“The process of trying to write a satisfying horror story in only a few pages is one every writer should try and the quality of judges in each year’s contest is extremely impressive.”
Katherine Cox & Matt McCarthy
Killer Shorts is very excited to bring you this interview with two of our Killer Shorts alum, the married, writing duo, Katherine Cox and Matt McCarthy. Katherine and Matt are friends of the contest as they placed as semifinalists in Season 1 with their script Noise Complaint, and found themselves in Season 2 as quarterfinalists with their script Colins, and semifinalists with the script Dolls in the Walls. Having perfected their writing partnership, they marry their unique perspectives, and writing styles, into cohesive horror scripts. The duo has many other personal interests outside their writing partnership. Katherine is a published Scholastic author, and Matt is “Instafamous” for his cat artwork.
Kat and Matt found the Killer Shorts Contest perfectly fit their style of writing, and the genre they were interested in, with the parameters offering a unique challenge for storytelling. This duo finds they take their unique experiences, for example, their time in Brooklyn, and create intriguing horror scripts. Their partnership influences several of their successful scripts, case in point Dolls in the Walls, about a vlogging couple that awaken a supernatural presence during a home renovation. Killer Shorts set up a meeting for them with Tom Dever, Coverfly’s Head of Development, and with the encouragement they received from Coverfly, Kat & Matt turned Dolls in the Walls into a detailed pitch deck. With the support of the Killer Shorts Contest, Kat & Matt have turned this horror short script into a feature, which they are now sending out for queries. Check out this inspiring, and motivating interview below with two very accomplished writers.
Katherine Cox and Matt McCarthy on Coverfly.
Conversations With Kat & Matt
Where did you both grow up? How have your surroundings influenced your writing?
Katherine grew up in North Carolina and Matt grew up in Arizona. We met while working at a bookstore when we lived in New York City, and the city has influenced a lot of our projects. When we moved from the city to more isolated surroundings, we got a whole new batch of spookiness that is starting to show up in our current work. We’re constantly mining life for stories, so are always on the lookout for interesting visuals, characters, and specificity of place to incorporate into our writing.
Kat and Matt, as a married couple, what has the collaboration process been like for you?
Being married, we have a lot of time to brainstorm and we’re constantly workshopping ideas in the background of everything we do. When we write a draft, we pass the script back and forth, adding our own bit to push the story along. It’s somewhat like an exquisite corpse method, but we know what the overall story is. Once we have a full draft, we both go over the document repeatedly. We naturally write in a similar style so eventually, we forget who wrote what, and our voices blend.
Does your partnership play a role in your identities as writers? If so, in what way? Has it had an effect on either of you when transitioning into writing solo?
We both have our own unique creative pursuits. Matt is a visual artist and Katherine is a fiction writer, but writing screenplays started as a joint adventure and we like it that way. Our own endeavors allow us to bring different strengths to scriptwriting, so even if an original idea develops with one of us, we know it will be better if we’re both working on it.
Can you, the best you can, give a brief synopsis of your Killer Shorts script DOLLS IN THE WALLS?
Dolls in the Walls is about a young vlogging couple, Jack and Janelle Wilson, who buy their first home, a fixer-upper in need of care. They’ll be giving their audience of Watchers an all-access pass to their lives through the renovation process. During renovations, they release the spirit of an evil ghost girl, Hala, and animate her army of dolls. But that isn’t going to stop the Wilsons, who rely on their signature blend of positivity to continue the project. They’re rewarded with a rapidly growing audience, and ultimately save their home, but they lose themselves to an evil set on taking over everything.
What was the inspiration behind DOLLS IN THE WALLS?
We love coming up with funny titles for movies, and Dolls in the Walls started that way. We kept saying the title in different voices (Michael Caine is a particularly fun impression to do) and it made us laugh every time, so we decided to write the short script. We passed Dolls back and forth as we worked on other projects, and it was consistently fun to write and kept surprising us.
