Go Into The Story Interview: Vigil Chime

My conversation with the writer who won the 2017 Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting.

Vigil Chime wrote the original screenplay “Bring Back Girl” which won a 2017 Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting. I had the opportunity to chat with Vigil about her background, her award-winning script, the craft of screenwriting, and what winning the Nicholl has meant to her.

Scott Myers: You were born in Nigeria, relocated to the United States, Houston, Texas when you were 10. What was that experience like?

Vigil Chime: Coming from Nigeria, I have to say, I was so shocked. I was just in such culture shock. In fact, I don’t think I recovered until I left for college. It was just so stunning, the American landscape.

One of the things I remember in trying to share the experience with people is the straight line. I found everything was in a line. There was such order everywhere to what my 10‑year‑old eyes were looking at. The streets were ordered. There were things called lawns, grass. You will come to a light, and then if it’s red you stop, if it’s green you go.

It was just stunning for having come from a place where this would be the opposite. [laughs] There’s nothing in a straight line as far as the Nigerian landscape of when I was a kid is concerned, and there’s just chaos everywhere. I hope Nigerians do not take offense in what I’m saying.

As a 10‑year‑old child, I just found the entire American landscape was just so stunningly ordered. I just froze. I think it froze me spiritually. When you come into a country, your eyes are taking so many things in. That was the first things my eyes took in. That was one.

Secondly, the second shock was school. We were immediately enrolled at the elementary school that was closest to us. I just found that the children were horrifically mean because we were from Africa.

I learned that the word Africa was almost like an insult. If you call somebody an African it was an insult, just because of the negative impressions Americans maybe at that time had of Africa as a whole. For the fact that myself and my siblings were Africans, we just had a very, very rough time in school. That didn’t help.

What I’m saying to you is that that experience in particular, elementary school and the meanness of the children, was what really got me going as a writer. In trying to escape this place where there was no love, all I did was just started reading. Reading became my escape. I would just go to school, deal with it as best I could, and then come home.

I didn’t go outside because the children in the neighborhood basically were the children who were also in school. It was extremely tough for me and being a female, being a child, very tender, innocent. It just felt like the neighborhood was against my siblings and I, so it just made me escape into books.

This was the beginning of my evolution, I think, as a storyteller. I read so much. Everything I put my hands on was a book. Every bit of allowance I received from my mom I threw back into books. My favorite place to go was the local library where I just went from A to Z as far as books. I would just start from A and I would just read to Z. I just did that.

I focused on my work. When I say my work I mean my schoolwork. I was very good at school just because I had focused on it. It was the one thing I thought I owned. If I could get my As and my 100s that gave me a little room to be somebody at school. And so was reading the books, really, really just disappearing into stories. I think the segue became that eventually it made sense to me that I myself would write stories.

Scott: You went to University of Houston as an undergraduate and studied literature.

Vigil: Yeah. I studied a whole bunch of stuff. My father is an architect, so the first thing I thought I would do would be an architecture. No, no, no that was the second thing. The first thing I really wanted to do was to be an astronaut. I was such a Trekkie. I watched Star Trek when I was a child and I gravitated towards being a Trekkie because I felt humans were just so wicked. I looked forward to sci‑fi and anything outside of earth was just what I loved to read, and so I thought when I grew up I would be an astronaut.

That I would someday be captain of my own ship, but when I got to college my first class was physics. As an astronaut to be, you had to take a lot of physics classes and I was just horrible in physics. I could not understand what the physics teacher was talking about, just did not get physics at all.

I dropped out of that department that semester. I said, “No, I’m kidding myself.” That was when I went to the architecture department. It was fine. It was creative. It was really OK.

The only problem was we spent so much money buying the material we needed to complete our projects and I had no money. I didn’t know how to get it, so this was the reason I left the Architecture Department, because I could not afford to always complete these projects that we would have to do.

That was now I floated to the English Department. It’s cheap in the sense that you wrote papers, so this is cheap. My expenditure was based really on getting the books for my semester. Once I got the books then I was OK. I didn’t have to continue to come out of pocket buying anything. That was it. Of course, English was so easy. It actually made me feel bad.

I just felt like life should be a little tough. When I was in English class it was so easy for me that I felt a tinge of guilt. I was like, “I don’t think it should be easy. I think that school should be hard,” but it wasn’t. I had so much fun. I loved reading. I loved discussing. I loved writing these papers. It was just fun, but it was easy. I had to just make that OK spiritually.

Scott: I read somewhere where you had a friend who said he was going to go to Southern California and study film studies, and that had an influence on what you did next.

Vigil: Yes. Writing was the first degree. I’m coming towards the end of the degree, and so we students are all thinking, “What are we going to do next?” My classmate and friend D. Rogers was like, “Vigil, you’re going to New York, right?” Right. I had come to New York the year before for my uncle’s wedding.

I loved New York. I love New York. I said to Rogers, “I’m going to go to New York. I’m going to live in New York.” That was what he was talking about. He was jumping on that. “If you’re going to go to New York,” he said, “what do you want to do?” I said, “Well I don’t know. I suppose I could do English on a Masters level, I guess. That would be like the trajectory for an English writing major.”

He said, “Look, you are going to be in a City that has the two best film schools. It’s at NYU and then at Columbia. Why don’t you do film?” Up until that time I had never, I didn’t even think people went to school to go to film school. I just thought you go to the theater and the film just is there.

It didn’t occur to me that this was a profession one could do at school. When he said it, it resonated. I thought, “I can make up stories that way.” I looked at it as still fiction, but with movement. Now audiences could see it as opposed to if you wrote a book. People would have to read the book. I just thought that I was taking my storytelling just one level more with film.

