Interviews with Writers for People Who Want to Start Writing – Episode II: Screenwriting, with Malena Pichot

In my brief experience with literature, you never want to write. You either write, or you don’t. That’s it. It’s like an annoying weight –an unbearable ghost hanging off your ears– that forces you to sit down, open Word, and start typing. But turning what I feel into a rule is irresponsible: a dumb, too-neat conclusion I’d rather avoid. So I’m going to assume there are people who could use a small push.

That’s why I decided to start this interview series: interviews with writers for people who want to start writing. I called people I respect –people whose writing, one way or another, inspires me. Maybe in their answers, their advice, and their working methods you’ll find what you needed to finally put one word after another. The series continues with Malena Pichot, to talk about writing scripts.

–You started on YouTube as a way of getting through pain, a breakup. Did you understand you were already writing, or did you not read it that way?

Yes –when I did La loca de mierda I knew I was writing. Every time I got an idea, I understood the video was going to be about a specific topic. Then I’d spend a long time filming, and then hours and hours editing. So what I learned with La loca de mierda is that editing is writing –that in the edit you can change the story, and that editing is fundamental in the audiovisual world.

–Comedy is still treated like a “minor genre”. There’s a huge body of writing explaining why satire, parody, irony have historically been irritating to the status quo. Why are you interested in comedy?

Because I think it’s the hardest genre and the most important one. Making people laugh is not only very satisfying for your ego… no, it is that: it’s very satisfying for your ego. [laughs] I always thought, as a kid, that comedians were smart people, so I wanted to be that. When I was little I didn’t say “comedians”, I said “funny people”. I wanted to be that.

–What is a joke? What’s its structure?

A joke, like any story, has a three-act structure, where the third act is the punchline. Aristotle’s Poetics works for jokes too. I always say jokes are a riddle, a language game, because they need an element of surprise. The punchline has to be a surprise.

An expected surprise, if you’ll allow the oxymoron –because it surprises you, but somewhere in your brain you already knew that was going to be the punchline. That’s where identification comes in: except for pure absurdism, what makes us laugh is what’s recognizable in life.

Jerry Seinfeld says something similar in Jerry Before Seinfeld (Netflix, 2017), which follows the famous American comedian returning to stand-up. Seinfeld also said: “The specific element that occurs in every single successful joke is surprise”. In plain English: the setup points your thinking in one direction, then the punchline snaps it somewhere else –totally different– but not as a leap into nonsense. It’s a surprise that was, in some way, already anticipated: previously buried and quietly fed by the narrative itself.

Whatever your taste, and within the realm of so-called “dark humor”, Anthony Jeselnik is probably the comedian who takes that principle to the extreme. His jokes are 15 or 20 seconds long, they work the same way every time, and they’re consistently effective: he walks you toward the expected place, then turns sharply toward something much more disturbing –something that was already buried, structurally, in the initial premise. His Netflix specials Thoughts and Prayers (2015) and Fire in the Maternity Ward (2019) are clear examples.

–Malena, over time you “tamed” the freshness you’d built on YouTube. You turned it into a craft. When did you understand that you were, in fact, “writing”?

At some point I understood that there were people watching my videos who I didn’t know –people who weren’t my friends. And that’s when I felt I was really doing something that generated interest. I already knew it was writing, that it was creating something. But when I realized there were strangers on the other side, the tension changed: there was more attention, more care, more strategy. That’s when I systematized the “freshness”.

–What helped you understand how writing works? Do you have any bedside books on creative writing?

I still understand it –—[puts on a voice, laughs]– I’m still looking for the “how”. But it’s a craft. I’m convinced it’s a craft: you practice, you practice, you practice. And it’s true –like in all art–that practicing doesn’t mean you’ll become good or anything, but it improves the situation. It improves it.

I’m very much a structure person –classic form, rhythm, things moving forward, beats, all the writing strategies that exist and that are useful and that I love– and the total opposite of floaty, abstract, mental-masturbation stuff.

