Chatting with Creatives: Alex D. Reid
It’s taken a while to get to this post, thanks to the delay of masters assignments, but we’re finally here. CwC is an interview series hoping to promote the voices of young creatives who’re just starting their journeys in the Industry, and we have an awesome inaugural interview to kick it all off!
Almost two weeks ago I had the fantastic opportunity to speak with Alex D. Reid, who you can follow on Twitter @AlexDReid1. The young screenwriter from Northern Ireland is nothing short of prolific, and has found himself a finalist in several competitions in a variety of genres since he began writing in earnest. But he never imagined that he’d be walking away a winner of the Horror category at the Austin Film Festival this year, and at just 21-years-old.
This, by his own account, feels quite surreal. Compounding the feeling of the pleasantly bizarre, Alex also secured a manager at the festival, and currently has his foot jammed determinedly into the front door of the Industry. We had a chat about all things writing, process and inspiration, and the abridged transcription’s below.
I heartily encourage you all to read his screenplay which took the win, Delirium: On the run from an apocalyptic plague and desperate for supplies, a crew of scavengers adrift in the South Pacific uncover an alien artefact that corrupts their minds, leading them farther from sanity, but closer to that which lies far below the waves.
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Cameron:
First I’ve gotta ask, how was Austin?
Alex:
Yeah, it was good. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it was a little bit quieter than I thought it was going to be, which was good. I saw a few good movies, went to a lot of panels, a lot of different hotels, drank a lot of alcohol, you know.
Cameron:
And you’re doing a Masters now? How’s it going?
Alex:
It’s going well, there’s a lot of reading, as was to be expected. I think I’m up to three novels a week.
Cameron:
That’s kinda crazy, and leads to my next question. Has it affected your writing schedule at all?
Alex:
I think if I weren’t prepared it probably would. I’m a big fan of to do lists. I try to do 50 pages a day which works out pretty well because 50 times by seven, 350, that’s most of the novels done. So, if I do that every day, and segment everything out with to do lists, it’s fine. If I didn’t do that, I honestly have no idea how I would get through all this stuff.
Cameron:
Talking about getting through stuff, what’s your writing process like? How do you prep?
Alex:
It changes every time. Sometimes I’ll do a 30-page treatment and then sometimes I just have an idea and think “That’ll do.” and I’ll sort of jump into it. I know that’s a little bit unknowingly abstract.
Honestly, I’ve done every form of outlining under the sun. I’ve read quite a lot of screenwriting books and I agree with almost none of them in terms of…well, I think everyone’s a little bit different, and that sometimes [screenwriting books] are a little bit too prescriptive. The general method I’ve settled on is I’ll have an opening, a turn to act 2, a midpoint, a turn to act 3 and a finale. That’s pretty much my bare bones. And then it will change depending on the project. That’s how I start everything though.
Cameron:
You’ve had a lot of competition success in a ton of different genres. I guess you don’t subscribe to the idea of sticking with one genre exclusively?
Alex:
I describe myself as genre agnostic, although I think that’s more of a reality in writing when I’m not being paid. I mean, I’m at the very, very start of this business, if it ever turns out to be a profession. I’ve already learned that the general wisdom seems to be that you pick a lane and you stay in it for a time and then you can move out into different things.
Cameron:
Is there a genre you’re just terrible at? That you find really hard to write?
Alex:
The only thing I am terrible at writing is comedy. I’m God awful at comedy. That’s the only script I’ve ever deleted completely. I have endless admiration for a comedy writer who can keep their sanity, honestly.
Cameron:
Turning to Delirium. Your submission for the AFF horror category was great, and well worth the read. What was the inspiration for the script?
Alex:
Thank you very much. It was kind of a confluence of two different things. For my undergrad dissertation I was writing about Lovecraft in film, so that was kind of percolating in my head. And then I happened to see a video on YouTube by a channel called The Art Assignment, they were talking about the most remote places on planet earth, and they brought up something called Point Nemo. I suppose those two wires kind of crossed in my head. I believe that was in early January of this year.
