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I’ve made five films now and written all of them. I’ve been fortunate enough to keep creative control over my work, and that’s because I’ve kept control of the stories themselves.
Jeff Nichols
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Jeff Nichols is an award-winning writer and director, whose credits include Mud, Midnight Special, and his recent film Loving.
In this short but fascinating article, Nichols reveals the source of his ideas, the benefit of leaping into the middle of the narrative, and the importance of making your audience play catch-up.
<div id="attachment_16752" style="width: 610px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-16752" class="size-full wp-image-16752" src="https://creativescreenwriting.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Loving-L_04622_R_CROP.jpg" alt="Jeff Nichols with Joel Edgerton on set of Loving. Credit : Ben Rothstein / Focus Features" width="600" height="338" srcset="https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Loving-L_04622_R_CROP.jpg 600w, https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Loving-L_04622_R_CROP-150x85.jpg 150w, https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Loving-L_04622_R_CROP-250x141.jpg 250w, https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Loving-L_04622_R_CROP-500x282.jpg 500w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px" />Jeff Nichols with Joel Edgerton on set of Loving. Credit : Ben Rothstein / Focus Features</div>
My ideas all come from different places.
My first film, Shotgun Stories, came from a song by the Drive-By Truckers called “Decoration Day” about a feud in the South. I thought, “What would a present day version of that look like?”
For my second, Take Shelter, I was struck by an image of a man standing over a storm shelter with the doors open, looking down. I wasn’t sure if he was going in or coming out.
Sometimes I get freaked out about the end of the world and wish I had a storm shelter in my backyard. I thought, “What if a guy took that to an extreme?”
With my third film, Mud, there was a book at the library in Little Rock with pictures of people who made their livings off the river, and I saw a photograph of a guy diving for mussel shells to sell to the Japanese to make cultured pearls. I was fascinated by it, and decided to build a whole film around that.
<div id="attachment_5381" style="width: 610px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-5381" class="size-full wp-image-5381" src="https://creativescreenwriting.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/MUD09e.jpg" alt="Jeff Nichols and Matthew McConaughey on the set of Mud" width="600" height="341" srcset="https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/MUD09e.jpg 600w, https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/MUD09e-150x85.jpg 150w, https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/MUD09e-300x170.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px" />Jeff Nichols and Matthew McConaughey on the set of Mud</div>
The point is: Inspiration is all around you. It’s bouncing off the walls. An image pops into your head—and you have to be in a position to be open to it.
Be willing to drive around and get lost in the idea for a little while, and see if it takes you anywhere.
The fact is, a lot of people have ideas, but I’ve conditioned myself, as a storyteller, to latch onto ideas and explore them. Sometimes they run their course. Sometimes they turn into a whole film.
Also: It’s never just one idea, dropping out of the sky and hitting you on the head. One interesting idea in and of itself rarely does the trick. It’s a combination of multiple things. I get three, four, five, disparate threads going on in my life, and when I put them together, that’s when a unique story starts to present itself.
Don’t think about what the industry wants out of you, or what was successful last week. That’s a real fool’s game, though it’s tempting. Which is not to say “don’t think about what the audience wants”—that’s important; Hitchcock was very good at it. But what the audience wants and what the industry wants are two different things.
<div id="attachment_18254" style="width: 610px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-18254" class="size-full wp-image-18254" src="https://creativescreenwriting.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Midnight-Special.jpg" alt="Jaeden Liberher as Alton in Midnight Special - © 2016 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All rights reserved" width="600" height="338" srcset="https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Midnight-Special.jpg 600w, https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Midnight-Special-150x85.jpg 150w, https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Midnight-Special-250x141.jpg 250w, https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Midnight-Special-500x282.jpg 500w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px" />Jaeden Liberher as Alton in Midnight Special &#8211; © 2016 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All rights reserved</div>
Plot comes second to me. It’s what keeps the wheels on the bus, but the real heart and soul of a film is two characters, why they’re doing what they’re doing, and how things impact them emotionally.
I like an engine that’s running. Do the work—know where your characters are coming from—then try to land in the middle of it.
My recent film, Loving—a very quiet, slow film—jumps right into the deep end with the protagonists, the Lovings. There are narrative advantages to this:
One, you leapfrog boring stuff.
Two, it puts your audience on their heels. You want them playing catch-up. When they get ahead of you, it’s real bad; that’s when people’s minds turn off. I like to imagine that if you hook people’s brains up when they’re watching one of my films, you’ll see their synapses firing all the way through, instead of relaxing into the ease of a narrative they already understand.
<div id="attachment_16744" style="width: 610px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-16744" class="size-full wp-image-16744" src="https://creativescreenwriting.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Loving-4103_FP_00113.jpg" alt="Ruth Negga as Mildred and Joel Edgerton as Richard in Loving. Credit : Focus Features" width="600" height="338" srcset="https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Loving-4103_FP_00113.jpg 600w, https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Loving-4103_FP_00113-150x85.jpg 150w, https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Loving-4103_FP_00113-250x141.jpg 250w, https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Loving-4103_FP_00113-500x282.jpg 500w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px" />Ruth Negga as Mildred and Joel Edgerton as Richard in Loving. Credit : Focus Features</div>
I don’t look at my characters as chess pieces to move around a board. I believe in them; I care for a great many of them. Characters aren’t there for your benefit, to do what you want them to do. If you’ve built them correctly, they’ll start to do what they want to do.
And that’s when things get really interesting.
As told to Kelly Leow
 
<a href="http://www.moviemaker.com/"><img class="alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-13197" src="https://creativescreenwriting.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/moviemakerlogo444-150x53.png" alt="" width="150" height="53" srcset="https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/moviemakerlogo444-150x53.png 150w, https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/moviemakerlogo444.png 250w" sizes="(max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px" /></a>This article originally appeared on the <a href="http://www.moviemaker.com/">MovieMaker</a> website. MovieMaker Magazine is the nation’s leading resource on the art and business of making movies and the world’s most widely read independent film magazine. This article appears as a chapter introduction in MovieMaker‘s Complete Guide to Making Movies 2017.
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Featured image: Jeff Nichols on set of Loving. Credit : Ben Rothstein / Focus Features
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Jeff Nichols on Screenwriting

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