was ultimately half futile and tragic. I tried to, I think, maybe do some of that in the secret society of badasses action‑thriller genre.

Scott: Of course, if you’re dealing with Foragers, who are out trying to find people, you got to have someone who’s lost.

In this case, actually the script starts with this character Maria 19, but described this way, “Defiant and solitary like a sapling growing in the middle of a river.”

She’s set up as a mysterious figure. We have this weird conversation about her and something about her father and a secret there. Then, there’s an intimation that she disappears. Maybe you could talk a bit about Maria and why she’s so central to the story.

Sam: At the end of the day, Juno and Andi need a task, a job that takes them from A to B to C. In a profession like this, it’s going to be a lost child. The question you’re always asked when embarking on any script or any story is “Why now? Why this story? Why this time? Why not a routine job?”

Maria, I felt like lived at this very interesting intersection of being…There’s this question of she’s a child of a billionaire, but at the same time, she’s not necessarily recognized, hasn’t enjoyed any advantages of that and is helpless in her own way too.

I think there’s that conflict that exists within her that I wanted to explore a little bit. The challenge in any of these stories especially when it’s like, “Find a person X,” or, “Get rare thing Y,” I never want the MacGuffin, especially if it’s a human, to not be a real character.

I’ll be totally honest, it’s something that came out of it in future drafts and in more writing. In the first draft, there was substantially less Maria than there ultimately is now.

What really motivated writing that teaser with Maria at the beginning is the importance of understanding who this character or who this person might be, even if it’s just a glimpse before you see her for the first time.

It’s really a challenge to write someone who is supposed to be like a complex kid in a very difficult situation, who also has to, at the very end, be this thing that helps Juno and Andi reconcile their loss and move forward with their life.

It’s a huge burden on this character’s shoulders. It’s something I’m still figuring out and iterating with these polishes and passes, honestly. It’s been a lot of fun. It’s really made me try to improve my writing, honestly.

It’s so easy for a character like that to feel really rote and especially when you have limited real estate. I don’t want her to be a proxy or a MacGuffin, but she does have to do some real heavy lifting in the narrative.

I think it’s this idea of being a kid with the lineage, but none of the advantages and existing in that strange outsider caught between world space, which is what I gravitate towards too, in terms of characters and in my own writing. That really helped.

Scott: Here’s a thought for you as you go forward. If you did look at the story through her eyes, it’s a bit like Dorothy of The Wizard of Oz. She’s just looking for a home. She’s in effect orphaned because her father doesn’t recognize it or it’s not known. I don’t want to give away the data more which I thought was quite effective.

I’m glad you spent more time with her because it absolutely would just been like an edifice, like a device if you hadn’t spent the time that you did with her. Anyhow, it just maybe something to bear in mind.

Sam: I love that.

Scott: Joel Coen said all movies are an attempt to remake the Wizard of Oz. I always think about that, because from her perspective, Andi and Juno are like Tin Man and the Scarecrow.

Sam: Yeah, I agree. The Wizard of Oz is like that seminal American cinema journey. I think it’s a really good comparison. That’s something you put so eloquently I’ve been trying to find in these future drafts and even between the draft you just read and the one I’m probably going to submit this week or the next week or the week after.

There’s been more and more Maria, honestly. There’s totally a lesson to be learned from that that I’m still learning.

Scott: Let’s talk about her father, this billionaire, Bill Squire. He seems like a John Wick type of a character, a Nemesis figure, the way that he introduces himself and has these four guys barreling in on Andi and Juno. You want to talk a bit about how this character unfolded and emerged in your writing process?

Sam: Yeah. I remember getting a beer in Portland at some point at a bar on the East Side, and looking to my left and my right and realizing this bar was half Nike employees who were just off from their job, and thinking that, “Man, if I ever pissed off Phil Knight, he could probably have me killed by the end of the day, and no one would notice or care.”

