- il y a 5 jours
Yamil Vaena is a bilingual bestselling author in Mexico and an IMDb-credited screenwriter with decades of storytelling experience. A literary award winner at age three, she evolved from novels and feature films into the fast-paced world of vertical short dramas. Today, she is shaping the future of microdrama. crafting emotionally charged, cliffhanger-driven stories for global platforms while redefining what modern screenwriting looks like. Interview by WenWen Han
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00:00My name is Yamile Baena. I'm a bilingual best-selling author in Mexico and also a screenwriter and I have
00:08written a couple of things. I am MDB credits like a movie and several vertical
00:15series that is the short drama that we're going to talk about here. And I've been writing all my
00:24life. I was a miracle child because I earned my first literary award at three. This prize got me
00:34my book published and it became a best-selling book when I was a kid. And since then I've been
00:40writing. So I've been storytelling almost for five decades now. And I've been jumping into different
00:49formats. And at the end I ended with this format. For me it's amazing. It's amazing. It's the new
00:55way to tell stories. And we have to know that all the opportunities and chances that gives to
01:02producers, screenwriters, even independent filmmakers. It's amazing. So I love to do this.
01:12How do you get into the short drama industry?
01:15When I decided to be a screenwriter, it was in the middle of the pandemic. And I managed to have
01:23a couple of screenwriting gigs, but I realized I wanted to make a living from this. And it was
01:30kind of hard because I got to sell my first script and they make the movie, but the income was
01:40not
01:40fluid. And someone, I started writing some gigs here and there. And I saw, I don't remember where,
01:49I believe in Facebook, someone looking for a screenwriter for verticals series. And back then,
01:56this was like 2021, 2022, I believe. And this was not something that here in America we listen a lot.
02:07It was huge already in China, but in America, there was not much. So I started to do it. And
02:17I said,
02:17wow, this is much more easier for me. And maybe it was easier for me because I come from writing
02:26short
02:26stories. And I love to, when Twitter was used by 140 characters, I love to do your little haikus
02:37kind of often. So I like to be brief. That's the way I create. So it makes sense for me.
02:43And it was
02:44very easy. It was very quick. And I got good money at the moment. These guys said, I like your
02:51job,
02:51what the job you did. So they asked me for more. I said, okay. And back then, people didn't understand
03:00the vertical. In America, back then, they believe it was like, oh, it's like social media. You know,
03:07it's like, it's a TikTok thing. You know, it's like, if you're a professional, why are you kidding
03:11around with this format? And I said, I want to make a living. This is making money for me. I
03:16really enjoy
03:17it. It was kind of hard sometimes, because some of the stories were, honestly, the first one was a
03:23little bit too out of reality, because it was a kind of, you know, like, exaggerated. But I saw, it
03:35just
03:35started to have, like, like an evolution in the story. And if you see this, the first verticals,
03:46that I've written, and that were produced, and you see the last ones, I saw with this Ukrainian
03:54company, it's a huge difference. But back then, my screenwriters, colleagues of America, told me,
04:02why are you demeaning yourself writing this kind of stuff? You could be writing features. Why are you
04:08losing your time on this? That's for amateurs. That's for kids. They were obviously mistaken. And so I
04:15keep doing it. I have a couple of awful experience in a with a huge Chinese company that never paid
04:22my
04:22work. It was the worst nightmare as a screenwriter, that you have to adapt a 900 page book. And when
04:34you finally done, they said, I didn't like it, they use it, but they didn't pay. And you cannot do
04:39anything about it. So I was so hurt. I said, that's it. I'm not going to work verticals anymore.
04:45And I accepted the job with an Indian company that they were doing something similar, but this was
04:51an obvious thing, Pocket FM, that it was more written in Spanish. And what happened then was that
05:01the founder of Holy Water, that is my drama platform now, reached out for me because I posted
05:09in LinkedIn one of my verticals. And he was exploring that. And he said, I have a story and
05:15you're good. Why don't you do it? And I said, no, forget it. I never will do that again.
05:20Why not? And I told him my story. So he said, well, we are not, everyone is not the same.
05:26Give me a chance. What's your price? So I asked for a good price for me, but I never thought
05:36he was
05:37going to say, and he said, yeah, I ended up being the first screenwriter for both of them. It was
05:42very cool. And then, well, I kept working for the Indian people and I was a senior screenwriter there.
