Interview (Part 6): Tim Ware-Hill

My interview with the 2022 Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting winner.

Tim Ware-Hill wrote the original screenplay “Tyrone and The Looking Glass” which won a 2022 Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting. I had the opportunity to chat with Tim about his creative background, his award-winning script, the craft of screenwriting, and what winning the Nicholl Award has meant to him.

Today in Part 6 of a 6-part series to run each day through Saturday, Tim offers advice to screenwriters.

Scott: Congratulations again. A few craft questions for you. What about your writing process. Do you break story? Outline? What’s your prep process like?

Tim: I tend to outline all my scripts. I use it as a roadmap. I want to know where I’m starting and where I’m trying to end. Sometimes I know the ending before I know anything else. I’m like, “That’s where I want to get to.” Now the fun part is how do I get there? I’ll outline the script first. The outline is literally just suggestion.

What I mean by that is I can go very detailed within my outlines, but once I start writing, my characters tell me what direction they want to go in. I have the template, the outline there as a reference to go. These are certain bits I need to hit, but I don’t always stay on the same path. I think of it like a GPS. When I was living in LA, I…

Scott: The Thomas Guide?

Tim: I just missed the Thomas Guide, but the Thomas Guide isn’t a good example. I was there for MapQuest when we used to have to print out our directions. You type it in and you print out the map on your paper and you drive down the street like this.

The thing is that like Thomas Guide or as they were figuring out GPS at that time because half the time the directions were wrong on MapQuest, there’s more than one way to get to the same destination. I’d like to have the freedom to do that.

Like I said, I write a very detailed outline but I don’t want to be beholden to just that. I want my characters to tell me which avenue, which street, which lane they want to go in. Do want to go left? We can still get there. It might take a little longer, or we can go to the right. It’s a little shorter, but it might not be as fun.

Scott: It reminds me of Neil Simon had that thing. He said, “I used to outline on the yellow legal pad really specific. After a while, the characters would just start to wander off the page.” You have to have the freedom to do that, which leads me to…

Tim: You have to have the freedom.

Scott: You have an acting background. You say, because of that, you really understood characters and dialogue. How do you go about developing characters and how does your experience, say, having been an actor for so many years, inform that process?

Tim: Like acting, you have to go beyond what’s on the page in developing character. You’ve got to know who they are, really know who they are. Not just what they do. [laughs] Not just their occupation or what they’re trying to achieve in your film.

You’ve got to understand a little bit of the psychology of them. What are their fears? What are their wants? What are their desires? What are they afraid of and why are they afraid of it? Whether or not you ever mention it, it’s going to inform how they…

If they have anxiety, they might pick up a pencil and write in their journal. They might write life is so wonderful in their journal or in the notes in class, but you see that there are bite marks on their pencil. It’s telling me, “Oh, you’re not being honest right now. You’re not happy. You’re anxious. What are you anxious about?”

It informs the deeper you dive into the character’s psychology. That’s also in part to years of therapy for myself. Look, therapy is a great investment, especially if you’re going to be a writer or an actor. It’s great for life. If you’re going to be a writer or an actor and you think your life is great, great. Still see a therapist.

They will help you to dive deeper into who you are, which gives you the tools to dive deeper into your characters. When you understand deeply who they are, it truly informs how they move about the world that you’re creating for them.

Scott: I’m gratified to hear how you approach that. It’s like a series of questions. With my students, we do tons of character development and brainstorming. Literally, one of the exercises is you’re the psychiatrist. You’re in a room with your character. You just reframe what they say as a question. Just get them answering and get them engaged in the conversation.

Tim: Questions are important. Questions, for me, is curiosity. I think in order to be a writer, you have to have a lot of curiosity. You need to be curious about the world and things in the world.

When you think of a child, “What’s this? Oh, what’s that? Oh, how do I do this? Let me try that. I’m going to put that in my mouth. I’m going to stick that in my nose. Oh, I don’t want to do that again.”

