R.F. Kuang is 29 and has already published seven novels, including the Nebula-winning Babel, the #1 New York Times bestseller Yellowface, and this year's Katabasis. She trained at Cambridge, Oxford, and Yale. In a recent "How I Write" interview with David Perell, she walked through how she approaches writing scenes, from the physical construction of emotion to why the hardest writing sessions produce her best work.
Granted, Kuang works in prose, not screenplays. But most of what she says translates easily to other areas of writing.
Here are four ideas from the conversation any screenwriter can steal.
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Emotion Is Physiological
If you've ever been in therapy, your therapist might have asked you to be more specific about the emotions you were feeling—for instance, where in the body do they sit? What are the sensations you're getting as a result of emotions?
Kuang does the same with students, which helps them avoid reaching for the same tired emotion words we all might use.
"I passed out these kindergarten-level silhouette diagrams of the human body, and I [said], without reaching for any abstractions, tell me how joyous triumph—suppose you just got a call and you got a promotion. Tell me where that sits in the body. Describe only what is happening on a physical level."
Students reported elevated heart rates, palpitations, butterflies. One student said her toes tingled with joy.
In a novel, a writer would be able to express everything a character is feeling internally, but in a screenplay, you have to think about this on a visual level. Does stress make a character sweat? Does great emotion fill their eyes with tears? Does fear make their gaze dart around? Even when you're limited to what we can see, you can be super creative.
This is the show, don't tell advice you've probably heard before. Instead of writing "She felt scared," write what the body is doing. The shallow breathing, the hand that won't stop moving, or the eyes searching for the exit. Screen actors have to translate action lines into performance. Physiological specificity gives them something to play. We've got a guide for describing character emotions as a starting point.
If You're Stuck, You're Holding Back
Imagine you've come to a scene you can't get past. We've all probably been there for various reasons. Maybe the story isn't gelling, characters aren't behaving how you want them to, or something else. For her part, Kuang says she gets stuck because she's not being honest as a writer.
"Every time I'm stuck on a manuscript, it's because I'm unconsciously holding back, and I'm scared of pushing the scene to where it needs to be, a place of actual emotional honesty."
Her example is Katabasis and a scene in which her depressed protagonist, Alice, shifts from wanting to survive to wanting to live.
Kuang's first draft used what she calls "silly therapy speak" and Alice having a "revelation" that she wanted to continue. That's flat and uninteresting. The scene came alive when Kuang pushed Alice past comfort, into a moment where she finds a dead cat carcass, feels famished at the smell of hot blood, and devours it as a physical embodiment of the choice to fight for life.
Comfortable scenes read as false. That's why we like conflict and surprise. Push your character to the precipice. Check out our creative screenwriting exercises for prompts designed to force you out of comfortable habits.
If Writing Feels Easy, You're Using "Volunteer Words"
Kuang's rule comes from Verlyn Klinkenborg's Several Short Sentences About Writing.
In essence, if writing is coming fast and loose to you, chances are you're reaching for the easy options. Klinkenborg is saying that you're not fully synthesizing thoughts or choosing the interesting way of saying something because you're pulling from what's readily available around you.
Kuang says, "You're repeating discourse that you've seen, that you've read, you're putting down ideas that are easy and simple to digest."
Kuang is not saying to suffer for its own sake. But maybe go for the harder path and challenge yourself.
"Hard writing is when the words are not volunteering themselves. When we actually have to sit there and do the messy and hair-pulling, teeth-pulling work of really thinking about what word combination do I need to articulate this emotion or experience or observation that I have not seen other people write about before."
When a scene pours out fast, that can feel good, but it's often because you're writing what you've already seen written a hundred times. The hard scenes, the ones where you have to build the language from scratch, are usually where your best work lives.
Read a lot, expand your vocabulary. Take in opinions that aren't your own. Widen your worldview. Journal so you can come to your own conclusions and process your emotions in ways only you can.
Kuang also mentions research she did for a fantasy novel about artists. She didn't just look up information about artists. She started going to life drawing classes to learn the craft itself. If you can, do the same. If you're writing about a musician, take a music lesson. If you're writing about a boxer, do a workout. Direct-experience specificity beats research every time.
Voice Can Change Every Time
As you write multiple scripts, you might notice that the way you write changes depending on the story content and genre. Your voice is yours, but it doesn't have to stay the same on every project. (Dan Gilroy confirmed this for me once.)
Kuang doesn't believe in a "default voice" either. Every book she writes has a different one, built by reading research and content in the specific canon.
For instance, Babel leaned on Dickens and Victorian maximalism. Yellowface was written in the rhythm of "an online flame war" because she was chronically online during lockdown and studied the mechanics of viral tweets and online arguments. Her upcoming Taipei Story draws on a meandering stream of consciousness.
"The voice of the narrator is always a very carefully considered conceit to deliver a story in the right way to the reader."
Every screenplay you're writing has a voice of its own. A neo-noir doesn't sound like a family drama. A workplace comedy doesn't sound like a horror film. Learn more about developing your voice as a writer.