The idea of a vlogging couple, in a horror film, is such a modern and creative take on reaching a wide fanbase. In contrast, dolls are such a classic horror device. How did you decide to almost combine these 2 worlds?
Dolls are so prevalent in horror we wanted to write a script that had a contemporary twist. We were getting into YouTube vloggers at the time and have a huge respect for their ability to turn anything into content. As big fans of the found footage and comedy sub-genres of horror, Dolls in the Walls presented us an opportunity to combine the fun of vloggers in a doll-infested house with the visceral first-person perspective of found footage.
DOLLS IN THE WALLS is about a married couple. Do you take a lot of influence from your personal partnership when creating characters?
Our most effective/favorite scripts keep ending up being about couples. Relationships are fun to write because the characters know each other so well, and it’s enjoyable to subvert what they think they know and how they believe the other person will respond. There’s also something satisfying about throwing all different kinds of relationships into horrible situations to see how people will react.
You did very well in Season 2, with two scripts, DOLLS IN THE WALLS and COLINS. How did you feel having two scripts place in one season?
It was such a wonderful and encouraging feeling to land two scripts in the quarterfinals. Dolls in the Walls and Colins are very different in tone and subject matter, and it was nice getting confirmation that readers in the contest liked them.
Your script COLINS is a Season 2 Quarterfinalist and in the Top 11% on Coverfly’s Red List. What was the inspiration behind this one?
Colins is about a woman who has a bad first date with a generic-looking guy named Colin. Afterward, she notices “Colins” everywhere as his ubiquitous face starts to take over her life. The idea came from us often being mistaken for other people. That unsettling feeling that someone else is walking around with your face. We also had a few people in our circle with similar-sounding names, and the confusion that arose when talking about them became comical. We combined the ideas and came out with a short that’s one of our favorite things we’ve written.
Your Season 1 Semifinalist script NOISE COMPLAINT is in the Top 19% on Coverfly. This being your first Killer Shorts submission, what initially made you decide to submit to the contest? What was it about this script that made you want to submit?
Noise Complaint follows a transcriptionist dealing with a noisy neighbor and was inspired by our own experiences in a Brooklyn apartment. We finished it and were worried because it was so cathartic for us to write it might not translate for other people. The horror short screenplay space is such a fun one, and we loved the idea of Killer Shorts as soon as we discovered the contest. It was exciting to have a contest that felt tailored to what we were interested in and nice to get encouragement with an early short script that we should keep writing in that format.
Noise Complaint on Coverfly.
How did you come to submit this script to the 2021 Killer Shorts Contest? Was it ready to go, or did the contest prompt you to write the script?
Dolls was ready to go before entering Killer Shorts. It had previously been a semifinalist at Screencraft Shorts and finalist at the Austin Film Festival, and we entered because we thought it might fit well at Killer Shorts. That being said, all short horror scripts we write going forward are written with the intention of submitting to Killer Shorts. This year we’re excited to enter the 1-page horror contest. It’s a fun challenge to try and fit a rich story into limited space and has proven to be a great writing exercise.
What was the process like submitting to Killer Shorts? What advice might you give someone who is considering entering their short horror script?
Killer Shorts has been a wonderful experience each time we’ve submitted. The contest is well-run, and it brings together a diverse community of writers. The process of trying to write a satisfying horror story in only a few pages is one every writer should try and the quality of judges in each year’s contest is extremely impressive. Plus, there is that rad trophy we’re determined to win someday.
DOLLS IN THE WALLS has done very well in both the Killer Shorts Contest, and is ranked in the Top 3% on Coverfly’s Red List horror shorts. You have also recently turned this script into a feature. What made you want to continue pursuing this particular project? What has the process been like?
We love the world of Dolls in the Walls and especially the main characters, the Wilsons. We’d talked about expanding it since the moment we finished the short but wanted to make sure we were able to keep the same voice and charm if it was stretched into a feature. We enjoyed getting to spend more time with the Wilsons in their world, making things even weirder and scarier, and we ended up with the feature version of Dolls we’d always dreamed of. Entering Killer Shorts provided us the encouragement to finish the feature. We knew the quality of judges and connections and wanted to make sure we had a finished feature version ready should we advance in the contest.
