Interviews | Screenwriting

In Her Own Words

1 Jun , 2006  

Written by Ellen Mills | Posted by:

Caitlin McCarthy teaches English by day and writes scripts by night. Of the three feature-length scripts she has written, one is in development and one is a finalist in the screenwriting competition of the Boston International Film Festival this month. McCarthy tells us about her writing habits, the virtues of self promotion and the power of positive thinking.

As a former marketing and public relations expert, Caitlin McCarthy knows a good product when she sees one, or should we say, writes one. The Worcester resident is a full-time high school English teacher and a part-time screenwriter with three finished scripts to her credit. The ebullient McCarthy is serious about her craft and enthusiastic about promoting her work. The two go hand in hand she says, because a writer’s best work is wasted if no one knows about it.

McCarthy says she has always known that she wanted to be a writer, but she pictured herself as a novelist. She earned an MFA in Creative Writing at Emerson College in Boston and focused on long-form fiction.

A fortuitous connection in an unexpected place changed her from a novelist to a screenwriter. During a period of career transition in 2002, McCarthy was going through a teacher training program at Brockton High School. She mentioned to one of the teachers there that she had written a novel and the teacher said that her cousin was a director.

"Techno-nerd that I am," says McCarthy "I happened to have a business card with me and I gave it to her." Before long, director Matia Karrell, who was nominated for an Academy Award in 1988 for her short film Cadillac Dreams, called and asked to read McCarthy’s novel. Karrell called again when she was returning to the Boston area to visit family and wanted to meet with McCarthy.

"She talked about all the elements she liked in the story," recalls McCarthy. "And finally I said, ‘Does this mean you want to work with me?’" Karrell replied yes and asked if McCarthy could write the script. "I said yes even though I’d never written a script! I’ve learned to say yes to things and figure out how to do it later." On her way home from the meeting McCarthy stopped at a bookstore and bought a copy of "The Screenwriter’s Bible" and began to adapt her novel Cape Cod Lite for the screen.

Karrell read the draft and made suggestions to the novice screenwriter. "Working with Matia was the ideal way to be introduced to that world," says McCarthy. "She was so generous with her time and knowledge." McCarthy was converted. "I switched from novels to scripts," she says. "I just had an affinity for it."

When Karrell wanted to option the script of Cape Cod Lite, a drama/comedy about life in the off-season of a summer resort, McCarthy went looking for a lawyer to represent her in the deal. A novelist friend referred her to David Lubell of Propp, Lubell and Lapidus,bLLP in New York City. Lubell has become her lawyer/agent and introduced her to actor Lucie Vondrackova (Last Holiday). Vondrackova, a native of Czechoslovakia, is slated to play the late Vera Laska when the film of McCarthy’s screenplay Vera is made. Vera is a story based on the life of Vera Laska, one of McCarthy’s college professors, who was a member of the Czech resistance during World War II and who survived three Nazi death camps.

McCarthy had kept in touch with her professor and asked Laska for permission to write the story of her life as a screenplay. She optioned the rights to Laska’s life story and her book as well as another book by Marquerite Bouvard about women in the holocaust. McCarthy also worked with the Shoah Foundation to obtain Dr. Laska’s testimony about her experiences. "So, the final two minutes of the film viewers will see the real Vera giving her testimony. It will be the first time that actual testimony will be used in a feature film." McCarthy is a producer on the film as well as its writer

Her third script is entitled Free Skate and is about the world of competitive figure skating. Free Skate is currently a finalist in the screenwriting competition of the Boston International Film Festival. "I’ll find out June 15th if it wins and if it does, they’ll finance the film," she says.

McCarthy’s sister was a competitive skater for many years so she says she was familiar with that world and felt that the feature films that have been made about figure skating have glamorized the subject. "It has a real impact on the family. There’s the money, the academics and the travel, and that’s what I wanted to write about."

Free Skate is not the only work of McCarthy’s that draws upon her own experiences. "I see my life influences in all my work," she says. "There’s a little fingerprint of me in there."

McCarthy is disciplined in her approach to her writing. "It all begins with the outline," she says. "I wouldn’t dream of starting without one." Her outline provides the roadmap but does allow for some spontaneous detours. "During the process you might get an idea, but you know where you’re going to end up." She adheres to a three act structure. "Screenwriting is a craft; you must hit certain emotional beats in the story.

"I usually write in the early evening. I work on the computer and I don’t consider it a chore." For the first draft she writes straight through, then leaves it for a few days, and then begins to re-write.

McCarthy also uses two rules set by one of her favorite authors, Ernest Hemingway. The first rule is known as the "iceberg theory" or, the idea that the majority of the story is unseen and hints of the past and the back-story surface as the story unfolds. The second rule is to have an output goal for each day. McCarthy’s writing goal is 350 words per day.

McCarthy isn’t all work all the time, however. "Artists need some downtime to dream," she says. The only time in her life that she has experienced writer’s block was during the intensive days of her marketing/public relations career. After graduating from Emerson College she began to work in public relations. "I thought that if I worked in PR I would have time to write, but the PR job is what I call a ‘time sponge’. It was 24/7." Her days were long and draining and left little time or energy for creative endeavors. Although teaching is demanding, it is also rewarding. McCarthy says that many of her students are writers and she can help them with their dreams through her teaching and by the example she sets in her own life.

McCarthy is working on a new script titled Wonder Drug, a historical drama about Sir Charles Dodds, the British biochemist who created the synthetic estrogen diethylstilbestrol (DES). For decades the drug was given to pregnant women as a preventative for miscarriage before it was discovered that it caused malformed reproductive organs in their children as well as rare types of cancer. McCarthy spent her February vacation in England doing research for the script and plans to write it this summer.

McCarthy says that writing chose her, she didn’t choose it and playfully blames her parents for naming her after Dylan Thomas’s wife, Caitlin. McCarthy says she has always written and will always continue to write. Her writing skill and her promotional talent will undoubtedly move her work from the page to the screen very soon. McCarthy says her personal motto and her advice to anyone doing screenwriting is: "Early to Bed, early to rise, work really hard and advertise!"