There’s a question. Why did that hurt? Why did that make me laugh? What is that on the ground? I remember walking through Central Park with my friend years ago and her child, who was maybe two. It was the fall. There were leaves on the ground. She stepped on her first leaf. She felt the crunch beneath her feet.

Her eyes went, “What was that?” Then she found another leaf. Did it again and was like, “Oh, that’s what that was. Let me do that again. That was cool.” That’s the curiosity. That’s the questioning. I think that’s an important part of the process, is this curiosity. The questions and to ask the questions and to explore the answers of things that you’re even afraid to explore.

Scott: That’s great. I want to talk about the dialogue. Your dialogue in the script is terrific. I was reminded of the great playwright, August Wilson, who was asked once, “You write such great dialogue. How do you do that?” His answer was, “I don’t. They do.”

I think he taught at Yale toward the end of his life. He’d be walking along in New Haven. All of a sudden, the character he’d written 25 years ago would pop up. He’d catch up with them. I would imagine it may be something like that for you, where you get to know the character so well, the dialogue spills out.

Is that an accurate appraisal of how you…?

Tim: It is. You know the character so well that the dialogue spills out. You start to hear their voice. You hear their cadence. I’m a very musical person, so I hear the rhythm of which they speak as well, not just the language that they speak. I hear the rhythm of it.

Each character has a different cadence, as well as what they say, what words they choose to use, and how repetitive they are in those words. Like that. There are certain people, they can’t go through an entire sentence without saying, “You know what I mean?”

Based on where they grew up, they go, “Like. But you have to move around the world like, like there’s nothing going on. You know what I’m saying, like?” That’s a part of it. The other part of it is listening to people, real people. [laughs] Just listening, observing. Shutting your mouth, sitting back, and just observe how people talk to one another.

I still have to be careful of that. That’s where the rewrite’s coming in. The poet in me can be very poetic in my dialogue sometimes. Then my husband is like, “That don’t sound like a real person in this moment.” Then I have to go back and go, “Damn, I love what I said, but since I’m not writing prose, I need to rewrite this.”

I could still say it in an eloquent way, but I need to make sure it’s grounded in some reality. Then there are moments when you stylize, and it has to be on purpose, where you purposely stylized a character’s language. You want that poetry to come out. You want them to be philosophical, metaphorical, and all the isms.

That comes in, once again, to who is your character? [laughs] Who are they? Why do they speak this way? Tyrone has a little bit of his father’s language, but he has a slightly elevated and more educated way of speaking than his father as well.

We establish that he’s a smart kid, which is why he was asked to integrate the school. He could represent the Black community in a light they wanted to be representative in.

Scott: I’ve got one last question for you. What advice do you have for someone who’s trying to learn the craft, and hopefully, break into the business as a film or TV writer?

Tim: Just write. [You don’t have to know the craft to start. You don’t. You don’t have to know the craft to start. You can learn the craft. You should learn it, but that shouldn’t stop you from writing because you still have a story to tell. We all have different ways of telling it.

The way one person tells their story is not necessarily how you have to tell your story. My advice to any writers or aspiring writers. There were two guys that came to me at the end of the Nicholl ceremony. They were like, “We’re aspiring writers. I’ve written a few things. What advice do you have for me?” I said, “Well, first, stop calling yourself an aspiring writer. Call yourself a writer. That’s number one.

You say you’ve written something. If you’ve written something, you’ve already done more than most people have because most people are too afraid to put a pen to pad or a finger to key, or a voice to phone to dictate. Most people are afraid of that.

If you’ve already done that, then you’re not aspiring. You’re not an aspiring writer. You are a writer. You may be aspiring to have your work produced or aspiring to have it seen or aspiring to have it made, or what have you, but you are not an aspiring writer. You are a writer. That’s the advice I would leave people.

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.

Tim is repped by The Gotham Group.

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