Dolls In The Walls on Coverfly.
Sending queries can be a daunting thing. What has that process been like for you? What advice might you give writers, who might be weary, on how to send a successful query?
Sending out queries is a bit of a numbers game, and rejection can make it hard to stay focused, but we’re excited about what we have to offer and want to connect with people who feel the same way. We watch a ton of movies and do our research into who made them. In our limited experience, we’ve found that it’s helpful to show people you know who they are and what they’ve done and that there’s a reason you’re writing to them specifically. We also believe being friendly and professional is always a good thing.
Having three scripts place in the contest, across both seasons, Killer Shorts set you up with a meeting with Tom Dever, Head of Development at Coverfly. Was this meeting helpful to you? How were you encouraged moving forward with this script and your careers?
We’re so thankful to Killer Shorts for introducing us to Tom and the Coverfly team. We’ve had great discussions with them, and they’ve provided actionable advice about ways to advance our writing career. Based on the helpful encouragement of Mithra at Coverfly, we recently finished a pitch deck for Dolls in the Walls, giving us an efficient visual device to convey our script to the industry. Getting advice from people in the industry that have such great experience is a special opportunity.
“The process of trying to write a satisfying horror story in only a few pages is one every writer should try […]”
Katherine Cox & Matt McCarthy
Were you always interested in horror shorts, or horror in general? Do you plan on continuing in the genre?
We both grew up with a fascination with the weird and strange, and it was our love of scary movies that ultimately led us to write them. One of our favorite things about horror is the seemingly infinite number of sub-genres, and how creators are constantly finding unique and surprising ways to express themselves. We’ve enjoyed watching horror shorts for a long time, and some of the most inventive horror we’ve seen recently has been in the short form. The first time we wrote one we were hooked, and we’re currently working on some short scripts in hopes of filming one ourselves.
What is your takeaway from your experience in the Killer Shorts Contest 2021? How would you say this experience helped your career and how you move forward?
You can tell that Killer Shorts is run by people who are passionate about the genre, inclusivity, and truly care about helping writers. The connections we’ve made through the contest have been so valuable, and the Killer Shorts team puts in the work to help its writers stand out. We feel like we’ve grown as writers thanks to the encouragement of the contest and can’t recommend it enough. We plan on entering Killer Shorts every year we can.
Killer Shorts hopes Kat & Matt’s story, as finalists in both seasons of the contest, will inspire you to submit to Season 3 of the Killer Shorts Contest. We are proud to have this duo among the ranks of our Killer Shorts alum. With the meeting we set up with Coverfly, and the continuous support from our contest, Kat & Matt were inspired to create a solid pitch deck for Dolls in the Walls, and in turn, expand the short into a feature. The feature is now in the top 19% of Coverfly’s most discoverable projects. With all three of their scripts, Dolls, Colins, and Noise Complaint placing in our contest, this writing team has certainly made a name for themselves, in their work, and in the horror genre. We cannot wait for them to enter the Killer Shorts contest every year and to see what comes next for them. Make sure to follow Katherine Cox and Matt McCarthy in their career, and check out their Dolls in the Walls feature script.
Make sure to check out Matt’s amazing cat collage art on his Instagram.
Submit to Coverfly, FilmFreeway, or NetworkISA for just $20 by the Oct. 31 Regular Deadline!
Killer Shorts actively promotes diverse voices. If you are female-identifying, a Person of Color, non-binary, or LGBTQ+ please email us at [email protected], or DM us on Twitter, for a discount code to submit your scripts.
Katherine Cox on Instagram.
Katherine Cox on Twitter.
Matt McCarthy on Instagram.
Matt McCarthy on Twitter.
Dolls in The Walls feature on Coverfly.
Noise Complaint on Coverfly.
