Write Your Screenplay Podcast

The Hero Writes Itself: Interview with Katie Torpey

Jake: I am here today with Katie Torpey, our newest teacher. She is teaching our TV Drama Classes, Write Your Screenplay I, Write Your Screenplay II, Write Your Screenplay III, and The Writing Lab.

Welcome, nice to have you. 

Katie: Thanks for having me, I am very excited.

Jake: I would love to start off by talking a little bit about your background as a screenwriter.

Katie: Perfect, so the first job I got out of college was at America’s Most Wanted TV Show. I was doing stories for them, and that is when I fell for storytelling in that genre.

And then I left for LA, I lived on the East Coast; I went to LA and started working as a PA and stuff like that. But, I started taking some classes at UCLA Extension and I won some awards. I won The Diane Thomas award, I was a finalist in the Chesterfield. That got me going, and then I got into UCLA Film School and got my Masters in Screenwriting.

And then from there, I sold a script out of film school, and I went started working with Power Rangers and wrote for them. Then I sold another script that got made called The Perfect Man with Hilary Duff and Heather Locklear and Chris Noth.

I wrote and directed a movie that I shot in Ireland, starring Stana Katic who was on Castle, and that was awesome because I got to direct.

From there I sold a TV show that got made on Hulu. It was one of Hulu’s first TV shows. It was interesting because we were like, “Online? We’re going to do a TV show online?” And now it is so huge online TV.

And I teach obviously, I love teaching. My first teacher as a screenwriter was Valerie West and she was so inspiring. She helped me learn about storytelling, and I swore if I ever got to a place that I could teach and help someone and have them feel that way I would do it. And that is what got me into teaching.

Jake: I had a mentor like that too. I had Peter Parnell, who at the time was a playwright, and Peter taught me what it meant to be an artist, which is something that often I think gets left out of screenwriting training.

Katie: Absolutely, it tends to get so formulaic that it is like a math equation,  and that isn't what it is supposed to be.

Jake: When you’re approaching a script, how do you help a student, or how do you help yourself find that balance between the art and the craft?

Katie: Well, I spent so much time learning the craft in many different ways. I throw it out now, because it is really kind of ingrained in me. So I don’t even really think about it. For me when you know the character so well like you really make them rich, they write themselves, it is almost like you’re channeling.

Jake: So if you’re a new writer, and maybe you’ve been taught a lot of like formula, you’ve been taught Save The Cat, or The Hero’s Journey, or three act structure, and now you’re looking to kind of get underneath and get to your authentic voice as a writer, like how do you do that?

Katie: I would start with journaling. Just start to write, just vomit it out and see what comes out. And then you’ll see like some beautiful stuff.

Jake: You have a really cool installment of The Writing Lab that you’re going to do with us called The Hero Writes Itself, and you were talking about how you actually use archetypes in that class to connect through a series of writing exercises, is that right?

Katie: Yeah, I have people go into their life and the people who they’ve met in their life, and things they like, they dislike, who they are, moments from their life, to really pull out experiences and stories, and a story they might want to tell. It is just a wild experience because it is all psychological.

Because, if you know all the elements of a human being, why they do what they want and the motivation behind everything… for example, if you understand someone has a hard time in relationships because the parents got divorced and the mom cheated on the dad...

If you know these kind of details, you will understand why this main character has a hard time at love, and it is almost like a river that starts and it just goes.

And the character becomes fabulous, because you’re creating something so original and it is just talking for you, it is like you aren't even writing it anymore.

Jake: You’ve worked in so many different worlds, and I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how you approach feature films versus how you approach TV writing, how are they similar and how are they different?

Katie: Well, in features there’s an end to the story. So I really think about “where’s this character going?”and “who are supporting characters in the world with them?” and “how do they all connect?”I am like a little more like, “hmm, what’s going on here?” and “how am I going to end it at some point?”

And then with a TV show, it is endless, so I think, “what could happen at 100th episode?” “where can these characters go?” “where can the stories go?” It’s almost more freeing to write TV and it’s a lot of fun. Because in TV you can let these characters run and play.