If you’re trying to get people to consume your work, it made sense that more people would consume a film than would go and pick up a book and read it. That was my thinking. Without ever having considered film, my friend Rogers mentioned this thing to me.

It was just like wow and it just made sense. When I came to New York I took the year off. I arrived in 1990. I took ’90 off. It gave me time to come into the City and apply to gradulate schools the following year. I applied for ’91 to both NYU and Columbia and got into both. In fact, NYU gave me a little scholarship for whatever reason, I don’t know. I went to visit the two campuses.

I went all the way downtown to see NYU. Then I saw that there was no grounds. There was no campus. It was weird. Then I came uptown and I went to Columbia, passed through the gates and saw these amazing grounds that is Columbia’s grounds. I saw grass. I thought, “I’m going to go to this school.” I choose Columbia only because it had a campus. That was it. That’s how I ended up at Columbia University.

Scott: You did film studies there, then segued into your making a series of low‑budget movies, writing and directing them. How did that evolve?

Vigil: I’m a screenwriting concentrate at school. Why did I choose that as opposed to directing concentrate? Again, it came down to finances. To be a screenwriter, all you had to do was, at the end of your time at Columbia, you had to just write a final project, and that was paper.

I thought, “OK, I can afford paper.” If you were a directing major, you’d have to go direct something, and I just didn’t know how I would amass a small fortune to go shoot a film, nor was I a producing concentrate. Writing, again, it just made sense that I would be a screenwriting concentrate.

But, when I left school, I had no idea what to do. It’s really sad to say, but I don’t think that school really prepared me for life after school. I had no idea how to make a film. All I knew was how to write one. I stumbled into temping for a little while because I still had to pay my bills.

I didn’t know what I’m supposed to do after school, but I kept writing. The funny thing is, I just kept writing. I would write something, I would put it on my shelf. I wrote all these features, and I just shelved them. Then, after a while, instead of shelving the films, I now started writing smaller, smaller things.

I said, “If you make them small, you can shoot them.” I went and bought a film camera and I taught myself how to shoot these stories, how to edit these stories, how to produce them. This is my experiences of filmmaking. Honestly, it’s weird to say, but making films came after school.

That was how I learned the production of film. The writing of a film was taught already, but the production of film, it affected my writing, actually. I would write things because I’m not producing them. I’m not going out to shoot them. There was no care, really, in the writing of those stories that I was not going to go out and shoot myself.

They were huge, those stories. Big, they were outlandish. But when I started producing film, when I started directing them, when I started editing them, this process somehow affected the writing. It was bizarre. [laughs] It was really bizarre. I now know, if I can’t get the location, I’m not going to write it in the story.

I started writing things for practical purposes. If I can get it, then I’ll write it in. No longer was I moved, you can say, by story. I was more concerned with, “After we write this thing, can we go shoot this thing?” It really affected the stories I started writing.

My stories became smaller and more real, I would say, and very manageable. It was all because I started shooting and editing and producing my stuff.

Scott: You were wearing all those different hats, and that was affecting the screenwriting.

Vigil: Yeah. That affected screenwriting. Absolutely.

Scott: Let’s jump to your Nicholl‑winning script, “Bring Back Girl” which is a terrific read. Here’s a plot description:

“A 14‑year‑old girl kidnapped by human traffickers and sold as a child bride plots to escape, even as her father, a hunter, lets nothing stand in his way in his pursuit to recover her.”

First of all, you’re from Nigeria, so you’d be aware of the contemporary circumstances there, and I imagine this derives from the Boko Haram kidnapping.

Vigil: Yes. That is correct. When I prepared that logline for the Nicholl, it was a choice of mine not to put the word “Nigeria” or “Boko Haram” in it. At that time when I submitted it, I wasn’t sure whether, if I put “Nigeria” or “Boko Haram,” I wasn’t sure if it would have an adverse effect on how people responded to the script, so I just kept it vague as far “Nigeria.”

I wanted to give the story the greatest opportunity that I could, and so I did not put that in. But, yes, the story was inspired by the missing girls, the Chibok girls. That happened, the event of their kidnapping, in 2014, and then a whole bunch of other things that were happening in Nigeria that, as a Nigerian, I am aware of.

So I decided to open this particular film with Boko Haram, but it’s not about Boko Haram at all. I opened it with Boko Haram as a marketing choice. I thought that, if I started my film with Boko Haram and the kidnapping of the girls, the world already knows this story. The world knows this story.

There’s no explanation that needs to be done if you tell me that these girls were the “Bring Back Our Girls” hashtag campaign. That was the choice I made. But, as I do not know what happened to the girls, I did not want to focus my film, really, on them. I wanted to focus on the ones that escaped, because we know that some jumped off the truck that night.

I now said, “Let me throw my girl, Khalilah, let her be one of the escapees,” and so I did that. Once she jumped off, you can say the camera follows her rather than follow the trucks. You see?

Scott: Yeah.

Vigil: It was at that moment that I took my right turn. I said, “OK, the truck continues, but let’s follow this girl, and now I’ll visit upon her all the other problems that I wanted to address in Nigeria.” Those were the choices I made.

Scott: It’s an interesting choice because the protagonist, Khalilah, a 14‑year‑old Nigerian girl, even though she does escape and isn’t under the sway of the Boko Haram, she ends up in a situation which, in effect, is a kind of imprisonment because she is a…

Vigil: Child bride.

Scott: Yes, so you’re able to explore a similar experience, but not Boko Haram specifically.

Vigil: Even though the whole Boko Haram thing is important in the film, but physically, you don’t see them after page 10. However, they have this thing, they have this tone and aura about the whole region, the whole region is afraid of these people.

