Interview with Kara Holden

Screenwriter Kara Holden has three feature projects in development, and her first spec—Meant to Be—will begin shooting this summer. A former actress, her specialties range from family and action comedy to romantic comedy.

How has your acting background helped you as a writer?

Q. [Acting] has given me insight into characters in a very different way.
A. When I was acting I would go to auditions and they give you sides [to read], and … I would be like, “Nobody in the history of the world has ever said this line. Nobody would say this. People don’t talk like this. It doesn’t feel like it’s coming from a real place. It feels like its coming from an agenda of someone who wants the scene to go a certain way and so this is how [he is] going to move it—through this dialogue.”

I wouldn’t say that I start with dialogue. I don’t. But I think it is hugely important that your characters sound real, that they talk like real people, that you’re constantly checking yourself, that the dialogue that you’re allowing them to say is coming from a real place and not from a place that you are trying to manipulate the scene or the story. It’s such a balance.

No actor wants to play a 2-dimensional character. No matter how small the role. Actors want to play rich, varied, interesting human beings. They don’t want to play caricatures.

Q. What is your secret to writing believable, three-dimensional characters?
A. [I like] the whole idea of [holding] secrets … for your characters, and [deciding] what you allow them to actually say, and how [to] keep it from being expositional when they say it.

I feel like the people that I know, real people, always have what they think are flaws and maybe issues that seem like they may be bad things, but in reality make them who they are. … I [am] always searching for what makes us really human, our weaknesses, and how we overcome them and turn them into strengths.

I keep a notebook in my purse. I am a big thief. I’ll hear of some situation or some little piece of dialogue or a little piece of conversation between people, and I write it down. And it inspires me. I think life has so much comedy in it, I love to steal from it.

Q. What is the best way to keep balance in your screenplay when writing comedy?
A. Comedy has to come from a real place or else that’s where it goes off balance. The thing that we might think is funny is very real to the character it’s happening to.

I learned a really huge lesson about comedy from one of my teachers early on in college. I wrote what I thought was a very dramatic—borderline tragic—story about a married couple who with all the ups and downs they had been going through at one point they didn’t have enough money to eat. It was all about how they [would] split their Ramen noodles between them. To me, I felt like it was real drama. And my teacher said the next day, "This is the funniest piece I ever read. I was almost crying, I was laughing so hard, at this couple dividing their noodles, noodle by noodle."

Q. Do you write characters that are similar to or different from you?
A. I think they’re all very similar. At least they struggle with similar things that I struggle with or they have similar hopes that I have, or they have similar feelings in many ways.

Truly and the coolest thing about writing, which always kind of freaks me out in a great way, is how the characters, as you write them … they almost always come alive on their own, and say things that you completely don’t expect them to say or do things that you completely don’t expect them to do. That’s exciting because you are off the map and on a ride, and hopefully if you know your character well enough, you can follow that and still stay true to the story.

The first thing that I wrote that got me the attention of my agent and manager was a one-act play called “Writers Block,” and it was all about a character who comes to life and refuses to do what the writer wants her to do. He’s writing a film noir and he wants her to kill someone, and she’s like, “I’m not a murderer.” So, there’s this whole struggle between them. … By the end of the play, she ends up shooting and killing [the writer].”

Q. How do you approach writing characters for a new project?
A. I always start from theme, actually, and what is it I am hoping that the characters will learn.

When I come up with my characters I write a page about what is their arc going to be, where they are starting, where I want them to end up, and then what beats they should hit along the way. A little guideline. Even hopefully my smallest characters in some way will have some arc that relates to the theme.