First Advisor
J.J. Vazquez
Date of Award
Spring 6-12-2026
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in Film and University Honors
Department
Film
Language
English
Subjects
Screenwriting, Screenplay, Film
Abstract
On Thursday May 21st Kip Kinkel arrived at Thurston High School and first killed Ben Walker, injured another student, then went into the cafeteria, and opened fire on the students who were eating breakfast just before classes began. In total, twenty-five students were injured and two were killed. The day before this event took place Kip shot and killed his father, a Spanish teacher at Lane Community College, while he was in the kitchen, it happened without warning. Around 6:30pm when his mother, Faith M. Kinkel, a Spanish teacher who worked at Springfield High School, arrived home where Kip shot and killed her in the garage.
I found out about this at the end of second period. Our high school principal announced it over the intercom and it shocked the entire student body. One student gasped at the knowledge as soon as they heard it. Walking the halls between second and third period you saw students embracing one another. One student looked at me with tears in her eyes as she embraced her classmate, creating a haunting image that can’t be forgotten. I hung around the school till about half way through and simply went home, where I sat down, watched the news and started to tremble. It was a moment that was incredibly difficult to get through and left me grateful to be alive but also terrified me that something like this could happen.
When I started film school several years later, I felt as though I had a story here I wanted to try to find some way of telling. I didn’t know how to tell that story, however. At first it started as a reenactment of the events of that day, but it didn’t feel quite right. So, with time I watched films that inspired me towards a narrative that helped me work through the trauma inside. Two productions particularly influence my choice in how I was going to go about writing this film, first was Sean Baker’s Red Rocket (2021), a dark comedy about a former porn star trying to make his comeback, the second is The Curse (2023) starring Nathan Fielder and Emma Stone, a dark comedy about a couple who start a reality show about a married couple who are some of the worst people imaginable.
After watching these shows, I knew I wanted to make something that spoke to this. A dark comedy about a town rocked by a high school shooting and the people that use it as a means to an end. Then during the start of the 2024/2025 school year I spoke with a classmate who was also in the honors program, where he mentioned how he was going to try to direct a short film and also write a screenplay for his thesis. I felt as though it was the path I was interested in as well. So, over winter break of 2024, I started writing my thesis, a coming-of-age, dark comedy about a high school shooting and the fall out of it. It started out as a short film that was about thirty pages in length. When I read it to my classmates, in a club meeting, what became apparent was that everyone just wanted to know more about the characters in the script. I was also unsatisfied with this version of the screenplay. It felt as though I hadn’t fully fleshed out the characters, and I just wanted more from what I was writing. But I met with my thesis advisor and was trying to figure out what I wanted to do for my thesis. At first, I believed I wanted to make this into a short film, so I investigated the potential for something like a production binder, a binder filled with pre-production paperwork completed, but frankly, that felt like the wrong angle to approach it from. Trying to make this into a thesis short film felt as though it wouldn’t do it justice and I realized that no matter how much I liked the idea, the story just wasn’t there yet, and I decided right then and there that I wanted to make a feature length screenplay. Partly to see if I could go the distance and if it was feasible.
The research that was done to help make this screenplay involved some reading and studying of screenplays. This involved reading screenplays based on the works which inspired the narrative. The films of Sean Baker (The Florida Project, Red Rocket, and Anora) and the pilot script for The Curse. In addition to this there were the books on scriptwriting that were recommended by Professor Vazquez, Screenplay by Syd Field, Making Movies by Sydney Lumet, Story by Rober McKee, and On Writing by Stephen King. As well as previous knowledge of Joseph Campbell's Story Circle. These books gave me a better writing foundation to start from, including ideas of The Rule of Three’s which is a tool in screenwriting in which you introduce something thirty pages in a writer then has a call back to it thirty to forty pages later and finally some thirty to forty pages after that at the end of the narrative. As well as the idea that in a screenplay the main character must learn something or not learn something that the audience does learn.
