Interview (Part 6): Haley Bartels

My interview with the 2021 Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting winner.

Haley Bartels wrote the original screenplay “Pumping Black” which won a 2021 Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting. Recently, I had the opportunity to chat with Haley 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 6 of a 6 part series to run each day through Saturday, Haley answers some craft questions and offers advice to aspiring screenwriters.

Scott: Let’s talk about story prep. You’ve got your whiteboard. This is from AFI or is this something you picked up over time like these nine story beats or plot points?

Haley: The whiteboard is a new development since I moved in with my boyfriend, who already had it. I live with four comedians. My boyfriend writes half‑hour television. Jacob does sketch. Adam does improv, and Carl is a stand‑up. We have a big whiteboard that’s always got somebody’s ideas on it for something.

When I moved in, it was like, “Ah, great. This is a tool for me to use.” So that’s where I start with my nine beats. The specific structure I use mostly comes from Stan Chervin, my second‑year feature instructor at AFI.

Scott: I know Stan.

Haley: Stan is the best person in the world. I can’t say enough good things about him. He’s one of my heroes and one of my friends.

Scott: Yeah, I interviewed him for the blog.

Haley: Did you?

Scott: It was years ago. He was the first writer on Moneyball.

Haley: Yeah, first draft.

Scott: Okay, let’s talk about your nine story beats. What else? Do you work your way doing a scene by scene outline? Do you do cards? How do you get from nine to wherever you get to before you write?

Haley: Yeah, the nine beats, I’ll do on the whiteboard, and then I’ll move them to a Word document, write them out, and then I’ll sort of do bullet points under each one, just sort of expand like, “OK, here’s what comes in at this sequence,” because I find it’s so much easier to erase and fix when it’s just like a line.

I really had to get over overwriting at AFI. I was always so tempted to be like, “OK, here’s my 25 page outline.”

Then, people will be like, “Well, this whole sequence doesn’t work. Get rid of it and rewrite it.” It’s so much more work to redo that whole thing than to just fix it in the lines and then slowly expand it with each progressive pass.

Scott: How about character development. How do you go about doing that?

Haley: That really comes about in the beats actually, because I’m never really thinking of the beats in terms of plot. The plot is a byproduct of character, and moving your character along their arc.

I think of story very much in like the Pixar sense. I always use Finding Nemo as an example. Marlin has to move from a place of fear to a place of trust. Every single one of those nine beats, we’re moving him along that journey.

For me, that is where character comes in. Each of those beats is coupled with a choice, and choice is character.

Scott: You mentioned Finding Nemo. I’m a Pixar freak. When you identify where a character starts off, you can often spin things one-hundred-and-eighty degrees, so if it’s a unity arc, that can give you an initial sense of where they end up. Then those key moments which spur the character’s growth along their journey.

Haley: Exactly. God, I could talk about Pixar all day. And then, within each of those beats, there’s vacillation between fear‑trust.

Marlin, he trusts Dory to go to the sharks, and oh, actually, the sharks aren’t that bad, but, oh, no, actually, they are really bad. Go back to the flaw, oh, no, but in order to surpass the next obstacle I have to blindly but my trust in Dory again…

And I’m not saying my script does that anywhere close to as effectively as what Pixar does, but it’s really helpful to have the greats in mind when you’re thinking about crafting story, theme and character.

Scott: Okay, we touched on it before, but let’s talk about scene description, action description. You mentioned you really enjoy writing it. Maybe unpack that a little bit. What are you going for when you’re writing a scene description?

Haley: Well, part of it is that I come from a prose background. I love language. I love finding the perfect verb, the punchiest verb that doesn’t just tell you what’s happening, but gives you the feel of the language, so as to almost have this onomatopoeia effect and be as visceral as possible.

I take a lot of joy in that, in trying to write as viscerally as possible so that the action lines convey feeling. I feel like, at least in my work, so much of the character is in the action.

Maybe people gloss over it sometimes, but I always appreciate those moments, little moments in a script that are just a glance between characters.

We see that they’re picking at their cuticles or doing some little charactery‑something that informs their state without someone saying, “I’m anxious,” right? I mean it’s Show, Don’t Tell‑101.

Scott: Yeah, I tell my students all the time: Movies are primarily a visual medium. I wrote an article on my blog about this, that when you think about scene description, it’s more like poetry than prose. If we’re thinking of those really precise use of language like you talk about verbs.

Verbs are so powerful, right? And vivid descriptors. Use language, like a poet, minimal words, maximum impact. Scene description as poetry.

Haley: I think you’re totally right. I take my thing back, you said it better. It is more like poetry, because I think a poet will do the same thing where they’ll sit there, and they’ll try and find the perfect word that conveys the feeling.

Not just for rhyme, but scansion, for feeling, for texture, for the way that the word feels in your mouth when you say it. Yeah, totally. I think that’s spot on.

Scott: Let me ask you one last question: What advice can you offer to aspiring screenwriters about learning the craft and trying to break into the business?

Haley: One of the things that I always turn back to is William Goldman, “Adventures in the Screen Trade”: “Nobody knows anything.”

Nobody knows what’s going to be a hit. All of us, not just us film people, but humans in general, none of us really know what we’re doing. We’re kind of just fumbling around in the dark, trying to make the best life possible.

Only you really know what you’re good at, and what your script is about.

Sometimes people are right — if someone says your protagonist needs to be active in the scene, probably they’re right. Sometimes, they’re not. Sometimes — rarely, but sometimes — you can pull off a passive protagonist if you’re good enough, or if you’re doing it with intention and purpose.

My second piece of advice is get therapy. Therapy is the best. It really is the best.

Then, I would also say, and it’s the oldest piece of advice in the world, but keep reading, keep writing.

Read as many scripts as possible, and, yeah, just write things, finish them and rewrite them. Oh, my God, you have to rewrite. A first draft is never good. A second draft is probably also never good. My Nicholl draft, I think was like an eighth or a ninth draft. And I have rewritten it more since then.

Just keep rewriting, keep getting notes, but also know which notes are good for the story that you are trying to tell. Because something might be an incredibly enticing note, but it’s not the right note for your story.

And the more that you read and write and the more that you think about your script and know exactly what you’re trying to say, the better you will be at parsing those notes.

My last piece of advice is keep submitting to things. Keep trying. I almost didn’t submit to the Nicholl this year, because I was so burnt out on rejection. But luckily my boyfriend badgered me enough that I took one last swing, and thank goodness for that, because it paid off.

I think be judicious with where you’re spending your money. You know, the Nicholl is obviously a great one. There are a few others that are worthwhile as well.

Just keep trying. I went through so much rejection before I won. It really is just about rolling enough dice to get that lucky combination of readers. Just keep trying.

For Part 1 of the interview, go here.

For Part 2, go here.

For Part 3, go here.

For Part 4, go here.

For Part 5, go here.

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

For my interviews with Black List writers, go here.