Draft Zero: a screenwriting podcast

Listen if you want to make you endings great!

Stu and Chas are joined by their first guest – illustrious script developer and producer Stephen Cleary – to explore how certain films can trigger an outpouring of emotion from the audience. Turns out that Aristotle may have figured it out a few thousand years ago and called it Catharsis.

To examine how Catharsis can be triggered by a sequence of fixed beats, Stu, Chas and Stephen zone in on the last few pages of FIELD OF DREAMS, TOY STORY 3 and SE7EN. And Stu brings up FROZEN. Again.

Thanks to Noisepig Productions for location recording and producing this episode.

As always: SPOILERS ABOUND and all copyright material used under fair use for educational purposes.

LIKE THIS EPISODE?

Thanks to our Patrons, especially Khrob, Theis, Sandra, Jesse, Randy, Paulo, Thomas, Jennifer, Malay, Alexandre and Lily.

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FILMS

SCRIPTS

LINKS

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More Draft Zero is brought to you by our awesome Patreons.

If you enjoy the show, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts, a rating on Spotify, or a review on Podchaser.

We are @stuwillis, @mehlsbells and @chasffisher on Twitter. You can find @draft_zero and @_shotzero on Instagram and Twitter.

Full show notes at: https://draft-zero.com/2014/dz-04/

Listen if you want to make audiences care about deeply flawed protagonists!

In this episode, Stu and Chas try to work out what stops a-holes protoganists from pushing the audience out of the movie.

To work this out, we tackle the first 20 pages of HOT FUZZ, AS GOOD AS IT GETS and GROUNDHOG DAY. And we break down how in each script the protagonist's flaw is stated out loud to the audience and to the character within a handful of pages. And how this changes the question from "what's wrong with this guy?" to "how will he ever change?".

The other tools we discuss:

We also wander through DUE DATE, SUPERBAD, ANCHORMAN's pantsless desk-scotch, GRAN TORINO's weaponised racism, DUCKMAN, GIRLS, THE OFFICE (David Brent the Office versus the US Steve Carell) and the British tradition of letting its leads be proper a-holes.

PS: In ANCHORMAN... um... they renamed the character of Alicia Corningstone to Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate) in the shooting script. We keep on referring to her as Alicia as that is what she is referred to in the screenplay. Sorry.

As always: SPOILERS ABOUND and all copyright material used under fair use for educational purposes.

LIKE THIS EPISODE?

Thanks to our Patrons, especially Khrob, Theis, Sandra, Jesse, Randy, Paulo, Thomas, Jennifer, Malay, Alexandre & Natalie and Lily.

→ Read the transcript for this episode.

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"Stating the flaw early sets up a dramatic question for the audience... The question becomes: *when will he realize* or *how will he realize?* And you're actually wanting to see how they will ultimately change." — Stu Willis @ 00:25:52

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CHAPTERS

FILMS

SCRIPTS

LINKS

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More Draft Zero is brought to you by our awesome Patreons.

If you enjoy the show, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts, a rating on Spotify, or a review on Podchaser.

We are @stuwillis, @mehlsbells and @chasffisher on Twitter. You can find @draft_zero and @_shotzero on Instagram and Twitter.

Full show notes at: https://draft-zero.com/2014/dz-03/

Listen if you need to know which guru frameworks actually deliver in Act Three.

Part 2 of our Screenplay Gurus series takes the same lens from Part 1 — Vogler, Snyder and Hauge — and points it at the two highest-grossing original films of 2013: GRAVITY and FROZEN. No franchise, no sequel. Just the two films that audiences went to see in the biggest numbers that year, and the question of what their scripts actually look like when you run them against the guru formulas.

The short answer is: both films cleave much more closely to these structures than the award-season dramas we looked at in Part 1. Which is interesting — but not as interesting as how they deviate when you look more carefully.

GRAVITY maps onto Vogler's Hero's Journey in surprising depth: the umbilical tether as threshold crossing, Matt Kowalski as Obi-Wan, the hallucinated ghost in the pod giving the "use the Force" instruction. The structure isn't just present — it's legible, almost mythological. FROZEN brings a genuine dual-protagonist puzzle (who is actually driving the story — Anna or Elsa?) and a third act that plays out under its own rules rather than anybody's formula.

What starts to emerge is that the frameworks are more useful at some points than others. Vogler has real things to say about Act 3; Snyder's "finale — finish it" turns out to be pretty thin guidance for actually generating that emotional hit. And as Chas lands at the end of the episode: the three-act model itself might not be the useful unit. Sequences might be. Though you'll have to wait quite a few episodes until we tackle them!

The craft questions in this episode:

We also go deep on the frameworks' different coverage of the Dark Night of the Soul — which Stu argues is less a formula beat and more a question every writer should be able to answer for their character. What is the lowest point? What does it take to get out of it? That turns out to be something these frameworks are, and aren't, equipped to help with.

As always: SPOILERS ABOUND and all copyright material used under fair use for educational purposes.

LIKE THIS EPISODE?

Thanks to our Patrons, especially Khrob, Theis, Sandra, Jesse, Randy, Paulo, Thomas, Jennifer, Malay, Alexandre and Lily.

→ Read the transcript for this episode.

