W-File Christin Simms
BY JASON MCBRIDE
29-year-old Christin Simms has been working in TV for about half of her life. Thanks to a generous aunt employed at Nelvana, Simms started working there as a runner when she was just a teenager. After getting her degree at Ryerson, Simms spent time in infomercials (“Not the best job,” she says. “‘You need this juicer because you’re fat.”) and in on-air promotions at Corus. The entire time, however, she was writing. She landed a job in 2005 at Breakthrough Entertainment where she rose from production coordinator to director of development in two years. At Breakthrough, she wrote for both the adult animation show, Producing Parker, and Captain Flamingo, a cartoon about a boy superhero (the episode “Comic Slip” won her a 2009 WGC Screenwriting Award). Currently, Simms is in production on Dino Dan, a Sinking Ship live-action show.
What are your strengths as a writer?
Character is my strong suit. I don’t think I’m necessarily hilarious in my writing, but I get people. Everything I’ve written has a basis in reality; it comes from a true place.
Do you often base characters on people you know?
I haven’t taken a whole person and transplanted that. But definitely aspects of people. And a lot of aspects of myself. I’m not the most open person in the world and the writing is definitely a place to channel things. If you reveal something in your writing, it’s a bit safer than in reality. But in writing rooms, it can get a little dicey sometimes. “Oh, I don’t really want to talk about that.” But at the end of the day, if you want to be an emotionally honest person and writer, you have to open up.
What’s the difference between writing for live action as opposed to animation?
Less than you’d think. Ultimately, both come down to story and character. In Producing Parker or Captain Flamingo, you can go anywhere but it still has to be a good story about characters people care about. That doesn’t change. It’s more about what you can do with the story that changes. I call it the “icing.” I’m sure I didn’t come up with that (laughs). But once you have the story down, then you can go to the funny or crazy places. And in both live action or animation that story has to be rock-solid before you get to the icing.
Is it tough shifting from writing for adults to writing for pre-schoolers?
When I got Producing Parker, I had only written for kids. The idea that they could kiss was crazy (laughs). On most of the shows I’d done, there were maybe two plots and the second plot is very small. Parker would generally have at least three plots and then interweaving them was really challenging because they have to come together in the end. But what was more difficult for me personally is that that show is more about where I am now in my life. Whatever show you do, you write one draft, then another draft, then 17 drafts later it’s good. So as long as you’re prepared to put your head down and do it, you’ll probably get it right. It’s just a matter of not thinking that first crappy draft you do is going to make it to the end.
Is there a big difference in pacing?
Yeah. I like to think Dino Dan is hilarious but, in terms of jokes, in Parker, there are like three per page. It’s more rata- tat-tat. It’s not that we don’t create fully realized characters in Dino Dan, but because we don’t have the range of emotion, you don’t get to see every facet of the character. With a pre-school show like that, it’s like everybody’s happy and look, we discovered this amazing thing that’s so great. On Parker, you can really take characters to their depths. Like we have the lead character high on diet pills and hallucinating. So, it’s going to these crazier places and making sure the turns happen quickly. We have one plot on Dino and it takes 10 minutes to get there and there are little bits of information that happen throughout. But on Parker, you have to have seven turns in 22 minutes.
Please see Canadian Screenwriter Magazine for complete interview - and more.