I don’t give them a name. I just say, “the devils.” I keep saying, “the devils,” “the devils.” I didn’t really give them a name (although I probably will later). I wanted the overarching tension that they embody. The whole village, everywhere, is aware that these people are running around just creating havoc.

Everybody is trying to protect their families and live the best way they know how. So they are the invisible enemy that makes everyone react against them, though you don’t see them anymore.

Scott: You’ve got this village where Khalilah lives and there is this chief who is essentially promising protection to the villagers.

Vigil: Yes, the girls are missing. See, what happened in Nigeria, at that time, when these children were taken was, it’s very embarrassing to the Nigerian government that they are not able to find these girls.

What they did was, in trying to find them, and, knowing that girls are being kidnapped, murders are being committed by Boko Haram, what the government did was it sent assistance. The president said, “We’re going to send soldiers up North. Soldiers have two aims, protect the innocent villagers as much as possible, but by all means, we’re still looking for these girls.”

Because these are farmers, they are mostly farmers, just trying to live their lives, that is why the Police Chief and his men are in this particular village, yes, to protect them.

Scott: Let’s talk about Khalilah’s family. She’s got two siblings, and a father, Boubakah?

Vigil: Just call him Bouba.

Scott: Bouba. The mother, Lidal?

Vigil: Correct.

Scott: He’s a hunter. She’s an herbalist. Khalilah is captured by Boko Haram, but manages to escape. Then, Bouba gets detained by the Chief. This is a weird situation. The people who are supposedly protecting the villagers, they actually extort money from the villagers.

Vigil: Yeah. You know, here’s the problem. There was some talk, these things are not fiction, ultimately. There’s a problem with the soldiers up there.

Yeah, they are there to protect on the one hand, but on the other hand, they’re actually harassing the villagers. They are trying to say things like these, “Well, we have all these men that live here,” because villagers are men, women, and children.

What they are trying to do, in trying to “locate” Boko Haram, sometimes they’re squeezing the men of these places. They’re just squeezing them, harassing them, beating them, asking them questions like, “You are part of Boko Haram?” “No, I’m not. I’m not part of Boko Haram.” “Yes, you are. Tell us where they’re going to go?”

On the one hand, they don’t know who is innocent and who is not. They came to protect, but they’re harassing, and part of harassment is extortion.

These are the things that are happening up there, or really, everywhere in Nigeria, just the whole bribery thing. Sorry to say, but it’s one of the more corrupt nations on Earth. So part of that corruption is anyone who has an edge, “Give me money, and I’ll make your life a little better.” That’s what you’re seeing.

Scott: That’s the theme that runs through the story. Everybody’s out looking for money and so, Boubaka gets detained by the Chief’s men. Now, his wife has got to raise money to get him free, but she doesn’t quite have enough, and so she agrees to hire out Khalilah as a maid for a month, but then, it goes terribly wrong.

Vigil: Yes, it goes terribly wrong.

Scott: One thing leads to another and she’s essentially lost. You make another interesting choice here because up to this point, the story has been told through Khalilah’s perspective. Once Boubaka discovers his daughter is gone, for about the next 15 pages, the story is told pretty much from his perspective. As a result, we’re left in the dark. We don’t know where Khalilah is.

Was that a conscious thread in your choice?

Vigil: That was absolutely a conscious choice. I thought about how to write this story. Before you started the story, you think, “How am I going to do this thing?” There’s things that I’m doing.

What I’m doing is this, I don’t really want you to know what happened to Khalilah, yet. I don’t want you to know. All we are moving on is a father’s love. “Yes, I was apprehended. I’m OK now. Yes, my daughter had to be taken to be a maid,” Really a nanny, a live‑in nanny, “OK, but I’m OK now. We don’t have money, but I have one thing, which is my gun. I will sell it to get the money to go get her.”

We are just following the dad. At that moment, you have no idea that anything untoward has happened to Khalilah. You’re just following Daddy, “To go get my daughter.” Then, of course, once he hits Abuja, things are not quite what they seem, and things continue to be quite not what they seem.

Then I tried to do something with time. I’ve heard from readers, some people like what I do with time. Other people would prefer it went in a linear fashion, swing between father and daughter. I really don’t want that. I did not want you to know that this child is in harm’s way until the camera comes on her. You see?

The father is feeling something is wrong because he is not finding the kid. And at the point, I want the audience to be tense as well, like, “Wait, I thought she’s supposed to be at somebody’s house taking care of their kids. Are you telling me that this child is lost?”

That’s right. Something is wrong. Then the tension for the audience begins. Something is wrong. Our Khalilah, who we love because this girl is wonderful, and the family is beautiful and wonderful and full of love.

Yes, I made a conscious decision not to present two parallel tracks, swinging between the father and the daughter. I didn’t want that for this story. I really don’t want you to know what happened to Khalilah until I need you to know what happened to Khalilah. That was the reason I did that.

Scott: I figured that much. Once you re-establish her, you do cut back and forth between Khalilah and Boubaka. In fact, you actually cut back to Lidal, too, as well, when she goes over to extract some information from the woman who set up for…

Vigil: Yes, Miss Mary.

Scott: Miss Mary, right. The story turns into a rousing action narrative. Really, it’s quite thrilling. Boubaka is like a force of nature. He will not be stopped. Some of the things he does, creating a fire as a diversion…

Vigil: Yeah [laughs]

Scott: …assaulting a man with a knife, and threatening to toss a baby out a window. Were these things you’d heard about or read about?

Vigil: No, not at all.

Scott: Your imagination?