But I don’t have bedside creative-writing books. I do have some screenwriting ones. And I’m always still looking for how to write.

In screenwriting, a “beat” is the smallest unit of action or dialogue. It often delivers specific information that forces the narrative forward. It isn’t action or dialogue detached from the story-machine: it’s shaped according to plot progression. Two examples, to clarify. A simple one: a man (beat 1) arrives at a mechanic with his battered car (beat 2); the mechanic tells him the repair costs an astronomical amount of money (beat 3); the man, whose bank account is at zero, offers –by way of payment– to build a little carpentry job in the back of the shop (beat 4). A more complex example is not a “small” action but a broader causal chain: in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (2001), Rubeus Hagrid would never have visited Harry in that cabin in the middle of nowhere if the awful aunt and uncle hadn’t systematically refused to open the Hogwarts letters that kept arriving by owl; owls that would never have arrived if Harry weren’t a wizard; a condition that would be impossible if wizardhood weren’t already in his blood, like his parents’ –and so on…

A long time ago, I spoke with Malena about other things. In that conversation, she basically forbade me from blowing up my savings on a short film I wanted to make, and she recommended two books. The first, by Syd Field: Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting (1979). The second, by Blake Snyder: Save the Cat!: The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need (2005).

If I had to add one more to that pairing, I’d pick a classic –and I don’t think Malena would get mad: Robert McKee’s Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting (2022).

–Did you do literary workshops? What was your experience?

I didn’t do literary workshops, but I went to a very progressive, very hippie elementary school that had something really interesting: on Fridays there was an activity called “silent reading”. Every Friday, kids would bring a book –or grab one from the library– and we had an hour to read. I think that built a certain reading habit. Then I studied Literature at the UBA, and I read a lot. But I never had a formal space to practice writing. As a kid I also wrote stories. I showed them to my parents, who were my audience.

What functioned as a “literary workshop” for me was the blog. God, so millennial-internet of me. [laughs] That was the first time I wrote something and showed it publicly. I wrote very cheesy, very pretentious things –like every Literature student.

And yes, I did do a screenwriting workshop. But I went to two or three classes and left.

Malena wrote Jorge, which for me is one of the best contemporary comedy miniseries. It does what comedy often does: it circles trauma in a very particular way –revolving around it without naming it– until it exposes it in an explosion. In literature, with a similar cynical device, Lorrie Moore, Amy Hempel, and Kelly Link do something like that too.

–What traumas are you working with today in your new scripts?

I’m glad you liked it. Jorge complicates me a bit because I don’t find it funny. It complicates me, you know? But I know that people who like it, like it a lot, so it’s pure joy.

I think more in terms of adventure, actually. I don’t know if the character –or characters– have a trauma, but they do have a very strong trait: a lack, something they want, and a clear flaw. A character has to have a clear flaw.

On desire: there’s a maxim Kurt Vonnegut repeats to exhaustion, and it lines up with what Malena is saying. It’s simple: your characters must want something –anything– even a glass of water.

On lack: there’s an interview with Claire Keegan about Small Things Like These (2021), a novel inspired by the Magdalene Laundries –where the Catholic Church held pregnant and unhoused women under exploitative conditions– and later adapted to film in 2024 by Tim Mielants, with Cillian Murphy in the lead. In that interview (and many others), Keegan talks about how her characters always carry defects, a kind of absence, an “unspoken” pain—and that’s the place you write from.

–We were talking about Jorge…

Jorge is the longest thing I’ve written. I did it pretty much alone. It turned out pretty well for having written it so alone. But no: you have to write with people. Scripts, especially. I have no experience with novels. But with screenwriting, no doubt: it’s teamwork, it’s many heads, it’s talking. It’s telling, it’s talking. You think by talking with other people. You ping-pong with other people.

With scripts, rewriting is writing. The first thing you think of doesn’t end up in the final version. Maybe some scene or image that inspired the episode or the film –that might be there from the start. But generally, everything has to change.

