Interview (Part 6): Kate Marks

My interview with the 2020 Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting winner.

Kate Marks wrote the original screenplay “The Cow of Queens” which won a 2020 Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting. Recently, I had the opportunity to chat with Kate 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, Kate provides advice to aspiring screenwriters and filmmakers.

Scott: I want to ask you about how you go about developing your characters. I read an interview with you, and you said something I thought was interesting, “I love to stare at people. I want to peek in their ears, study the stains on their shirts, scrutinize their split ends, and examine the texture of their hands.” That visual acuity there — stains on their shirts, textures of their hands — that’s going to start telling the story of the character, isn’t it?

Kate: Yes, definitely.

Scott: How do you go about developing characters, then?

Kate: It’s a lot of people watching. I’ve actually gotten called out and yelled at a couple times for staring at people on the train. With “The Cow of Queens” I would always go to the same coffee shop and write looking out the same window onto Queens Boulevard where I would watch a constant stream of people going by.

I love seeing real people, the details and the quirks that they have. I pay really close attention to them. Sometimes, I write in the character’s voice and I journal as the character.

I find when I can run on the page for a little bit, the character will take on a life of its own. After I find the character’s voice, then I go in and shape the character’s journey with more of a critical eye towards things like wound, flaw, want, and need.

But I have to identify those after I’ve listened to the character for a little bit. If I start from that place, then I feel like I’m just filling in the boxes, almost like I’m Frankensteining it. I prefer to let the character emerge from the page.

Scott: I remember interviewing Robin Swicord. She said that there is this little dance she does. Her answer was specifically about writing dialogue. She said, there’s receptive writing and there’s executive writing.

The receptive writing is where you’re allowing the words, the flow, the characters into your consciousness to play around with them, allow them the freedom to emerge on the page, but then there’s the executive thing like, “What you were just saying? Where you just kind of step out of the story universe and you tweak this and shape this?”

Is that a pretty accurate appraisal of what your process is like in terms of character development and finding your voice?

Kate: Yeah, I love that. I love separating those into two different steps. Because I think that the executive writing does help you craft the character and track their journey as they move through the arc of the script, but if I start with executive writing, then my character’s just kind of flat.

Scott: Perfect world, ten years from now, what are you doing?

Kate: I’ve written and directed three features, and I’m working on the next one. I’m growing and stretching myself to find new ideas and ways of impacting audiences.

Scott: Hopefully this project goes forward and gets made. It’ll be a great double feature with First Cow, the Kelly Reichardt movie.

Kate: [laughs] Yeah.

Scott: That would be an awesome double feature.

Kate: Yeah. It could be a whole festival.

Scott: MooFest.

Kate: Yeah. [laughs]

Scott: Final question: What advice can you offer an aspiring filmmaker?

Kate: I would offer them two different sides of something. One is to be very disciplined in your writing process and to try to make that process as systematic as possible — when you write, where you write, for how long you write without any interruptions. It’s important to be very rigid about the time and space of when and where you’re writing. And you must do it every day.

But the other side is that, you must keep finding the joy and the pleasure and the fun in your work. Hold onto what delights you within your writing process, especially when you are writing about something hard. Don’t buy into those tropes that say writing should be torture. Let your writing process be delightful and it will liberate your voice.

That last piece of advice is one of the most on-point and succinct takes that echoes what I tell my film school students: Discipline. Joy. You need both.

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.

Kate is repped by The Kaplan Stahler Agency and The Radmin Company.

Here website: LINK.

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

For my interviews with Black List writers, go here.