Vigil: Yeah, totally. Here’s what I was trying to do. Remember what I said at the beginning of our conversation? If I don’t have it, I don’t write it in. After I wrote this story, I, Vigil, was going to go to Africa immediately and shoot this film.

In trying to present what this father could do, just think about everything he does, they’re very simple. I can’t get a car. [laughs] It’s going to be very difficult for us to get a car and crash the cars.

Like, no, no, no, no. I’m not going to go get cars and crash them. I’m not going to have him dangling somebody off a roof. I’m not going to have him running through the freeway because we’re not going to get that.

Everything I presented to you was me thinking, “How can I go get an actor in Nigeria? Probably with one camera. How are we going to shoot this thing? I need it to be an action film.”

Everything that Boubaka does is so simple. It is so simple. Like, “Go get a wheelbarrow…” I know I can go get a wheelbarrow, throw garbage in it, set it on fire. I know that I can push that wheelbarrow up against somebody’s gate. We’re going to have the Fire Brigade, as they are called there, on standby because nobody wants their gate lit on fire in Africa, but we’re going to do it. That’s what we’re going to pay them money for.

Then, I’m going to have Bouba take the guy into his living room because I know many people whose living rooms we can use. Then we’re going to get him to a bathroom and he’s going to force him to tell him information.

As I wrote these scenes ‑‑ even when he goes upstairs and goes to the balcony ‑‑ I know we can get that. I can see my camera following him as he runs in. I can see the camera with him while he’s grabbing the child. It’s just a baby. We’re not going to dangle any baby off any balcony, we’re just going to pretend that we did that.

Everything that I did, that he did, it was a poor man’s action flick.

[laughter]

Scott: A poor man’s action flick.

Vigil: Yeah, given his means. He’s a very poor guy. These are not wealthy people. His thinking has to be it’s him against ordinary men like him. He is very powerful, he’s a strong man. He’s not an old 70‑year‑old father, no. He’s a 33‑year‑old dad who’s looking for his child without money. He’s looking for his kid without money.

I had to present, indeed, an action film, but everything that dad did is so ridiculously cheap when you compare with what Hollywood would do. Say with the Liam Neeson TAKEN series. All the things that Liam did, I can’t afford all those things. I had to keep my dad very simple with his hands. He’s doing all those things with his legs ‑‑ he’s running and fighting with his hands.

These are the things I knew I could control and that was why I wrote them in.

Scott: You have a benefit from a character standpoint because he’s a hunter.

Vigil: Yup, I had to. I thought of what he could do. You see, when I chose hunting, I said, “Oh, nobody’s going to believe this if this guy is an accountant. Nobody’s going to believe it if he’s a farmer.”

Although you could probably write it as a farmer and it could still work. A farmer is just a man who farms, but his daughter has been kidnapped, so he can beat people up trying to get to her…I could have made him a farmer but, no. I said, “No, no, no, no. I need a hunter.”

Someone who was cunning, someone for whom this is quite natural in terms of finding things, because that would be what a hunter does. Knowing what the father would do, that was why I chose that his profession should be hunting.

Scott: Also killing things.

Vigil: Yes.

Scott: Did you do the same process in, like a reverse engineering kind of way, where you figured, “Well, I need for Khalilah to be able to understand herbs and so, therefore…”

Vigil: Yes. The thing with Khalilah was this. I said, “I look for what Lidal could be because I’m a female.” I’m very sensitive to men saving women in films, very sensitive. I said, “I, as a female, cannot write yet another story where my females are practically useless, just waiting for Daddy to come and save them.” I said, “Hell, no. I’m not going to do that.”

What I did was, I made…I don’t want a housewife. I don’t want Lidal to be a housewife. I wanted her to have a job. Her job became natural medicines and she’s very good at it. Then I said, “OK, that’s good.”

Her daughter wants to be a doctor, we know that. I said, “All right. I need…” Obviously, the mother would have taught her daughters some aspect, in fact, everything she knows about herbs. The reason for this is that Khalilah will use it later to save herself with respect to Mustafa.

I want to say to other writers out there, you can outline. Everybody has a process, you see? Some processes is that we have to write an outline before we think about writing whatever. I never…I don’t even know what is…I can’t outline. I just don’t know how to do that.

What I do, I just start writing. I start writing once I have what I consider 75 percent of the images of what this film was going to be about. I start writing, but things like herbalist, I never would have thought of that. I wasn’t thinking, “Oh, this woman is a herbalist,” before I started. No.

As I’m writing, I think, “Oh, I need her to be a herbalist!” As I’m going along, I start thinking of the things I need to make the story work. All of a sudden, I needed her to know medication, so I thought, “Oh, this is awesome. The girl loves medicine. This is really great. She’s going to use this later to save herself. I needed this 13‑year‑old to be able to save herself somehow.”

In planning how this was going to be, I thought about it for a while. The father can go to the compound and get his daughter out, but I thought, “Man, if he gets to that house, there are way too many men in that house.”

There are too many men and remember, he does not have a gun. It would be, I think, impossible for him, by himself, without sort of like an army to infiltrate the compound and dispense with each of the men one at a time with his fists alone.

I said no. Why? It would mean that my daughter is sitting in a house waiting for her father to save her. I said, “Hell, no. I’m not doing that.” What I wanted to do was I wanted Khalilah, at 14, to get herself out of that compound even as her father is coming for her. I need her to do her damnedest to get out of there in case her father is not coming. That was some of the decisions that I made as a woman, that I was going to have a daughter escape. Then her father will still meet her and finish it. The father is like the mic drop moment.

I need the daughter to get herself out of that situation. Those are some of the choices I made. Herbalist had to be a part of the story because she uses it later to exact the promise from Mustafa.