Cameron:
How did you go about developing the script?
Alex:
I don’t think I fleshed it out terribly much in outline. I knew how it started. I knew how it ended. I knew the mid points. Once I had that I just started writing.
Cameron:
I’ve always been jealous of people who do the more freeform approach, speaking as an obsessive planner.
Alex:
Well, I think inevitably people wonder if it’s faster to be spontaneous. And I feel like that’s not necessarily true, because if you’ve constructed it like an architect ultimately you’re going to have less redrafting to do than someone like me whose first draft is, to put it gently, a mess.
Cameron:
Who was your character inspiration for the lead in Delirium?
Alex:
Sonequa Martin-Green. She was in The Walking Dead for a bit, and was image that I had in my head for this character. It just seemed so right to me, given that I was inspired by Lovecraft, to write a woman lead. I love Lovecroft’s writing. I’ve read everything he’s ever written, but in every single one the protagonist is a white man in his thirties who’s fairly erudite and well educated, and I was like, okay, here’s a prime opportunity to challenge that.
Cameron:
This raises an interesting point. Both of us are young, white guys. Do you agree that there’s a particular level of care that should be taken when writing out of gender and out of ethnicity?
Alex:
That’s a good question. I’m not sure I’m very qualified to answer. I have talked to a few writers of colour about this, and my takeaway from those conversations is that if you come from a position of appreciation and try not to stray into waters that are problematic, then that’s a good place to start. Let’s hypothetically assume Delirium gets made into a film, whichever actor plays Morgan, I would very much want their input into that character. You know what I mean? As opposed to prescribing what that should be. I would like them to bring whatever they’d like to bring to the role. That’s probably a good way of circumnavigating through difficult waters.
Cameron:
Moving onto your writing habits, you’re quite prolific. I think I read that you wrote four scripts this year, is it all just down to a dogged determination?
Alex:
Five pages a day, no matter what. No matter what, I’m writing five fucking pages. And the thing about writing five pages today is that it never ends up being five pages. Sometimes you get to five, and you’ve pulled the stinger out, and now you’re jogging along and suddenly you want to see where this is all going, and you get to six and then ten pages. As long as I do that every day, I’m fine.
Cameron:
Do you have a first draft ritual? The thing’s done and dusted, do you put it away for two weeks and then come back to it?
Alex:
I think this is where my whole ethos sort of falls apart. It’s different every time. Usually I put it away for awhile and that takes the form of sending it out to 4 or 5 people who’s tastes I know very well, and they know me well enough that they can say exactly what they think and I’m not gonna, you know, get defensive. They’ll inevitably pick up on some stupid stuff that I’ve done. And then once I have that back, I make a Google doc and I sort of collect all the feedback together. I read through it, I figure out which ones I agree with, which ones I disagree with, why I disagree with them, why they might’ve thought that, and then I make a big massive to do list, which usually ends up being 40 or 50 different to do’s. Then I go through and chip away at all the comments.
Cameron:
What does a re-write look like?
Alex:
I pare everything back and start from scratch. Which is tedious, but it works because often the sentence structure in the first draft is clumsy, and you only really pick up on that clumsiness when you write from scratch again. I think Walt Whitman said he would sometimes re-write the Great Gatsby word for word just to get a feel for it. I’m not saying I’m creating the Great Gatsby or anything, but there is a critical feeling to typing things out again.
Cameron:
So, when did you write your first feature script?
Alex:
Let me see. It depends if you count 70 pages as a feature? I was really trying to push a very small idea into a feature length format. It was terrible. I wrote that in late 2015, early 2016, so I think I was 16 or 17.
Cameron:
Out of interest, when did you know you wanted to really pursue screenwriting?
Alex:
I actually thought about this while at the Austin Film Festival. I think this is the most cliched thing you’ll ever hear from someone, but I watched Pulp Fiction and I was like, “Oh, this is what movies can be”. It was the first film where I was aware of a script behind it and just the notion of that really appealed to me. I actually bought the, because I didn’t know you could get scripts for free at this point, I bought the script off Amazon in a book form and I read it. Then I suppose it was just the rabbit hole from there.
