John and Craig rant about prohibitive screenwriting advice and declare their allegiance to the “we see/we hear” convention. They analyze scripts from this year’s awards season to argue good story trumps all else.

We also answer questions on screenplay fundamentals from parantheticals, action lines to script length.

In our bonus segment for premium members, we consider: what is the screenwriting equivalent of boot camp?

Links:

• The CW is for sale!
• Annie Hayes on Writing with an Invisible Illness on John’s blog
• Being the Ricardos by Aaron Sorkin
• The Lost Daughter by Maggie Gyllenhaal
• The Mitchells vs. the Machines by Mike Rianda And Jeff Rowe
• Passing by Rebecca Hall
• Belfast by Kenneth Branagh
• Tick, Tick, Boom by Steven Levenson
• Willy Wonka Script at the johnaugust.com library!
• Vigil show
• MIT Mystery Hunt 2022
• Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
• Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription or treat yourself to a premium subscription!
• Craig Mazin on Twitter
• John August on Twitter
• John on Instagram
• Outro by William Brink (send us yours!)
• Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at [email protected]

You can download the episode here.