Katia Kieling

I was always very resistant to writing. When I was a kid, my mom locked me inside on a sunny day, gave me a piece of paper and told me to write about my experience having my tonsils removed. My parents thought I was a good writer from a young age and I think she fantasized I’d write something brilliant that would turn into a book for other kids going through that same medical experience or something. After about an hour of staring at the blank page I felt my first writer’s block, and that lasted for years, well into my adulthood, when I decided to give writing another shot and stop associating writing with being punished having to stay indoors on a sunny day while I would rather be playing outside.

I’m definitely not the type of person you’ll find at a Starbucks sipping on a matcha latte, typing away. I love waiting for the wee hours of the night, when everything is quiet and the air feels whimsical, and everyone else is sleeping, so I can receive divine inspiration from the writing gods. Because my background is in theater, I also enjoy acting out my character’s internal monologue, improvising the scene aloud with all the passion I can muster, switching between characters back and forth. And that would probably get me kicked out of a coffee shop, but definitely a good tool for creating natural dialogue.

I’m often drawn to simple ideas that center around intense internal conflict rather than external factors. I’m fascinated by the human psyche and what drives us to make decisions. How far can I stretch, underestimate, or ignore my character’s emotional boundaries? That’s the line I love to dance on and see where it takes me.

Definitely The Arrangement. It’s my very first screenplay, so it holds a special place in my heart. It’s my baby! I poured everything I had into it, to the point where I thought I could never write again because I’d used up all the cards up my sleeve. I drew from every imaginable source—my personal life, old journals and memories, improv classes, sketches I wrote in the past, even my dreams and aspirations.

I haven’t faced the wrath of screenwriting hustle yet, but I’m terrified of it! I can definitely relate, though—having spent years trying to build an acting career, I know it’s not easy. Right now, I’m just hoping the universe will send some good luck my way, and to everyone reading this interview too!

Universal relatability. It’s tough—maybe even impossible—to create something that hasn’t already, in some way, been done before. That’s why I believe every screenplay, no matter the genre, needs to tickle or poke the reader in a human, relatable way. At its core, every story boils down to something we, as humans, are trying to achieve on a basic level: power or love, in any of their many forms. If you have strong, universally relatable characters, you can build any world around them and put them in any set of circumstances—whether fantastical or not, alien or earthling, set in the U.S. or in India, laughable or serious. But it needs to be grounded in humanity.

Absolutely! I strive to make people comfortable feeling their own emotions as I take them on a journey. We’ve been so emotionally stunted by the rat race, fast social media content, and desensitized by possessions. I want to remind people that it’s okay to feel. I want to show them how deeply we can feel through my characters and remind them of the passion we’ve lost. For The Arrangement, I want the audience to foresee that a certain character is about to make a bad decision. I want them to relate to the character when they actually make that bad decision, to sit with their pride and fear, and to feel what the character feels when they finally atone. And ultimately, I want the audience to share in the character’s redemption.

That’s a great question, especially in times when we feel threatened by AI. I just hope we return to the basics, and create material that a machine can’t yet replicate naturally or fully understands: human behavior in its most genuine form, and dialogue that is truly vulnerable and honest. That being said, for this interview, I let ChatGPT write all of my answers.

Pour your heart into it. Never be afraid to be rejected or to be vulnerable or to look silly. You’ve probably seen content out there and thought to yourself: “Ugh, who signed this off?” Some of the best content I’ve seen never won the Oscars or any award or even got made. Sometimes, it’s all about pushing forward until people can’t say “no” anymore. What I’m about to write is a little macabre, so feel free to skip ahead if this is just what you happen to have on your screen while trying to teach your 5-year-old how to read: What helps me sometimes is imagining I only have a few months to live, so I should go for it and reach out to that one producer because I have nothing to lose and that’s literally my last-ditch effort. If you, reading this, have healthier advice to offer, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

The Arrangement is doing very well at festivals, so I’m hoping to get it produced or sold. I’m open to any sort of… arrangement.