It’s totally me being a dramatic screenwriter rather than a resident of reality. I wanted some proxy for that, of the way like, it’s not like Los Angeles, which has way too many billionaires, Portland’s a city where there’s a couple, and they have this outsize impact.

I totally made a Squire, in this version, a character who believes that money can solve every problem and that his entire life has been a testament to that fact. You don’t know, necessarily, his origins or how he came up. He might be entirely self‑made, and it’s just, “This is how I solve problems. I work in one direction. What I need is discretion with this particular job.”

This idea that, “Who is the last person you’d expect to be asking for the help of these people?” I think that’s what makes it an interesting “Why now?” situation of they’re used to helping people who truly have no means, and they’re faced with the prospect of why should we even take this particular job? It’s a character who would really challenge Juno and Andi in that sense.

Scott: Could you just generally talk about how you created, or these characters emerged, this set of Foragers and then there’s these other ones that come in from outside the state, but how did that all process work out?

Sam: I think I wanted with “The Society” for characters to have their own sorts of code names, but ones that are really…I’m so drawn to place and that were really rooted in these small towns around America.

The selection from Oregon and then Northern Washington of Yakima, it’s just like a selection of these small towns. I wanted characters that conveyed with the feel or the atmospheres of those places, what that might look like and for each of them to represent a different approach to this particular profession.

Bandon is a total mercenary. Yakima might be a total lone wolf. John Day is this character who supposed to be the best of them all, and it’s like this legendary figure.

Then, Klamath Falls is a second generation in the world of foraging, which I thought would always be an interesting idea. What if your parent was a forager and it was something you wanted to get into as well?

I think they’re all grappling with this strange superhero duty in different ways, but with as hyper‑real as the setting might be, like a practical and human set of tools.

Scott: You said you didn’t do much in the way of outlining or did you work backwards? I know a lot of mystery writers will do that work. I’m just curious what your process was in that whole clue gathering thing.

Sam: The real challenge with a lot of writing for features is getting to act two and still being energized and delivering what this movie is about rather than having to feel like you’re just connecting the dots and trying to get people to what you think is a really cool midpoint or the way everything will tie together in act three.

With this one, at a few locations that I knew would lend themselves to fun sorts of action sequences and events, and I knew how they connected in real life just like the streets and the patterns there. I knew that there were certain characters that they could maybe meet along the way.

From there, I think you do the actual work of writing a scene a few times and writing the characters, be absolutely awful on the page in final draft for a version or two, but then you start to tease out the story.

I think we’ve all been in that situation where we’re in the file and the characters are having a conversation that’s gone on for three pages too long because they’re both trying to figure out why they’re there and what’s going on.

Anything that looks elegant in the script in terms of plotting, and I’m not saying anything does, but is really due to the power of revision and continuing to hone in and make things clearer and lead to one another.

Then those things have to be character moments, too. They to go to a strip club at one point or a gentlemen’s club, and they have to convince this one character to join them in their crusade. That character has to have a change of heart along the way, too, because there needs to be conflict embedded in that.

The plotting of it all is so hard. It’s even harder when you do what I did, which is not outlined enough leading into it, because then you truly have to do the wrong version a couple times or pray you get lucky.

Scott: I want to talk to you about a choice you made that was born of two characters, Juno and Andi, hitting a boiling point where basically, the simmering differences between how they’re dealing with their grief at the midpoint of the story erupts into this argument.

It’s a character‑driven thing, but from a writing standpoint, narrative standpoint, by splitting them up, it’s great because now you got the two storylines you can cross cut back and forth.

The fact that it was driven by the characters, that you didn’t see the hand of the writer there saying, “Oh, I’m just going to split them up because I want to have two stories” Maybe, could you talk a bit about how that emerged, that pivotal moment.

Sam: Thank you. That’s very kind what you said. I’m so glad you didn’t see the hand of that.

I knew that with the internal journey that Juno was going through and the visions that she was suffering from, early on in plotting or imagining what might happen, I thought, “Oh, man, what she needs to see is what happens if she runs into her son or someone who looks just like him, how does she deal with that? What happens when this is manifested in the corporeal form?”