05:51And when that project ended, I reached out to both and I said, I'm free again, if you need
05:57a freelance or whatever. And I started working for them. First, I worked there for a year and it was
06:05amazing because it was, it was like another, and what they do is that they put a little bit more
06:12quality. The other verticals I used to write, there were low budgets produced and they didn't care
06:21much about the logic in some scenes in some characters or yeah. It was like, they were
06:30more based in what past stories were written by amateurs and writers, not like the book I adapted.
06:40And with my drama was different. My drama had a huge young team that had a very strong marketing
06:50vision and they, they wanted to do things different. So I learned a lot about the pace,
06:58about the structure, about the cliffhangers. And somehow your brain clicks and you learn how to
07:08tell the stories and you wait to tell a story. And I really liked it. So I, I started exploring
07:14that.
07:14But, and then when my project with them ended, uh, I believe I have six or eight, uh, I don't
07:23remember verticals with them. Uh, the last I wrote for them, I, I believe I saw it's, it's the queen,
07:30but I don't think they use my, my last version of, of script. They changed a lot of things, but
07:36it was more or less the queen of, um, the queen of hearts was my last vertical with them. Then
07:42I
07:43started creating my own stories, but in the vertical format and pitching them to producers. And
07:50right now I'm, I'm working two of them for a Mexican company and of a huge Mexican company. And another
07:59producer, uh, in, in the States said, I, I, I presented an idea and I developed the script and
08:07he said, it was excellent. But I believe these guys are starting to explore other things because
08:14in verticals, all people work. They, what do, what they do is you have these tropes, for example,
08:21in the States, the CEO thing, the billionaire CEO, and you have these tropes and people and the market
08:29of China moves around these tropes. And I saw that, for example, my grandma at, at, at first
08:37we're moving around the tropes and they dare to explore another, you know, it's like, okay,
08:44what if we explore comedy and, but comedy is not that huge in, in, you know, it's like melodrama is
08:52the thing. Melodrama is the thing that, that moves more than the, the, the micro drama or the,
08:59short traumas. But I believe the universe is expanding. So what I really like is that right
09:07now people are recognizing this as a format, as a media, more than, uh, you have these tropes
09:16where, where you have the characters, uh, very defined. This girl is the girl that she, the Cinderella
09:24that she was poor and, or she has, uh, the girl that's bullied and then she gets the range.
09:30In the Chinese vertical story, you would find a lot of stereotypes. The, the bully, the, the
09:37mean girl, the rich guy, this sexual tension between this, um, almost non-consent sexual tension,
09:46um, almost violence. And I believe that new stories are starting to breathe on their own
09:58because you, well, if you write a good thriller, for example, thriller is not something you see
10:06in this kind of stories or horror or comedy. Yeah. Comedy, but it hasn't been popular and it's very hard
10:14because you have to keep the tension. You have to keep people this, this, I need to know. And that
10:20is very easy to do with the drama, but it's not that easy to do with horror because you have
10:25to
10:26scare people and keep them intrigued. But thriller is bad. You can do it yet. So I've been exploring
10:33other, other genres and it has been fun. It's not expensive to produce this series in comparison
10:40of other things. So people are hopping up and the return of investment is higher than any other kind
10:49of media or content you can create. It's a very interesting thing that's happening here. So they
10:56are willing to experiment a little bit more and if they fail, it's not that bad. And I don't know
11:06if
11:06that's the idea we have. And it's not completely true because I have this talking with one high
11:15executive of a Chinese company. And she said, we produce a hundred series, I don't know, every three
11:22days. And we only need one hit, for example. They are willing to risk because with only one, they can
11:30have the whole thing. And that's funny because that's the way a book company works, book publishing
11:36house. They only need a hit and that sustains the other a thousand books they are producing.
11:44And it's funny that it works that way, but well, I believe it's a whole new world with so much
11:51possibilities. As a screenwriter, I can tell you, making a living from this, as if you only have
12:00as an option, movies and series, TV shows, it's very hard to make a living from that. You have to
12:07have another job. But if you focus on verticals, you can make a living because the pace of this is
12:16very
12:16fast. And that's very interesting. What's the definition of short drama?
12:20A short drama is it has to be in a format, best one minute format episodic. And it's like serious.
12:29You're telling a story maybe in 30 minutes, maybe in an hour. But the pace of the storytelling has to
12:40be very brief, little moments. So you need one minute episode or two minutes episodes, the most.
12:48So you have to, that's why it's a short drama, because you need to tell the story in one minute.
12:55And you only have one minute to hook the audience. And you only have one minute to present the action
13:02and to present the characters and make the audience love the characters, make them want to watch more.
13:09So for me, a short drama is the art of a short format, a short telling. And it's like short
13:18stories.