Feedback helps me a lot. And knowing how to receive feedback –an opinion, a comment– that’s part of the key to being a screenwriter. If you don’t know how to receive it… sometimes they give you notes that make you want to kill them, and your first instinct is killing. But you have to breathe, listen, and think: “Isn’t this better for the project?”

I can recognize good ideas, so when someone gives me good ideas that improve things, it makes me happy. That’s why I build teams where everyone has something they’re good at that I don’t have –so we complement each other.

Once Diego Capusotto, answering a question about Cha Cha Cha (1992–1997), said: “On TV there’s a myth about improvisation. People think we show up at the studio, pop a couple pills, and do whatever. But it’s not true. Well –popping the pills is true, but improvising isn’t. If anything, we take the pills afterward”. From another angle, Werner Herzog has said that, many times, what he had in mind ended up mutating not only in the edit, but during the shoot itself.

–You’re not only a writer, you’re also a director. How much of what you write actually remains in what we see as the final product? How much do you play with things in the heat of shooting days?

Herzog can go fuck himself –just so we’re clear. [laughs] No, all good with the guy. But what stays is ninety-five percent of what’s written. You improvise some lines, some dialogue, a joke here and there. I understand there are movies where everything gets flipped around –but no. In my case, honestly, no.

The structure generally doesn’t change. It did change in La loca de mierda –but that was different: it was a girl alone, experimenting alone at home, with no commitments. It can happen that in the edit you say, “Hey –wait– this scene works better earlier”, but not much more.

–Do you write by hand or on a computer?

Computer. Always.

–Do you use any software?

I use Miro, which is like a post-it program for organizing the first ideas, and then, yeah: Final Draft.

Miro is an online platform that works like a virtual whiteboard. People use it for almost anything: brainstorming, mind maps, workshops and classes, product design, branding. Within its workspace it can also integrate AI tools, groups, video calls, and more.

Final Draft, for its part, is the program almost every screenwriter I know uses. It’s popular in Argentina and in the U.S. and elsewhere too. It’s software built specifically for screenwriting: very intuitive, and with simple shortcuts you can format scenes, dialogue, technical notes, and so on. It also includes tools to organize loose ideas, plots, characters, and more. Final Draft is currently on version 13. There’s a 30-day trial on the official website because –of course– it’s paid. But you already know…

–Everyone who tries to write steals. Where do you steal from?

We all steal. No doubt. No doubt. What offends me is when the stealing is literal –identical. Now “homages” are fashionable, which to me are not homages, they’re thefts. It’s sad and depressing. In music, in videos, in whatever. Word-for-word lifts. That’s not okay. But yes: we all steal.

Who did I steal from? Seinfeld. Francella –whether you like it or not. [laughs] I stole a lot from Ana Katz in La loca de mierda, I always say it. Una novia errante, by Ana Katz: that’s where I got it from, straight up. If you watch Una novia errante you go, “Oh –this is La loca de mierda”. So embarrassing.

–Three books?

I barely read fiction anymore, I told you that last time. Since I’m looking for stories all the time, I need real stories so I can turn them into fiction –so reading fiction doesn’t entertain me. But three books… that’s hard. Wuthering Heights (1847), by Emily Brontë. On the other end of the universe: Yo era una chica moderna (2004), by César Aira. And to finish… I’d say Las primas (2007), by Aurora Venturini. I’d love to tell you something from my youth, but in my youth I read some Kerouac-and-beatnik garbage –so forget it. Those three.

–What do I have to do if I want to start writing?

In my case, what entertained me was that someone would watch it, and someone would comment on it. That’s why the blog world was good for me. That’s why literary workshops must be good too. But really, what has to happen is that you get the feeling that you can’t not write. That’s what has to happen.

–Why should I dare?

Put guttural sounds here in the interview, because honestly I don’t know. Anything that sounds like an encouraging message –I can’t do it. Now I have to give a talk to fourteen-year-olds. What a need. What am I going to tell them? “I want to die, kids. If I were fourteen today, I’d kill myself”. That’s how I’m going to start the talk.