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"I think as soon as you are stretching them in any way, they're losing their value as a rigid tool." — Chas Fisher @ 00:00:57

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CHAPTERS

FILMS

SCRIPTS

LINKS

EPISODES IN THE SCREENPLAY GURUS SERIES

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More Draft Zero is brought to you by our awesome Patreons.

If you enjoy the show, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts, a rating on Spotify, or a review on Podchaser.

We are @stuwillis, @mehlsbells and @chasffisher on Twitter. You can find @draft_zero and @_shotzero on Instagram and Twitter.

Full show notes at: https://draft-zero.com/2014/dz-02/

Download episode: DZ-02.mp3

Listen if you want to know whether Blake Snyder, Michael Hauge and Christopher Vogler's structural theories actually apply to Academy Award-nominated screenplays

Three of the most widely read structure books in screenwriting — Snyder's Save the Cat, Vogler's The Writer's Journey, and Michael Hauge's Six Stages — all make essentially the same claim: this is how great films are built. In our debut episode, we run that claim against two Oscar-nominated films to see if it holds: PHILOMENA and DALLAS BUYERS CLUB.

We map both against Snyder, Hauge, and Vogler, looking for where the beats land, where they don't, and — more usefully — what those gaps reveal about how the films actually work. As Chas puts it: "the answer as to whether these structural theories apply is actually less important than what the act of testing them against great films teaches us

PHILOMENA turns out to be a dual-protagonist script that makes the frameworks interesting precisely because it doesn't fit cleanly.

DALLAS BUYERS CLUB seemingly has a cleaner structure — the A-plot is Ron Woodruff's drug-smuggling operation — but the more interesting structural question is the B-story: Stu identifies it as "the battle for Ron's soul," with Rayon and Eve staging Ron's transformation from a man "sick in both body and soul" into something else.

The structural question we keep returning to: if a great film breaks the rules, does that mean there are no rules, or that it found something better?

And we skim over a few other ideas: why we picked these films over other nominees, the problem with Page 12 catalysts, and whether "Save the Cat" moments are actually doing what Snyder says they are.

As always: SPOILERS ABOUND and all copyright material used under fair use for educational purposes.

LIKE THIS EPISODE?

Thanks to our Patrons, especially Khrob, Theis, Sandra, Jesse, Randy, Paulo, Thomas, Jennifer, Malay, Alexandre & Natalie and Lily.

→ Read the transcript for this episode.

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"They aren't the Bible. They aren't the holy grail of screenwriting. You need to do more than read these books to become a screenwriter." — Chas Fisher @ 00:03:36

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CHAPTERS

FILMS

SCRIPTS

LINKS

EPISODES IN THE SCREENPLAY GURUS SERIES

———

More Draft Zero is brought to you by our awesome Patreons.

If you enjoy the show, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts, a rating on Spotify, or a review on Podchaser.

We are @stuwillis, @mehlsbells and @chasffisher on Twitter. You can find @draft_zero and @_shotzero on Instagram and Twitter.

Full show notes at: https://draft-zero.com/2014/dz-01/

Listen if you're new to the podcast and want to understand our philosophy on screenwriting craft!

Welcome to Draft Zero. A message from 2019 to those starting with our first episodes dating from 2014. We’ve learned a lot in five years. So where do you begin?

Since launching our podcast, we’ve embarked on an ambitious mission: to enhance our writing skills by dissecting the very elements we grapple with in our own projects. From thematic structure to character development, we study successful films and scripts to glean insights that not only improve our own craft but also enable us to share valuable resources with our listeners.

Basically we do our homework and share it with you: leaving you with (hopefully!) golden nuggets.

Attention first-time listeners! We’d like to highlight that our episodes are not necessarily linear, nor do they follow a strict curriculum of lessons. Instead, we jump from topic to topic, tackling micro-elements such as inducing catharsis in scenes or mastering pacing through white space on the page. We understand that this might not suit everyone; thus, we encourage new writers to explore our website and the “Beginner’s Guide to Draft Zero,” where we’ve categorized our episodes into manageable themes like character work, scene development, and thematic exploration.

Remember, this podcast isn’t about following a structured course; it’s about opening up the conversation around screenwriting. Whether you are an aspiring writer or someone who enjoys dissecting media narratives, we do our best to provide insights. We’re constantly learning ourselves and sharing what we’ve discovered. The ultimate goal is to foster growth, creativity, and community within the field of filmmaking.

Many thanks to all our patrons but particularly to Chris, Khrob, Sandra, Nick, Rob, Matteo, Daniel and Carrie. They’re good humans.

As always: SPOILERS ABOUND and all copyright material used under fair use for educational purposes.

LIKE THIS EPISODE?

Thanks to our Patrons, especially Khrob, Theis, Sandra, Jesse, Randy, Paulo, Thomas, Jennifer, Malay, Alexandre and Lily.

→ Read the transcript for this episode.

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"We're trying to do your homework for you." — Chas Fisher @ 00:01:50

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CHAPTERS

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More Draft Zero is brought to you by our awesome Patreons.

If you enjoy the show, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts, a rating on Spotify, or a review on Podchaser.

We are @stuwillis, @mehlsbells and @chasffisher on Twitter. You can find @draft_zero and @_shotzero on Instagram and Twitter.

Full show notes at: https://draft-zero.com/2014/dz-00/