Interview (Part 2): Kayla Sun

My interview with the 2023 Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting winner.

Kayla Sun wrote the original screenplay “Boy, Girl, Fig” which won a 2023 Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting. Recently, I had the opportunity to chat with Kayla about her creative background, her award-winning script, the craft of screenwriting, and what winning the Nicholl Award has meant to her.

Today in Part 2 of a 6-part series to run each day through Saturday, Kayla shares insights into the two central characters in her script “Boy, Girl, Fig”.

Scott: This is how you introduce Aden in the story. This is from the script:

“Aden, 7, Asian, sitting astride a tree branch, his soulful almond-shaped eyes staring wistfully at the other kids walking away. He seems curious but reserved, the kind of boy who believes every fairy tale you tell him.”

Could you describe this little boy, Aden, beyond just the fact that he has this condition where people, they’re close to him, he’s invisible. Beyond that, maybe give us a little bit more of an understanding of who this boy is.

Kayla: Aden is naturally very curious and very outgoing. He loves human beings and wants to interact with others. He finds energy by interacting with people. But because he was born with this condition and his parents kept warning him as he was growing up, don’t get close to people, they will treat you like a weirdo. That suppressed the outgoing nature of him.

Scott: And he’s got this precocious knowledge, these bits of insight, like right off the bat on page four, he’s saying, “but my point is fig does have flowers. I read it in a book yesterday. Their flowers just grow inward, there’re the sticky things you see when you cut a fig open. Isn’t that interesting? Do they teach that in school?”

Because he’s homeschooled at this point, I thought that was interesting. I don’t know if you were intentional about it, but Joseph Campbell talks about the hero’s journey being an inner journey, and that in some respects I was anticipating, well, that’s what this story is going to be. They’re going to find the metaphorical flower inside. Was that intentional on your part?

Kayla: Yes.

Scott: It was a lovely, lovely image.

Kayla: Thank you.

Scott: And then let’s talk about Velare. This is how she’s described and introduced in the script. This is Velare, 7, Asian, detached and reticent. Her hair cut short haphazardly, an intense mixture of childishness and insensitivity.

Again, going beyond her special condition where she can, when she touches someone see into the future, in particular the way they die, she’s a quite different personality than Aden. Could you maybe describe a little bit more about her character?

Kayla: Yeah, Velare is insensitive in nature already. She likes to find meaning in things. She’s very introverted. She wants to see into the future and she wouldn’t do something if she thinks it is pointless. And at a young age, she believed that she wished these people dead. That enhanced the insensitive side of her. Made her feel like, I don’t care about people and it’s better that way because they’re going to die anyways. That created this very sociopath personality of her so she… she does feel things and she does care but it’s just she doesn’t know that she cares.

Scott: Yeah, she bottles it up. She’s defensive in that respect. And interestingly enough, that’s a similar dynamic to Aden’s parents who are trying to keep Aden safe because of the irony that if he gets close to someone, then he starts to disappear.

Kayla: Yeah.

Scott: And so there is a similar dynamic there. The first nine pages of the script are so compelling. You employ an interesting cinematic device. You’re showing Aden at home with his family, concurrent with Velare at home with her family. These cross cuts, this rising tension towards something.

In fact, Velare’s parents are dead. When she’s taken away by social services, there’s that last little moment with Aden where she says, “Don’t ever let me see you again.” Did you always have that beginning in mind, where it’s this very dramatic end point of that opening sequence?

Kayla: Yeah, I always saw that. No matter what kind of note I got, I couldn’t move the beginning away from that.

Scott: It’s very cinematic. You may see yourself you’re a writer first and director next, but you got the director chops, it seems to me.

Another interesting narrative choice you made: At first, you tell the story from the perspective of Aden. Title card: PART ONE: BOY. Later, Title card: PART TWO: GIRL.

So you pivot, you literally shift the point of view. Was that always something you had in mind?

Kayla: Yeah. With this version of the story I knew I wanted to switch the perspective in the middle. It was a hard decision because early on, I often get feedback that once they get to the girl’s perspective, they already knew some of the things that they would go through. But I just insisted.

Scott: Well, those people evidently haven’t seen Rashomon.”

[laughter]

Because this is a wonderful use of that similar thing. I mentioned that line: “Don’t ever let me see you again.” In this second appearance, a callback, the line takes on a whole different other meaning. You realize that later on, from her perspective, she thinks that Aden is an imaginary friend. That’s how she’s been treating him all along. Was that a thing that you had in mind or was that early on or did that evolve in your writing?

Kayla: No, that also was something I knew early on because it only made sense that way. Because when Velare was a kid and she saw this boy who’s like a little transparent, of course she was going to think that.

Scott: You think he’s invisible, like an imaginary friend? It was such a great twist. I was like, “Oh, yeah, that makes so much sense.”

Let’s talk about the invisibility. Aden becomes invisible when people care about him. But the way you handle it, it’s not just black and white invisible. It’s like, 75 percent or 40 percent or 30 percent. You also switch it. Sometimes the invisible is from Aden’s POV and then sometimes from other people’s. I bet that was a little challenging for you to try and figure out how to handle those invisible moments and stages.

Kayla: Yeah, actually because I think a lot of people will have questions like how does this work? I made up the rule that anything that relies the gravity on Aden will disappear with him and when people start to care about him they will start to see him fading. When you love Aden, then you can’t see him at all.

So, there’s progress. I had a writer’s group when I was working on the script, and through a conversation they had about the rules of invisibility, they were saying just like, play around with it, like play with some objects. That’s when I saw the balloon behind his head and thought that would be funny.

Scott: That was great because that’s one of those things you set up these little mysteries. I mean, he’s walking around, he’s got a balloon attached to his collar, and then you go home and you see the whole reason behind it. It’s his grandfather who handed the balloons to him and the family realized that they could see the floating balloons even when they couldn’t see him.

Kayla: Yeah.

Here is the video where the 2023 Nicholl Fellows found out their scripts had been selected as winners.

Tomorrow in Part 3, Kayla talks about how being a fan of detective stories influenced some key choices in writing “Boy, Girl, Fig.”

For Part 1, go here.

Kayla is repped by Bellevue Productions.

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