13:19When the dinosaur wake up, you need to tell the story as brief as you can. So for me is
13:27to learn to tell
13:30a whole story in a way so that's compelling and thrilling enough to be able to do little pieces and
13:39iron. It's the same, but it's not the 60 minute movie, of course, because you have to binge, binge what
13:48it has to be,
13:49you have to binge the whole. So that's my definition of short drama.
13:55What is the essence of short drama?
13:57I believe that the essence is you need to evoke emotions in your audience the fastest you can.
14:11You mentioned about your writing original stories. How do you choose their topics? Where to find your
14:17inspiration?
14:17I find my experience from everything I see, from all the people I know, of all the things I read,
14:27all the things I watch. The reason I started to be a screenwriter was because I watched a thriller
14:35series in Netflix while we were at the pandemic. And I hate it. And I said I could do it
14:42better.
14:42And that's why I realized and I wrote my first series, thriller series. So I believe I'm inspired
14:50of everything. But also, as I understand the pace and the news, I know how to recognize there are
14:59certain stories that doesn't work for verticals because you need to have enough things going on
15:05in one minute. And that's the reason why comedy is so hard. It's not that easy to make
15:15this pace because in comedy, you need different freedom sometimes. And in verticals, you need at
15:23least twist. You need emotions. You need to go like a wave every, every episode. So I believe I've
15:31been inspired of everything, as everybody. You can be inspired by talking with your friend,
15:37and your friend tells you a story, or you can be inspired. I've been, for example, I have a great
15:43example. I have this TikTok thing I love that is in reality is a radio show. And this is only
15:54an
15:54example, but they do this gig that they make the second date update. And the thing is like a person
16:03that went into a date and thinks it's marvelous. And then the guy or the girl never calls them back.
16:10And they are so into them that they call this radio station and they make this guy call them and
16:17figure
16:17out what went wrong. And the stories are some very funny. So from that kind of thing of real stories,
16:25real geeks, that's the seed of something going on. Because there's a girl that almost got married,
16:32and it turns out she didn't get married. And so she went and find out where she was stood at
16:40the altar.
16:40And for two years, she looked for this guy. And this is a true story. And she looked for this
16:45guy.
16:46And when she finally found where he is, to make him say the truth about why he didn't marry her.
16:54And it
16:55turns out the dad of her gave, I don't know, $100,000 for him not to marry her. And that's
17:03a true story.
17:04So it's very funny. You find this kind of seeds in. So you, as a writer, you need to be,
17:10you don't know where your next idea can come from. And there are some good ideas and there are ideas
17:19they didn't mean to say, but you need to learn to recognize them. The other day I saw in a
17:26writer's
17:26group, they say, it never happened to you in the middle of a script that you realize this is not
17:32the story you want to tell, or this is not the story, you know? Yeah, that happens. And you have
17:36to
17:37recognize that. Oh, you wrote stories about vampires and werewolves, right? So how do you create
17:43emotional resonance with the audience? Well, that's another, those tropes are very,
17:51very safe to explore. Those were stories that this is a story we need you to adapt them and make
18:00them
18:00vertical. So it was not that hard because it was almost a story. But the hard one was one that
18:10it
18:10was werewolves and vampires and witches, and they made a mix up. It was a 900 page book I told
18:19you
18:19about this one I made. And it's a challenging thing because even though you're talking about
18:26werewolves and you're talking and it's a lot, it's a teenage thing and it's a topic everybody knows,
18:34a trope everybody knows since Twilight. But still, you need to make, for example, werewolves are very
18:44territorial. They owe the alpha and they have this, it's very important, and they have these rules and
18:51they impront with a, I don't know, they have a, they are 18 and the wolf in the wolf wakes
18:58up and
18:59they have their mates and it's the mate and no one. So it's very easy because it's like a soap
19:04opera,
19:05you know? It's like, oh no, you're meant to be, oh, but you fell in front with someone of the
19:11other
19:11clan. And this kind of drama is very easy to do because you don't really have it. It's not that
19:18hard,
19:18but it's the same. Let's admit it. What I tried to do with this Wattpad story, I would mention it
19:25because why do I care? They never paid me. But this story was something like, it messed up with
19:32vampires, werewolves and with witches. And it's a very famous, but this company, what they used to do
19:39is that they pay for the number of words they publish. So it's crap. I'm sorry to say, but if
19:46they
19:46are paying, you have to have 20,000 words daily. And then what they do is they write the first
19:56chapter and they write the second chapter, copying the first chapter just in the point of view of
20:01another character. So it was very hard because they are amateur authors and they don't plan the
20:07whole story at the beginning. They just have a fun way to like, I don't know, Stephanie Major,
20:12that she had a very sassy way of telling stories. And maybe the content wasn't so deep, but as she
20:21had this sassy way of telling stories, it was hooking. So that happened with this kind of writers.