Look at Breaking Bad, it is a great example. It was almost like a long movie, six seasons, because he changed and the characters changed, and the stories changed.

Jake: You know we have so many students who are working to break into television, and some who’ve successfully done it, which is really exciting. When you were working as a Head Writer, what would you look for in a new writer?

Katie: It is all about, “Can they tell a story?  Am I engaged?”

And engagement doesn’t mean you open up with a murder or something. Engagement is all about, “Do I want to read the next page, because the character is just insanely brilliant?” Or, there is a story element makes you say, “wow!” and you just want to keep on reading and reading.

That is my goal when I am telling a story; I want to be real and authentic with it. You can feel it when it is manufactured, when it is trying to be something it isn't. So, I love being authentic with it. I want you to keep on watching the TV, or not walk out of the movie theatre.

Jake: So, one of the things that I always talk about with my students is that there are different phases of writing.

You have your Me Draft first , “hey, I am just going to look at what it might be, I am going to let it write itself.”

Then you have your Audience Draft where you are like, “Okay now I have to find a way to serve this up in a way that the audience can go on as cool of a journey as I have, so I am going to have some structure.”

You have the Producer Draft where you are going to turn up the volume on the hook, so that a producer can realize, “Oh I can sell this!” or an actor can realize, “Oh I want to be in this!”

And then you have the Reader Draft where you really clean up formatting.

I am curious, when you are working on a TV show, it is such a collaborative environment, and like you were saying, there is like this element of, “I want to just allow the story to tell itself”, and then there is this other element of, “I want the audience to keep turning these pages...”

Katie: Absolutely. So, when you are in a writers room, it is a lot of fun because you do the season arc, so you need to know where the journeys are, where the characters are going, what are the story lines.

It is a lot of fun to play with that and bounce ideas. We always had a big board and we would just lay it out like, “Where are the stories going?”

But they would change sometimes. We needed the structure so we knew where we were going, but sometimes the episode would change, so we would be like, “Oh wait we have got to change this because the character authentically didn’t want to go there.”

So, we played that way, and people would balance and it was a lot of fun.

Jake: I think that that is such an exciting thing to think about, because a lot of newer writers get really hung up on their outlines. Or there is this idea that when you get to a TV show, you must do an outline and then everyone must play by those rules.

What we have really seen with our students who have gone on to TV shows, and having wonderful teachers like you and Jerry teaching how to write for TV, what we have seen is there is an outline but that outline is constantly in flux. And just when you think you know what your story is, someone changes episode 42 and your story changes.

How do you develop those skills with an emerging writer so that when they have worked so darn hard to craft that piece, and suddenly the showrunner changes everything, or the network changes everything, or the showrunner and network both want to change something, they have enough plasticity in their writing to adapt?

Katie: I think for any writer, you need to be able to be flexible, because it is an art. It is a storytelling art. It isn't finance! And so you have to go with the characters and the story. And you never know why a story is going to change. There could be an actor that gets fired and all of a sudden it is like, “Okay this story is going over here.” Or there is no chemistry between a couple on a TV show and they are like, “Okay we’ve got to break them up”.

So, you are always moving and shifting. But it is fun! It is actually fun to move and shift. It is like you are hanging out in the writers room and somebody is like “hey we’ve got a new plan, what are we going to do, let’s figure it out?” Then everyone bounces ideas together, and then we land in the story.

Jake: So you actually enjoy rewriting?

Katie: I do, I absolutely do. I find usually then it usually gets to the best level at that point.

Jake: How do you make rewriting fun for yourself, because I know so many of my students they dread rewriting. “Oh no God please let me be finished!”

Katie: Many people get hung up on rewriting and feel like they could rewrite for the rest of their lives. They are trying for perfection and that is never going t

In the first installment of this podcast, we looked at A Quiet Place in relation to writing action and discussed how all of screenplay formatting really exists for one purpose: to isolate visual moments of action. How does this relate to theme and character and dialogue and all those other elements of A Quiet Place and screenwriting in general? Well, that’s what we’re going to cover in this podcast.

