Interview (Part 6): 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 6 of a 6-part series to run each day through Saturday, Kayla shares advice for writers attempting to break into the Hollywood screenwriter profession.

Scott: And are you at any point creating treatments or is it all in your head?

Kayla: I don’t have treatments or outlines, but I have a Google Doc for every story. And when I have something, I write them down, but it’s not super organized. It’s just bits of plots and thoughts.

Scott: OK, so now I’m thinking from what I hear, because like when you were talking about the origin of this story, it originated with characters, right?

Kayla: Yeah.

Scott: Is that accurate? Is that often where the stories come from?

Kayla: Oh, not with others, but this one was strictly from the character.

Scott: OK, so how do you go from…there’s a character in your mind, you have an idea for this character, how do you then find them? How do you then develop them? Is it more of a process of you interacting with them or you are more intentional about it, you know what I mean? Is it more of an outside in approach or is it inside out?

Kayla: It’s more like I’m an outside person. I’m just a set of eyes looking at the characters. I don’t really experience the characters myself.

Scott: Yeah.

Kayla: I never rushed to write a story. I just let them live in my mind, but sometimes I’ll get inspired. I’ll suddenly think, for example, what if that character lives here and starts their lives here? And this is what they’re going to do, what they’re going to experience.

I had some failed attempts with Velare at first. Like I had the story of her living on the border of America and Mexico. That story just completely didn’t work out. But then I put her out again and then thought about a simpler love story. And then when it worked, I kept thinking about it.

Scott: These two, you can see why people wanted them to be together in your script. Now the dialogue, you got a good ear for it, I think. I mean, would you say you have a good ear for dialogue? Because I loved reading your dialogue in the script.

Kayla: Ah, thank you. Actually, I’m not sure. You know, I’m Chinese. Sometimes when I read my own writing in English, I feel like some dialogue might be awkward. I thought it was OK for this one because it’s a fairy tale and they just have to convey what they’re trying to say, but it doesn’t have to be super organic all the time. I felt like I was allowed to let them say weird things.

Scott: I think you’re trilingual. Is that right?

Kayla: Yeah.

Scott: What languages? English and…?

Kayla: English, Chinese and Japanese.

Scott: OK. All right. So what about the theme? Do you think about the theme and if so how do you think about it in terms of your storytelling?

Kayla: Yeah. Theme is what I will consciously think about because it’s also one of the most important things to me. Once I have certain characters and certain plots I will use the theme as the guideline to decide what I should leave out and what I should keep. Because, I want my stories to have good meaningful themes.

If I write something but then realize they’re just not contributing to the character arc and especially not related to the theme, those are something that I will cut out.

Scott: Do you think in terms of trying to find a central theme like one key theme for a story?

Kayla: Yeah, I do that. It’s usually one key theme.

Scott: What about when you’re writing a scene? Like, what are your goals when you write a scene?

Kayla: I realized that when I write scenes, this was not a conscious decision at first, but then once I thought about it, I actually try to go by it. I want my scene to start and end at different places.

A lot of good writing is, you start a scene thinking that they’re feeling this way, but by the end they’re feeling completely different. I like my scenes to be like that, to have some kind of change in the middle and I usually only allow myself a few scenes where nothing changes.

Scott: You say you’re writing a novel. Is this the first novel for you?

Kayla: First novel, yeah.

Scott: So, OK, it’s similar writing to screenwriting, but it’s different.

Kayla: Oh, it’s so different, especially when I’m not a native speaker. It’s actually much, much harder.

Scott: OK, so maybe let’s talk a bit about that. What do you find hard about writing a novel?

Kayla: When I first imagine the stories, they’re usually in screenplay format, but I sometimes ask myself, could this story be a novel? And when I thought about “Boy, Girl, Fig,” I thought it could be a novel. That’s why I started to write this. But I think as a novel, I want the flow and the wording to really pull people in so each word has more responsibility. As opposed to a screenplay, where I just need to describe what they’re seeing, what they’re saying. With a novel, I think I have higher standards. So I spend more time just crafting each sentence, each word.

Scott: And how far along are you in writing this novel now?

Kayla: I basically have a full draft, but it’s a first draft, so it’s not good enough. I’m doing rewrites every day.

Scott: And you want to share the storyline for it or the logline or premise?

Kayla: It’s the same as the screenplay.

Scott: Oh, is that right? OK. I have one last question. I always ask this question, which is, what’s the single best piece of advice you could offer someone who is an aspiring screenwriter?

Kayla: One of the best advice that got me off my feet was don’t wait for something to happen. Don’t wait for permissions. Do something active. Do something that you can control.

In this industry there’s a lot of waiting around. And writers can’t control that. But what you can control is you sit down and you write the next one. It keeps you in a good mentality and it keeps you in control of your life and you can always create more when you try to do that.

Here is Kayla delivering his acceptance speech at the Nicholl Award ceremony.

For Part 1, go here.

Part 2, here.

Part 3, here.

Part 4, here.

Part 5, here.

Kayla is repped by Bellevue Productions.

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