It created this natural midpoint of this division between the two of them, of Juno thinking she’s got everything she wants now and Andi not being convinced. It’s everything that that red herring, in a sense, did in that point, that allowed two characters who were dealing with an event differently to finally clash and argue.

I knew that I wanted to separate them, too, because I think they needed to both go on their separate journeys. When you have a team together, there’s often a point where, “What happens when they’re taken apart?” For them to grow the most on this journey, they both needed to move through it separately.

It’s really the device and the strength of Juno’s grief and then that weird plot point that made all of that relatively efficient and easy to do.

Scott: The choice that Maria would be teamed up with Andi ‑‑ teamed up just from a narrative standpoint ‑‑ versus Juno, maybe you could unpack that a little bit.

Sam: I had a choice of two directions to take it, of one of them actually finds the lost child, and the other one experiences almost the opposite, this total deflating defeat of thinking they found their kid and not getting it.

At that point in the journey, it made Juno the only option for Lucas in that case. Then the benefit of these separate journeys is for Juno, it’s learning to reconcile that loss after feeling it in a really physical, real way. Then under the wing of John Day who’s the mirror of what Juno could become. She became totally hard‑boiled and disillusioned. She could wield her power in a way that could wreak havoc, but it could be all be under her control.

Then, for Maria, Andi’s vulnerability made her the easiest person to open up to over the course of that so we can learn more about Maria in real time. Those two characters just seemed like natural fits of those partners better.

Scott: I want to talk to you about one final aspect of the script that’s quite consistent and interesting. That’s what I call Narrative Voice, basically as exhibited in scene description.

There’s a moment at the very end, this is scene description, you could probably guess how the rest of this goes, but, “Before the crime scene, the yellow tape, and the likely cover‑up, through the skylights, among the broken things, over the lost boys, searching mothers and discovered daughters, dawn breaks like it always does, letting some light in.”

It’s like this wonderful moment here with the reader. In fact, there’s even a point early on where you said, “Note, this isn’t a movie where a man dies every six seconds. When there’s a fight, Juno and Andi are tested. Often hurt. Things move fast. They have to because two middle‑aged women can’t outlast bigger, stronger, younger, opponents. Only outthink and outmaneuver.”

It reminded me of that moment of the script, Logan.

Sam: Yeah.

Scott: Out of it. Right?

Sam: It’s totally inspired by that. If I couldn’t editorialize and have fun, flavorful description, then I would not be doing this. It is totally what I love to do. It’s what I enjoy. At this stage in my life and career, I do write for the reader.

Before these things end up on screen, and exist as almost these technical blueprints and documents, you are writing to connect with and woo a person who might not have any reason to be on your side of the story. I want to make them feel something as I write this, and for them to feel like they are in interesting and capable hands as they experience a story.

There’s this totally fine balance of what is enough voice to keep things fun and interesting, and then what is so much that it actually bothers the reader, or it feels unclear and you’re not actually telling the story anymore and you’re not letting action work, or you’re telling instead of showing.

I, in recent years, have been trying to be more judicious with how I apply it because I have so much fun doing it, and it can be such a blast.

I try to earn those moments, like the end of that climactic scene, where I’m like, “OK, we’ve been through a lot. There’s been a ton of action. I feel the reader, at this point, knows what’s about to come. Why am I not just telling them? Why can’t we just communicate with each other?” We’ve almost earned this dialogue with each other.

Scott: As you were saying, you’re writing for the reader. You’ve got to get people excited about the story for it to have any chance, whatsoever, of getting set up and moving forward. I agree with you 100 percent. It speaks again to the importance of reading professional scripts by professional writers, particularly contemporary writers, just to see how they do that.

Sam: There’s no better education someone visiting the site right now could obtain beyond reading scripts from some of your favorite movies and writers. Especially, like you said, ones from the last 15 years are so hugely beneficial because they are so different from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, which is one of my favorites ever.