20:27But at the end, if you translate that, imagine, translate 900 pages to 161 minute episodes
20:37without, and these 900 pages were done without a planning. So it doesn't have a plot. It doesn't
20:44have coherence. Sometimes just a character appears and then that character disappears and never
20:52happens again. So it was a challenging thing to do, but it can be done. I believe that every story
21:01can be
21:01fixed. It doesn't matter how bad it is. But I don't believe every story is worth fixing. And it's very
21:09hard. I always said, when people came to me and said, why don't you fix this script? You don't have
21:15to write it. The only thing is you have to make little twists. I always said, if I charge 10
21:21for
21:22writing the script, I have to charge 50 to fix it. Another script, because it's harder to, you have
21:28to try to arrange a building that the basement is bad rotten. You have to almost rebuild everything,
21:37throw everything away. And that, the same thing happened when you write the script. I believe
21:43all this teen, young adult literature, that it makes sense because that's the origin from verticals,
21:52from what paths. And it just that the format just move toward verticals. So it makes sense
21:59that a lot of werewolf things are and a lot of vampire things. And it started changing to this power
22:10dynamics of the CEO, billionaire and the poor girl. And this, this kind of structures of social,
22:17social, economical, social despair, and, and hidden identity. And this kind of tropes emerge from the
22:26origin of the main verticals. So it makes sense. I'm really happy because I'm seeing things changing
22:34in the same format. And I believe that they can write a great thriller. If, if the producers risk and
22:43as, as, as everything is evolving, they will be able to risk because as AI is lowering, lowering the costs
22:52of certain things, they will be able to produce for less money and they will risk more. And I'm happy
23:03to see
23:03that there are producers risking new stories and they are trying to higher the level of quality of the
23:12stories of, and that's a challenge. I believe not everybody knows how to write a vertical. That doesn't
23:19mean that a screenwriter of another format cannot learn the format, but it's a new format. I had to learn
23:27to write screen scripts when I started because I, I used to write novels and short stories. And it's not
23:34the same
23:35because it was by, by start, different language. You wrote, um, with words when you write books. And when you
23:44write
23:44scripts, you wrote, you write with actions. It's a new language, completely different. You cannot say in a, in a
23:53script what they are
23:53thinking, but you can do it while you are writing a short story. So my first vertical, the first chapter,
24:01I was crying. I was like, Oh my God, is this story that, uh, it's a werewolf story. This is
24:07a girl that
24:08she gets 18 years old. The wolf inside of her wakes up, but it turns out on her birthday that
24:18she was going
24:19to be the mate of the alpha, but on her very birthday before the wolf awakens, the brother of
24:25the alpha came to rape her. And he was about, about to rape her when the wolf within her awakes
24:34and kills the brother. So she has this blood bath inside and the alpha came into the room with his
24:43girlfriend or whatever. And she said, what have you done? Did you kill my brother? And the girlfriend
24:51say, how dare you? And she steps back and slaps her. And I was watching that. And I was saying,
24:58I swear to God, I didn't put the slap there. They put the slap. It worked. And, uh, but for
25:05me and my
25:06standards, nobody slaps, uh, you enter a room and you find, uh, a killer bathed in the blood of your
25:16brother. And the last thing you think is, Oh, how dare you? You know, how do you improve your script
25:25each time? What I learned first is that you need to translate what the producer wants
25:30in the best way possible to make the best story. But then you have to just let go. For example,
25:38in this first story, my last version didn't have the flap. The producer decided to put the flap.
25:45And I didn't get involved. When I saw the flap, I wouldn't believe it. I had to go to my
25:50script and
25:51say, I know it was, it's not there. I, they make me doubt because the, the dialogues were the same.
