John and Craig take a detour to discuss side quests: those smaller tasks that can serve as the building blocks of a character’s journey. How do side quests differ from your hero’s primary goal? What’s the best way to use them? And how can writers make them meaningful?

We then discuss the importance of failure to the artistic process. We also follow up on graphic design for writers, spacing out TV episodes, and a Scriptnotes love story.

In our bonus segment for premium members, John and Craig put on their headsets to to talk about VR.

Links:

• Do Your Worst, Or You Might Never Do Your Best by Bridget Webber
• Why You Need to Fail TED Talk by Derek Sivers
• Artists must be allowed to make bad work by Austin Kleon
• The Museum of Failure
• For Profit: A History of Corporations by William Magnuson
• Kobo Libra 2
• Nine Days on IMDb
• Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
• Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
• Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription or treat yourself to a premium subscription!
• Craig Mazin on Instagram
• John August on Twitter
• John on Instagram
• John on Mastodon
• Outro by Daniel Green (send us yours!)
• Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt with help from Chris Csont and edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our intern is Halley Lamberson.

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You can download the episode here.