After my project was approved by my thesis advisor, I spent most of the summer vacation writing the first draft of the screenplay, but there were some real big problems with it. The most glaring was the fact that the thesis was only seventy-seven pages. Way short of the 100 pages it needed to be. I thought this could be fixed by simply adding more action to it but instead that had the opposite effect. Character motivations came out of nowhere, interactions felt forced with exchanges that made no sense in the grander scheme of the overall story. By the time I showed my advisor my work it became blatantly obvious that the project looked incredibly unprofessional. We didn’t know what the protagonist’s emotional want was, and he was completely passive. He felt as though he wasn’t even a main character. My advisor then told me the bad news, I had to completely rewrite the screenplay from the very beginning and try to find some way to make the character active and give him a want, something that he needs to achieve throughout the film.
This was a moment that I felt as though I wanted to give up, I truly started to question my own talent as a writer. Was I just a joke who couldn’t write a real project? A talentless hack? This was answered as I wrote. You see, one of the great things about writing this screenplay was that I didn’t start from scratch. This was the third iteration. The first was a basic outline or treatment that was a synopsis of the story, then I made that synopsis into a short film, which I then, in turn, attempted to write into a feature length screenplay. So, when it came time to rewrite this film, I had a wonderful fully fleshed outline to go off of. I also learned that writing is rewriting. Nothing is ever complete on the first draft.
At this point, the most important part of screenwriting , giving your character a strong want, something they want to pursue is key in giving the narrative momentum and agency. There are two variations of this that must be present in the screenplay, an emotional want, and a physical want. The emotional want is what the character personally desires, the thing that they wish they could have, an abstract thought or idea that they desire that they don’t currently have. Then, there is the physical want, a physical object or place or thing that they desire that they think will satisfy their emotional want, but usually doesn’t.
It was difficult sussing out these things in the character. Giving Jacob a want was a lot harder than I thought. At first I thought it was simply a place to belong and that was all. If the story were to go by that logic Jacob had this place with Marcus and Becky. He needed a physical want so I gave him California, the promised land that anyone living in rural Oregon wants as their dream goal. The place of sunshine and Hollywood things you don’t see in Oregon. Then, the much more difficult task was trying to figure out how to turn Jacob from a passive character to an active one. In the original script there were aspects to his character I really liked in relation to his passivity. It made for some interesting scenarios that I felt I wanted him to go through. So what I came up with was Light and Dark Jacob, the little angels on his shoulder trying to tell Jacob what to do, and it led to some fun moments where Jacob wrestles with his own conscience. These two variations of Jacob were interesting to write because at first it felt very distinct how they acted, yet as we kept going, they felt as though they had started to blur together and become something else entirely, which led to the inevitable birth of Chiaroscuro from Jacob’s psyche.
This whole experience of writing this character was interesting, it presented a theory that I started to think about in terms of Jacob. I believe that Jacob has early onset Dissociative Identity Disorder based on how he acts towards the end of the story. I feel as though this has created a unique situation to delve into my own psyche a bit and help me parse out my own feelings growing up and my own personal struggles with my mental health. I’d say about 90% of what is in the screenplay actually happened. Both good and bad memories from my childhood exist in this story. And the 10% that didn’t, was a fabrication of ideas that were swirling in my head in my younger days. To think that came out of me. And it was incredible to make. When I had really gotten into the writing process and learned to use the physical and emotional want, the rule of three’s, and the conclusion, the writing process became a blast.
When this project started, I thought it would help process my own feelings but, it feels as though a lot of those thoughts and ideas were already clear to me. It maybe helped me convey a meaningful story that could work but it never felt as though it helped me process my grief in any meaningful way, instead it made me aware of how much it hurt growing up living in a broken home. How much I never want to have that happen to anyone else ever again. What I am aware of now, looking back on those memories, was how dangerously close I was to becoming a Kip Kinkle. The only thing that saved me was my love for the arts. That’s what really kept me from completely going off the deep end. Kip didn’t have any of that. He just had the demons in his head that were haunting him with no outlet, nothing to give him a measure of happiness. Such a sad life he has lived.
In terms of what the process has taught me, I believe I have become a much better writer. I have learned the techniques and processes of proper screenwriting. From outlining to character arcs, and incorporating feedback. Screenwriting in itself opens avenues into fields such as becoming a story editor, a script doctor, copy writer, and a fulltime screenwriter. There is of course the lofty goal that maybe someday will come where this screenplay gets optioned into a feature film and, who knows, perhaps I could direct it.
Recommended Citation
Traver, Joseph F., "Chiaroscuro" (2026). University Honors Theses. Paper 1869.