Cameron:
So, you were born in Northern Ireland after the Troubles had officially ended. Do you think this has affected your writing or worldview at all?
Alex:
Well, I’m part of an interesting generation called the Hope generation. I was born right at the end of the Troubles, so there was a wave of optimism at the time. Anyone who’s older than me has a war story about what happened in the Troubles, almost everyone has a story. And, you know, I didn’t know any different, so I don’t think it consciously influenced me, but I think definitely in my early scripts there’re reoccurring themes that you I didn’t expect to be there. For me one of those was cycles of violence. Every single script talked about cycles of violence. I was like, ‘I didn’t intend this to happen, but here it is’. I don’t know what was going on in my brain, but I feel I was trying to reckon with something at the time.
Cameron:
Have you ever written something that dealt with the troubles?
Alex:
I think the first script I wrote that people reacted really positively to was a Troubles script. It was called Law of Talion, and focused on this awful event in 1988 where two soldiers were dragged from their car and killed on the street. It was horrific. News helicopters were there to capture the entire thing. I think it was maybe the first script that I felt like I could actually do this.
Cameron:
So, the Austin horror category win. Is it all really surreal or are you taking it in your stride?
Alex:
Oh I don’t think it’s sunk in yet. I went specifically expecting not to win. It was kind of a defence mechanism where I set my expectations low so I wouldn’t be disappointed. At the awards luncheon I just sat there enjoying myself and when the first person went up to get their award they gave a speech and I thought, ‘Oh shit, I have to give a speech. Oh no. Oh God. If I win, this is going to be awful.’ But I thought, ‘okay, I’m not going to win. So it’ll be fine’. And then it happens, and I was shitting bricks. It was terrifying, but I did it. It still feels a little surreal. One of the writers who was at the festival told me now I have my foot in the door, I’ve just got to step through, which I’m going to roll with. It seems like a realistic way of looking at things.
Cameron:
And adding to all this you actually secured a manager — one of the panellists who judged the scripts.
Alex:
Yeah, it’s all so surreal. It still doesn’t quite feel like it happened. I was talking to a writer at Austin who told me that screenwriting is 20% skill, 80% luck, and I’m inclined to agree with them.
Cameron:
I should know not to ask, but I will, how’s that going? Have you gotten to speak with them?
Alex:
Literally just before I was on this call with you I was on a call with them. Yeah. So things are in process. Things are moving.
Cameron
Finally, we’re both part of the Screenwriter’s Network on Discord. Would you say the group’s been a positive experience with your writing?
Alex:
Oh yeah. 100%. I actually met a bunch of the guys from the Screenwriter’s Network at Austin. I don’t know if you’ve ever talked with people for years online before actually meeting them in person, but it is a weird experience, though it wasn’t an unpleasant one. It was actually very, very wholesome and it got me thinking a lot about the Discord. I would definitely say it’s been a positive influence. I do not know for a fact that I would be where I am today without it, that is genuinely true.
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I’d like to end by thanking Alex again for taking the time to be interviewed by this small, little blog. One of the biggest takeaways from the interview has to be work ethic being at the core of good writing. We fundamentally learn by doing. Time spent reading scripts, dissect them, and films, is essential and important, but, we learn by doing. That’s how we work, and improve.
So, five pages a day. Five potentially awful, mind-numbing pages, which will slowly turn into better pages as you go. No one is born typing like Fitzgerald, or dialoguing like Sorkin, it’s work. But, as long as you enjoy it, it’s the best kind of work.
As a final note, as important as writing, is sharing. It can be hard to find a collective of people willing to read a script, but the best readers are fellow writers. Consider heading over and checking out the Screenwriter’s Network on Discord. It’s an awesome community of like-minded individuals, and a great place to hone your craft: https://discord.gg/dDE9ptQ