Scott: You do a similar thing, as you did earlier, where the father takes over the narrative for about 15 pages where once you’ve got Khalilah established and Mamadou, that household there, you pretty much stay there until she escapes. Then she meets up…

Vigil: With her dad. Yeah. Again, I hope that it…what do you say … it works. Once you see the film, I hope that people…

Scott: Sure, it does.

Vigil: Yeah. People are like, “Oh, my God. Why does the father disappear? Oh, no. I wanted you to cut between the father and the daughter.” [laughs] I didn’t want to do that. Once we are in the compound, we stay there. What I like that I did though is they just meet.

When the father gets to the tent, they meet. I gave Khalilah two days ahead. I gave her two days running time so that when her father gets to that tent, her two days conclude in the desert. There’s her dad. I went back and then brought you forward again, if that makes sense.

Scott: Yeah. First of all, well, the girls, they’re all brought to the place. These guys bid on them. Does that actually happens or your imagination at work again?

Vigil: No. It’s my idea. It’s my reimagining of how it could happen. That is imagination.

Scott: You know, I’ve got to say though what you did with that, once she’s relocated to the household with Mamadou, that whole thing is written in such a way, it felt plausible to me.

Vigil: There’s going to be controversy over it, of course. The Nigerians in Niger are going to be like, “What? Are you saying this is what we do in our land?” It’s just a film. It’s fiction. Take heart. I’m not saying it’s nonfiction. It’s fiction. Everybody, calm down. [laughs]

Scott: It’s quite dramatic. It certainly raises the stakes. The third act is incredibly intense. You say, “I don’t like to outline. I like to just start writing.” Did you know, going into this project, it was going to be heavy with action?

Vigil: Very good question. I love action. The thing is I love action films, myself. [laughs] I really do. I wanted it to be an action film. I had that in mind. It’s drama, sure. It’s family, sure, but I want it to be where every time you turn the page, there’s movement.

I don’t want to sit still too long. I don’t really want that. I wanted from page one with Boko Haram until the end. That, to me, is an amazing scene where the father literally jumps over his daughter to get to those who are trying to kill her. [laughs]

From the beginning of the movie to the end, I wanted it to be constant jumping, running, firing, ducking. In my mind, it was just movement. I don’t want us to sit still. That was some of the things that I wanted to achieve in the film. I don’t want to sit still too long. That was why I made it moving as I did.

Scott: I’m sure you’ve been following the news here in United States, the [Harvey] Weinstein, #MeToo movement, putting a spotlight on men assaulting women and sometimes other men. Is there kind of a parallel here in a way to your story?

Vigil: I wasn’t thinking of any of that. I guess you can say what is happening in Hollywood now is just the western version of what one can say happens in these African villages. You can say that this is just the Western world’s version of men in power, sexuality, and all that.

What’s the difference? You can say, “Oh, yeah, but our Western men are not buying and selling children.” Aren’t they? I’m like, “Really?” What is Roy Moore? Isn’t it several 14‑year‑olds he’s accused of touching?

The other day, I saw there was yet another political figure who was caught in some motel with some boy. Are the African men really that different from the westernized, powerful men? I go to work in America. They give us a sexual harassment doscuments..Everybody has to sign off on it every year. I wonder what is going on. Evidently, we’ve been wasting paper this whole time.

Scott: There were some comments at the Nicholl award ceremony where a speaker talked about the courage of the writer to follow whatever story they’re passionate about in the face of conventional wisdom. She was talking about you. What did you think about her words in that regard?

Vigil: I don’t know what she was talking about. Vigil and courage, what is that? OK, that’s nice. [laughs] I’ll say this about my work over the years. The thing is this. It doesn’t really take a village to write a story. It shouldn’t. In Hollywood, I have seen situations where people come. Everybody touches your story. Everybody touches it. They give you notes. Everybody’s telling you stuff. Sometimes, they contradict the choices you made. To me, this is a very subjective thing that we do. It’s very, very subjective. You have had people who contradict each other.

These are wonderful people trying to help you, but this one just said the opposite of what this other one just said. Now, what do you do? For me, one thing I can say about my approach to my work when the idea is mine. If somebody says to me, “Write something for me,” that’s different.

But if the idea came from me, I am so protective of the vision that I wrote. I don’t need a village. I don’t write with a village. This is the first draft, by the way.

Scott: Really?

Vigil: Mm‑hmm, because I wasn’t supposed to submit it. I thought I was going to go shoot it. There’s nothing for me to redo. There’s nothing to redo. This is the first draft, in essence.

People will come and say things like, “Well, it was the beginning. You know, it wasn’t about Boko Haram, so why don’t you get rid of the beginning?” I’ve heard that. Start it in the village, when Khalilah is there already. I listen to that. I thank them politely, but I keep the front. I call the whole Boko Haram abduction the front. I keep the front.

It doesn’t ultimately matter what people say if it contradicts what I’m trying to do. It doesn’t really resonate with me, actually. I’ve had readers say, “Oh, the character of Dia died. Is there any way you can keep Dia alive? He was so good.” I said, pardon my French, “Shit happens to good people all the time.” I said, “Look, he could have marched that girl out of the compound upon learning that she was not an orphan.”

This girl was kidnapped, essentially. He could have just waited until everybody went to sleep and said to Khalilah, “Come on, girl. You’re getting out of here. They’re not going to kill me. I’m family, you know,” but he didn’t.

I just think that that choice of not doing that, he got this own comeuppance. As difficult as it was what happened to him, but this can easily be real life. Sometimes, good people die. Sometimes, good people live. In this story, this is what happened to Dia.