25:58And that happened to me a lot when I was in the holy water, because there are a lot of
26:04people
26:04involved in the, from the creation of the story to the execution of the, they change. Sometimes they
26:12change things in the moment because that's the way verticals are done. So what I learned,
26:17if you see my work from the very first one I wrote, then the second one, the second one is
26:23interesting because it was an original idea. I believe I had the luck because the, the first
26:30one of it was this werewolf thing. And this company risk, they started risking the risk in an,
26:36in an original idea in the, and I started learning the pace because you get it, but the experience
26:43gives you, um, I don't know. It's like if you go walking every day, at first you will walk some,
26:48but when you get the rhythm, you get the rhythm. That's something that happens when you write a
26:53lot of verticals. How do you capture audience attention in 10 or five seconds? Oh, that's very
26:59easy. If you start here, you have to go there. So you have to have at least three twists, emotional
27:08twists in one episode, and you have to end in a gorgeous cliffhanger. The most important thing is
27:14the cliffhanger. If you get the story to have emotions driven, it has to be emotional driven
27:22all time. They, things has to be moving in the audience. And at the end, it has to be a
27:30great
27:30cliffhanger. No way you would work. You will do whatever. My example is, do you remember this series
27:37Lost? Have you ever watched it? Uh, I watch a few of them. Yeah, the, this series, it was, it's
27:45an old
27:45series that's called Lost in the, in America. It has the best cliffhangers. I remember I watched that
27:53series and the end was very bad because they didn't think that they have to close the stories, but they
28:00were opening them and it was so thrilling. So you couldn't wait a week to watch the set, the next.
28:08And that's important. You cannot achieve that every time, but you can try. How to design
28:14the cliffhanger? You have to based in, in the characters and in the actions. For example,
28:22if you have this couple of lovers and the husband is going to come and catch them. I noticed there
28:31are
28:31some writers that don't realize, and it's stupid because it's so obvious, no, but they don't realize
28:38they have to, to, to make the cliffhanger just when the hand of the husband is, and not when I'm
28:47walking through there or you have to walk through this. I'm, I'm calling it the click. When we, when
28:57a bomb is about to click, there is clicking. That's the timing. You have to, to increase the tension
29:06and cut it there. I wrote sometimes that we move ourselves. And as we produce, our brain produces
29:17different hormones, different hormones. And there are an hormone you produce when you have,
29:22when you're afraid, an hormone when you are anxious, another hormone when you are happy. If you know how to
29:30tell a compelling story, you know how to drive your audience through their hormones to get the result
29:38you want. And that is used for sales. That is used for advertising. And that is used for TikTok,
29:49for social media in general. And that is used for verticals. You need to know what emotion you have to
29:56evoke in your, in your audience first. And if you know that, you will know where to cut them. That's
30:04the way you have to do it. How do you design a hook? In my case, is what would hook
30:11me? Because I'm not
30:13an easy audience. I'm very picky. And when I, I know that something has to trigger my curiosity,
30:23and I believe it's a feeling. You develop the feeling or you have it. It's like, like, you know,
30:30something is going to be compelling enough. But I told you a lot of tricks to do it. You need
30:35three twists at least. You need to produce different motions and you need to cut the, if you were an
30:45addict and you want your dose and suddenly I cut your dose, you will want more. That's the way you,
30:53you do the cliffhangers, you know? So, well, they are the way different companies work. There are
30:59certain companies that they say they need fast. It's a fast pace, but they need quality. So you need to,
31:06when you send me the script, you have to already tell me which characters do, how do they look,
31:13the locations. And in each scene, in each episode, you have to say how many characters I work are there
31:22and how many locations. And normally, in a normal script, people don't do that. But if you do that,
31:31you are having a lot of time saved for the production team. And it makes sense,
31:38because if I'm the writer, in the beginning of this page, you can say in episode one,
31:45you have the pool. And in episode five, you have the pool. And in episode 25, you have the pool.
31:52And that kind of things save a lot of money and a lot of time. And that normally is not
31:58the work of
31:59the screenwriter. But if I deliver that from the start, how do you see the future short drama?
32:04I believe that's the future. I believe movies will move there. Series will move there. It's
32:11a non-brainer. It's cheaper. It's moving faster. Everybody's betting for it. And it's an easier,
32:20faster way to produce it. Huge players are jumping in. Fox is jumping in. I know Netflix kind of jumping
32:28in. I mean, huge, huge players are jumping in. That's the reason. This is the future.
32:34Quick advice for newcomers. I would suggest to think in social media formats. What do, when you,
32:44because maybe they are new to the writing, but I'm sure they are not new of watching TikTok,
32:50for example. Which kind of stories hook you? Or YouTube, this genius, Mr. Beast. What Mr. Beast says
32:57is the main thing you need for a micro drama. You have three seconds to people to do click here
33:05and
33:05whatever. That's the way to do it. That's the way to write it.
33:08And that one semester that there is alone in her belief that you've
33:08realized that you need to use the textójáškaškaška.
33:08And then when you remember,
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