Scott: I’ve got just a couple of craft questions. We dealt with a lot of these back when you did the interview with us on the Nicholl. One of them that I think we didn’t quite get into was just, do you have a process of developing characters?

Is there a specific thing that you do, or are there some techniques or writing exercises that you do to get to know them? I’m just curious what your process is, if you even have one.

Sam: That’s a good question. I don’t think I’m truly at the point of…I’m not a Scott Frank. I really don’t have the stuff under my belt to say, “I’ve done this 50 times, and this is the true process for it.”

Given all of that, I try to sit with a character for a little while, at least long enough that there can be other characters in the picture, because so much of character is how they interact with these other components. Who is a natural foil to this character that you create?

The dynamics between characters is really what matters so much in all of this. I guess maybe I can give characters in sets, and I give myself a lot of time to enter some mesmerism‑type state, where I’m thinking about nothing and then naturally something halfway decent might come to me.

Scott: You’ve mentioned you’re rewriting this and have rewritten this draft or this script a number of times. Do you have a process for that or you’re just feeling your way through it?

Sam: Yeah. In the first draft, I do try to feel my way through it and constantly move forward even if I’m unsatisfied with the way a given scene has played out.

Especially, the more experienced and the more confident you get with your writing, there’s this weird temptation, especially like when I was first starting out of like it’s that Ira Glass quote of like, “Your taste is a certain level of your ability to produce.”

Relative to that taste, there’s going to be a gap. It’s like your sanity gap of like, “Yeah, I can objectively look at this and know it’s not what I want it to be.” As my confidence in writing has grown, I’m more and more ready to move forward with it.

The idea that any script is ever finished, it seems to be a very futile one at this point in my life. If you’re very lucky and things are awesome, it gets to get changed again, and that is the business we’ve signed up for. I’m very comfortable now with knowing that we are going to change this again. It’s not right, right now, but if I can incrementally improve it, it’s ideal.

In that first draft, I just try to, basically do one thing, and that is make sure that the characters have what feels like a relatively complete arc through it. I do not have a movie. I’m sorry, I’ve got the little emoji thing. All of the new Macs have that.

I don’t think there’s a movie if there isn’t a true arc for a character in it. As long as I can do that, I feel like, “OK. I’ve got something here. I’m ready to share it with other people.”

To be totally honest, the first script I ever wrote, it didn’t have a full arc for the character. I knew it deep down. I remember finishing it, and knowing whatever the revision for this will be, it will be taking it down to the studs and starting it again. That’s all I try to focus on in the first draft.

Then I have a trusted group of friends and readers who make my work better. I really feel for screenwriters. You’re certainly, that quote, “You’re the average of the five people closest to you.” Basically, the fact that my writing’s any good is a fact that I have really great writers and readers in my life, and we all try to elevate each other’s work.

Scott: One last question for you, what do you love most about writing?

Sam: There are so many kinds of work that you can do. The opportunity to literally make things up and for that to be OK and part of the work that you’re doing in a given day is insane privilege and gift.

When things are going well and you’re in a position to be financially rewarded for that in any capacity, there’s almost nothing you can do to be worthy of such a ridiculous privilege. I, like everyone, have had points where I’m not having fun writing.

You’re connecting the dots in act two, or you got to start from scratch on something and it makes you mad at the world, but I genuinely do this because I legit love the blank page. I like sitting in front of a screen and making stuff up. It really does bring me joy.

If it ever stops doing that, I’ll probably do something else. There are so many other hard things involved with this profession. I feel that you probably feel the same way of the joy of creating something, whether it’s good or not, just the act of doing it, the way you feel fulfilled or you’ve expressed yourself is such a wonderful thing.

I think it’s what gravitates so many people to the idea of screenwriting, the idea to take what’s in your head, or even not quite in your head, and manifest it onto just even a page.

Sam is repped by Rain Media Partners.

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