More importantly ‑‑ and this is the selfish person in me ‑‑ the scene where Dia’s wife carries her dead son out of that house, that image…Remember when in “The Ten Commandments” Yul Brynner’s character carried his dead son because of Moses?

Scott: Yes.

Vigil: [laughs] That was the scene I was going for. Like, “Oh, this is my Yul Brynner Ramses moment. The way he was walking, carrying this dead…” This is the image I have for Dia’s wife.

I was like, “No, no, no, no, no, no. If I keep Dia alive, then I’m not going to have that scene.” He would obviously be alive, and nothing would have happened to his son, then there would be no need for him to go after Khalilah.

The only way he would live is he didn’t go after Khalilah. The only way he would not have gone after Khalilah is because his son was quite OK, but I decided that I cannot wait to shoot the scene where a mother carries her dead kid downstairs. I love it so much. I said, “No, no, no. Dia must die for that!” This is the selfish person, the dramatist in me. [laughs]

Scott: In your acceptance speech, you mentioned the women screenwriters over 40 writers lab. Was that the one that Meryl Streep started, or is that…?

Vigil: Right, that is the one. That’s the one.

Scott: What was your experience like there?

Vigil: Well, it was kind of weird. It was all timing. For example, my story was at finalist level with the Nicholl. We did not know if “Bring Back Girl” had actually won, but she was at finalist level the weekend that we had the retreat.

Meryl Streep’s The Writers Lab is a workshop. The mentors work the script, and they were workshopping my script, trying to make it better. I was like, “Well, hold on a second. Let’s not touch it. Let’s not touch it. It’s doing so well somewhere else.” [laughs]

It was a weird situation. They said they hadn’t really had that happen before where I came for a workshop and yet the very thing we’re workshopping is finalist at the Nicholl. I just said, “Well, let me have your notes anyway.” They gave me notes, but I was not inclined to change anything in my script because the script was doing so well at the Nicholl.

Scott: Let’s talk about the Nicholl.

Vigil: You know, man, it is the best thing that has ever happened to me. I have not won anything in my life. It was just so bizarre. It was like a whirlwind, really. What happened was this. Because I couldn’t raise the money to go shoot “Bring Back Girl” myself, I decided at the last minute…It was so weird. At the last minute, I went on the Nicholl website. I was actually just looking for competitions to submit the story to.

I thought, “Let it just not be sit here on my hard-drive. Let me send it out.” These things cost money, writing competitions. These entrance fees are no joke. They add up after a while. I looked for a list of competitions that are renowned. Of course, the Nicholl is at the top. What I did was I just submitted the story to seven. I hit about $300 with the seven, and I stopped. I said, “That’s it.” That’s my budget. [laughs]

I know when we do this as screenwriters…I don’t know about the others, but for me, when I submit things, which is very rare that I do, I know I’m going to lose. When I give you $300, I know I’m just giving money away. I say, “Well, I bite the bullet.” I said, “$300 is my budget. That’s it. We’re not going to do any more than that,” because I’m giving people money. I just understand that rejection is coming. The rejections are coming.

Then another thing that I do, and I don’t know about other writers, once I enter them, because I know it’s going to be rejected, I don’t think about the story anymore. I don’t think about it anymore. What’s the point? What am I agonizing over for? When are they going to call me and tell me I failed? “You didn’t get in. Thank you for sending it, but it didn’t…” No. I don’t even think about that anymore.

I sent the story, and promptly threw it out of my spirit, and moved on. I was getting ready to do God knows what. Then, I think it was in August, the first notification came that said “Bring Back Girl had made quarter finals.”

Now, I tried to understand how I felt when I got that. I looked at that statement. Then I forgot about it again. I forgot about it because this is the first place it’ll get to before it’s rejected for the other levels.

When I got that, it has gotten to quarter finals, I just shrugged and then threw it away, didn’t think about it again. I did pay attention to the story when they told me it got to the semifinals. That was the next notification.

“Bring Back Girl” had gotten to semifinal. Then I remember my entire world stopped. I actually stopped moving. When I first got the first one, I thought, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. The next notification will be rejection.”

When I got that she had gotten into semifinal, I stopped what I was doing to contemplate that. “Is that what? Semifinal?” I was like, “Wait a minute. Really?” That got me invested. Then I started worrying about final list. Once I got to semifinal, I began to worry.

At that time, I heard from Meryl Streep and the Writers Lab that they liked the story too. I was just flummoxed. I was flabbergasted. I was stunned. I was astonished, all those words. “What?” Meanwhile, the other five ‑‑ remember, I submitted to seven ‑‑ had rejected the story. They’re like, “OK, it’s no good. It’s no good.”

Scott: [laughs] Oh, wow.

Vigil: Once I had semifinal, then I couldn’t sleep. See, this is the problem. I couldn’t sleep after that. It takes a month from semifinal to final. It was a month of me not sleeping because now I’m worried.

Did she make it? I started looking at all the numbers. I said, “Is it possible?” Meanwhile, I already felt like I’m winning because at semifinal, I was hearing from producers. I was hearing from production companies.

At that level, I already felt like I was a winner because people were requesting the script from me. I was sending it to them. I knew I had broken through something for them to now notice. I knew something good would come. Even if I did not go any further, I felt so happy to get to semifinals because there were people who were asking me to read the script.

Scott: It has had an impact on your career.

Vigil: I don’t know if I have a career, but I love what is happening at this time. I have a manager because of it, a woman that very much believes in the story and thinks we would be able to raise the money to shoot it in Africa next year, but the pessimist in me doesn’t really believe anything until it actually happens. That is just me.

Scott: Congratulations again on winning the Nicholl Writing. I’d like to ask some craft questions.

Vigil: Absolutely.

