Judy Blume’s timeless classic, Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret, hit theaters at the end of April. I had the pleasure of interviewing Kelly Fremon Craig, the screenwriter/director of the film for LitHub.
Kelly is a master of the craft and Blume isn’t the only author taking notice. She has connected with writing masterminds, such as Dani Shapiro and Adrienne Brodeur, who she visited on Cape Cod to discuss an adaptation of Wild Game(Kelly wasn’t able to take on the project because she was wrapped up in Margaret).
As a writer, I wanted to go beyond the glitz and glamour of Hollywood and get into the nitty gritty of Kelly’s writing process. Spoiler: She sometimes struggles to get words on a page just like the rest of us.
Amy Paturel: Did you always want to be a writer?
Kelly Fremon Craig: Since the time I was very young, I’ve always written in journals and felt like I expressed myself best in writing. But it wasn’t until college that I began to think about writing for a living. I took a short story workshop at Boston College, and while I was there, a friend took me to this funky basement bar in Harvard Square where poets performed their work on stage. I was mesmerized and decided to take a stab at it. But my poems weren’t so much poems as they were monologues. I felt almost like a character would come through me with something to say, and I would just follow that voice.
AP: From writing monologues to arriving in Hollywood. How did that happen?
KFC: Around the time I was writing those poems, I woke up at 3 a.m. with a thought that came out of nowhere: Apply for an internship in Hollywood. I had zero desire to work in the entertainment industry. But something about that early morning wake-up call prompted me to drag myself out of bed, turn on my computer, and apply. I ended up getting that job. That’s where I read my first screenplay. Before long, I put myself through DIY film school, and started writing my first screenplay. I loved the movie Swingers, so I wrote a script that was basically Swingers from the female perspective. It sucked and I abandoned it about 60 pages in, but through that process, I discovered how much I loved playing with characters, scenes, and dialogue.
AP: You sold your first screenplay, Ticket to Ride (which became the movie Post Grad), when you were only 25. What was that like?
KFC: It was a huge learning experience, and that script opened a lot of doors for me. But having that movie made was a tough process. I was very young, and I didn’t know what I was doing, so I got chewed up and spit out. When I went to see the movie, it was almost unrecognizable to me. That was very hard, but looking back, I wouldn’t change it. It thickened my skin, and you need a thick skin to survive this business—to be any kind of writer really.
AP: How did you end up directing?
KFC: The experience with Post Grad made me want to direct. It taught me that the director makes all the decisions about how to execute what’s on the page, and also what should be on the page in the first place. Producers play a part in that, too. The screenwriter, on the other hand, has virtually no power. I wanted to write something I loved and take it from beginning to end, and that meant directing. So I ended up writing The Edge of Seventeen (the 2016 coming-of-age film about a teen who learns self-acceptance, which Fremon Craig also directed).
AP: Do you start with characters or plot?
KFC: I always connect with characters first, and tap into how the plot affects them emotionally. I always start with where it hurts. What are they scared of? What deeper emotional fear is being triggered by the journey? I ask myself what would make it even more painful or difficult or sticky? And I add those layers in. I see myself as the character. I view the world through their eyeballs. Interestingly, when I was in an interview with Judy Blume recently, I discovered that she doesn’t ever see her characters, she only hears them. I don’t see my characters either. But instead of hearing them, I am them. Well, I suppose I hear them too, but more like the way you hear your own voice when you talk.
AP: Tell me about a typical writing day? Is there such a thing as a typical writing day?
KFC: I’ve tried to keep banker’s hours—wake up, eat breakfast, then sit down to write and break for lunch and write again until 6 or 7 p.m. Sometimes that works for me, and it makes me feel like a have a healthy, balanced life. But more often, I write with intensity. I eat/sleep/breathe a project and become all-consumed. I write for 16 hours straight, then wake up the next morning and do it again.
AP: What tricks, tools, or rituals do you use to get the work done?
KFC: For me, the best trick is to get a draft on the page as fast as I can. That means that my first pass is awful—my lines of description are terrible, and my dialogue is skeletal. Then I go back and rewrite, and that’s where I start to really find the story. Also, I always have to have a sense of my ending before I begin. Even if I can’t verbalize it perfectly, I need to know where I’m going. In the beginning, it feels like I’m pushing a rock up a hill, but at some point, I get to the top, and the rock starts rolling down the other side of the hill and then I’m chasing it. That’s a wonderful feeling. I’m always waiting for the chase to begin.
AP: But do you have experiences where you push the rock to the top of the hill and then it stumbles back down that same hill? Tell me that you have those days!
KFC: Oh, absolutely. I have a ton of those days, and they’re the worst. With some projects, I never even get over the hump. But when that happens, it makes me realize there’s a crack in the foundation somewhere—that I’m getting tripped up on details, but the issue is deeper. So I walk away, take a break, and when I come back to it, I can see it with fresh eyes and tackle it from a different angle. Sometimes the thing you need most is just a pair of fresh eyes.
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