Scott: How do you come up with story ideas?

Vigil: The stories come to me, alright. It's like this. This is what I think. If you're quiet enough, if you're just quiet, the story will find you. Over the years, the stories have found me. There's got to be a reason for me to engage the story. They just come to me.

I am bombarded, by the way, by story ideas. I don't pursue all of them because some of them I designed to derail you from completion which is the catastrophy. I don't even pay them any mind.

As a story, you have to do a lot to get my attention. They really have to. Consider it like this, this is how I'm able to describe it to you. It is like this. I am the vessel by which they would be told. Every story wants to be told.

The purpose of every story is to be told, to be unveiled to the world. It is in purpose. They need this more than I do. A story wants to be told more than I do. [laughs]

They are anxious about being told, so a story looks for who on Earth would tell it best and not screw it up. If you're in the wrong hands, you screw up the story. They don't want that.

They look at people, and they come to you. That is why, for example, I cannot write a Western. I can't, because they don't pick me. I wouldn't know how to present that story well.

The stories that I know how to present, they know that I can, so here they come. They come to me. They kind of knock on my door. "Hello, Vigil." I say, "Hi."

They say, "Please, I would like you to write me." I say, "Why?" They say, "Because I have a lot to say." I say, "All of you do. That's what you all say. But tell me what you're about." Then the story will start telling me, "Well, I'm about a father and a daughter. The father is stolen, and he has to find her."

I say, "It's actually been done before, you know? Haven’t you seen Liam Neeson’s TAKENs? Why are you different?" "I'm going to be set in Nigeria," it says "Interesting,” I say. “Tell me more." You see?

The story goes on to say, "Well, I'm going to be an action film." I say, "Really? I'm interested in that." Now it's got my attention. "Oh, really? Action?" "Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm an action film." I say, "In what sense? You know we don't have the money."

"I know, I know, I know, I'm very simple. Don't worry. I'm not going to be too complicated." "OK, you still have my attention. Start showing me some scenes." Then I see a father, I see a daughter, I see Lidal. This is just extra...I see Boko Haram. I said, "Hmm, I like that. Are we going to start with Boko Haram?" "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're going to start with Boko Haram!"

I said, "That's interesting. What else is going on in you?" The story, I haven't touched it. I haven't started writing. It wants me to, but I won't. I will not do that. It keeps funneling me with images in no particular order, no particular order.

At this time in the process, this is very bad for me as a human. It means that I can no longer engage with other humans. I can't. If you and I were lovers, I would ignore you. I'm no longer feeding the child. I'm no longer commiserating with my friends, I am not. The story has my complete attention and all it is showing me are images, images, images, images, images.

At some point, I say, "I've seen enough. I've seen enough. Let's start." The story is delighted. "Yes, yes, yes." [laughs]

Then when I start the story, because it's showing me so many images, although in no particular order, my job is to order it. My job is to go in there and have it make sense. That's my skill.

Then some of the images I don't see, and I have not seen, true enough. But I'm not worried about that. With 75 percent of the images seen, oh, I'm going to see the other 25 percent. Once in the writing process, I will begin to fill in the holes. This is how my stories come to me.

There are story ideas I'm not touching, like I said. "I'm not going to touch you, because you haven't shown me enough scenes to start and I don't trust you. I don't trust you. I think I'm going to get a block. I can't finish, because you're not showing me enough."

That is how my stories come to me.

I've been writing enough now to know the kind of things that gravitate towards me. I write things...They're quite ordinary. These stories are quite ordinary. But the way they come together is extraordinary. These are ordinary people. These are ordinary lives, really. I mean, it is. There's no science fiction. There's nothing supernatural, per se, in these. These are just everyday people.

But what I am able to do in the images that I am shown, I am able to organize things quite extraordinarily fresh. “Oh, wow, that's interesting how you did that,” the story might say. That's why I might play around with time in this particular one, “Bring Back Girl.” I played around with time a little, because I thought it would be interesting to unveil the story in this way.

The story may not have delivered itself, these images, to me like that, but I just thought this is the best way to arrange the images that I saw. That's why I did that. I'm very good at knowing in my stories what works. "This works. This works."

Scott: Let me ask you a real fundamental screenwriting question. When you're writing a scene, do you have specific goals in mind?

Vigil: I have to finish the scene before I get up.

Scott: You have to finish it.

Vigil: Uh‑huh. I have to finish the scene.

Scott: Do you set out, "I need to know beginning, middle, and end. I need to know..."

Vigil: No. I've seen it. I've seen the beginning, middle, and end. I've seen it, so I write what I see. Now, I remember this, though. "Bring Back Girl” was written in about three weeks. It took me about three weeks to write. I remember what happened at one point.

When I got to Abuja with Boubakah, I know the beginning of that scene, of course. No problem. Got the end. Yeah, I know how, but when I got to there, I said, "How the hell is he going to find this kid?" I remember saying, "How is he actually going to find this kid? Where the hell is she?"

Now, I know where she is. I've got her with Tarif and Chichi. I'm like, "OK, how do I connect the father?" I remember that gave me a little headache. It gave me a little headache because remember what I said ‑‑ my story is an action film. It has to be cheaply done. We're not going to explode anything in Abuja. He's not going to go through the airport and shoot everybody. No, no, no.

I said, "So now what are we going to do? I know that Fidelis is in there. Fidelis is the key. How is he going to get this?" I remember thinking, "What's the dad going to do now? What's he going to do?" I remember that scene, because it gave me a headache of, "How do I extract this information from the bad Fidelis?"

But anyway, it happened. I took about 48 hours off just to think about how I'm going to get to Fidelis, and then that's what happened. I thought, "OK, yeah, all right. He goes to the market. He gets a wheelbarrow.

Then it's at night. Where I see it happening is my cousin's house. That street is so deserted. It's unbelievable. Literally late at night, you just see this dude in a wheelbarrow." [laughs] I liked the image. I said, "OK, let's do that." That's how I did it.

Scott: What about rewriting?

Vigil: Not this story. Not this.

Scott: Not this one. But other stories, have you had to do rewrites? How do you approach that?

Vigil: In my younger days. In the younger days, I used to. My rewrites are propelled by if I give it to a reader and they read it and they're like, "Oh, I don't understand what happened here." That would propel me to answer that question. Then I'll go and attack it.

In the early days, I used to have, oh my God, versions upon versions of a story. But here's what happened when I started shooting. I started limiting my rewrites based on I'm shooting now. All of a sudden, I just knew the choices I wanted to make. I just knew, "No, not as many rewrites," once I started shooting film. I just understood what I needed and what I wanted to do and where we're going and the choices I made. Because the choices are motivated by, can we get this thing?

Not much rewriting now, I'm happy to say. Not really. At the Writers Lab, the Meryl Streep thing, as I said to you, was a workshop. There were some notes which I was given which make sense, some notes. I said, "OK. I'm going to go sprinkle version two with some of those notes."

Version two, I'm going to sprinkle it with some things my readers did not understand about the African...They did not understand that Boubakah, having only three daughters with no sons is huge in that setting. Because such a man would continue to impregnate his wife or wives until he had a son.

But that's not what Boubakah is doing. Some readers at the workshop said, "What? I didn't know that that makes him a particularly awesome dude." When I heard that I said, "OK, let me just go and put just a line, just something in there that, when the American is watching it, they're like, 'Wow, man, this dude is not looking for sons?'" No, he's not looking for sons at all. He's fine.

Scott: Where do you see yourself in 5 or 10 years?

Vigil: Great question. I have wanted to be a filmmaker since I graduated. I graduated in '96. Now, I left school thinking I was going to be a screenwriter strictly.

But when I started shooting films, producing, directing, I really liked that. In fact, writing became secondary to my desire of producing and directing.

I want to write my films. My films excite me more than anybody else's films. I love the things I write. Immediately after I write them, I want to go shoot them. In five years because of the Nicholl and hopefully because of the Nicholl, I really just want to be...I am a Nigerian female director, writer. I want to be the preeminent voice in that place.

I want my films, let's say, to make money. I want to be respected in this field. I just want to be someone that the world knows as, "Wow, Vigil's next film is this, and it does the things it's supposed to do."

I don't believe that movies should not make money. I want my movies when they are done to have people go see them. Obviously, this is what every filmmaker wants. We all want our movies to make money.

I like action films. I don't like boring films. [laughs] I want movies that people rush to go see. If in the United States, I want people to go see this girl Khalilah because the movie is done well, and in a location that we don't really get to see on the big screen.

Remember, I've written other films that do not take place at all in Nigeria. It's just that this one I thought I was going to go do myself. I can afford to shoot in Nigeria because the rate of return is just incredible. But even at that, we couldn't raise the money to make this film.

I have written stories that take place in the United States. I've written stories that take place in Europe. I would love like this one, Bring Back Girl, to throw me onto the map so that the next time I ask, "Can somebody give me money so I can go make my next film?" They will not say no. Oh, her first film did this. Of course, we can give her money to do the second one, and so on and so forth.

In five years, honestly, I want to be...the word "renowned" sounds a little too much, but I want to be someone that makes movies that resonate with folks to the point that they want to go see it.

Of course, if people want to hire me to write for them, that’s great. Or Vigil, come and direct this. Yes, of course. I want to do that as well. As well as somebody says, "Come and adapt a book, come and take this idea and write it for us." Of course, I want to do that as well.

Scott: Last question. What advice can you offer aspiring screenwriters about learning the craft and breaking into Hollywood?

Vigil: I broke into Hollywood, if that is what I have indeed done, just by fluke. Here is the thing that I will say to people. I suppose, ultimately, we are all trying to get to Hollywood, but I did not have Hollywood in mind. What I was trying to do was...I could do this until the day I die. I love what I do.

First, you have to love what you do. You have to consider that you may never break in. If you may never break in, do you still love what you do? On that level, you have to love what you do because I'm not thinking of Hollywood.

As I was continuing to write, I was a temp, working law firms, I'm a teacher now. I didn't have Hollywood in mind. I just love writing. I love it very much. If you can love it, then it doesn't really matter what happens.

Let's be clear, many people are not going to break in. If I did not break in, I still love what I do. I know I have fulfilled a purpose on earth. I just love what I do and then I broke in. [laughs] I broke in. This is like the icing on a wonderful cake already.

I will say this also. The takeaway is this because I had a takeaway. I just wrote what I loved. It wasn't trying to be anything. I love this story, I wrote this story. It's one of the simplest stories I've ever written. I'm shocked that it resonated with Nicholl people. I was like wait a second, "You guys like this? This is so simple, such a [laughs] simple story to me."

My takeaway in that is this. In terms of writing, really write what moves you. What moves your heart. You're not writing for anybody, you write for yourself first at the minimal. You just write for yourself. I choose later the things I write. I don't really do artsy film very well. Not anymore.

I do things that because when I go to the theater, I know the kind of films that I love to watch. I'm not trying to do things that only three people are going to come to. No. I'm not doing those stories. Those stories I don't do them. I write things that would move lots of folks. My stories have to have heart. Quite honestly, this was a very, very simple story I've done. It’s just that it has a lot of heart.

For my interviews with every Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting winners since 2012, go here.