A QUIET PLACE Part 2: Dialogue, Action & The Theme of Your Screenplay

In the first installment of this podcast, we looked at A Quiet Place in relation to writing action and discussed how all of screenplay formatting really exists for one purpose: to isolate visual moments of action.

By isolating visual moments of action we can hypnotize the reader into seeing, hearing, and feeling the story in their mind’s eye, rather than simply reading it on the page. We can invite them to tell themselves the story of the movie, rather than having it spoonfed to them.

We explored the idea that each image in your screenplay, just like each image in your movie---every line, every comma, every period---is really a cut. An isolated moment that, when bumped up against another isolated moment, draws the reader into your script and allows them to make connections to tell themselves the story of what is really going on.

So by now, we understand what the word “Isolate” means. But what about the other three elements of formatting: Visual Moments of Action?

And how does all of this relate to theme and character and dialogue and all those other elements of A Quiet Place and screenwriting in general? Well, that’s what we’re going to cover in this podcast.

So since we now understand the idea of Isolated in Isolated Visual Moments of Action, now let’s get into the concept of Visual. The next idea is Visual.

Visual formatting in your screenplay means that there is something visually exciting about each image.

Another way to think of that is that there is nothing normal in your script, and the reason there is nothing normal in your script is because there is nothing normal in the world. Everything in the world is really freaking weird. Your most normal friend is really freaking weird. You are really freaking weird.

Your desk doesn’t actually look like a desk. Your desk has something weird about it.  Maybe it’s a scratch, maybe it’s a toothbrush sitting in a pen holder, maybe it’s the way that your papers are stacked up with a little crystal on top of them.

Your desk has something weird about it and you have something weird about you, and every moment in life has something weird about it, and if you don’t see it, you are just not looking closely enough.

And if you aren't looking closely enough, that means that your reader, or your viewer, has to do the work of seeing, rather than you doing the work of seeing.

Visual means that you are going to do the work of seeing each moment. You are going to do the work of finding that little hooky thing, that little special element, that little thing that makes it just slightly cooler than normal. That every single thing you write is going to be something that is worthy of shooting.

And here is why that is important: every single thing you write is freaking expensive.

A Quiet Place had one of the craziest production schedules ever.

It was released about 5 months after they finished production, and think about that. Think about how short that is. Post-production was the biggest part of this movie. You had to cut this whole film together and actually use sound almost like it was a character in the film. This movie was all about post, and its rush to release date was insane.

In fact, they even had to reinvent the creature during the post-production process because John Krasinski wasn’t happy with the creature that ILIM had created; they actually went back to the drawing board and reimagined all that visual work. So that timetable is intense.

Why were they able to pull it off?  

Well, actually Krasinski has talked about this. They were able to pull this off, and they were able to pull it off on such a low budget, because he wrote it (as did Bryan Woods and Scott Beck) to cut together in exactly the way they had written it.

Unlike most scripts, which basically throw the ball to the director and go, “Hey dude, you figure it out,” this script was written exactly the way it needed to be shot.

If you are an independent filmmaker, this is the most important lesson that you can take.

Usually, if you are an independent filmmaker, it means that your line producer isn't experienced enough to really do their job.

And that isn't because your line producer isn't good. That’s because your line producer isn't experienced because you can’t afford an experienced line producer. And usually, you are trying to squeeze in more shots in a day than the professionals are squeezing in, which is crazy because they have more budget and more pre-production than you do.

And what ends up happening is all of your days are going to run late, and your line producer is going to start making cuts because you don’t have time, and your director, who is likely as inexperienced as you are, is going to start figuring out on the fly “what do I need?”

But if you do this work on the page, like John Krasinski did, starting with a great script and then rewriting and rewriting until it’s written exactly the way you imagine your editor will cut it, then you can control your budget and the ultimate success of your film, regardless of how little money you have or how compressed your production or post-production schedule may be.

And on A Quiet Place that’s exactly what they did! Although they did a little bit of rearrangement in the editing room, they actually cut it on the page exactly the way they wanted to get it shot and edited---each image written on the page in exactly the way they were going to shoot it.

What Krasinski did was he took a great script, the early draft we referenced in the last podcast, and revised it until he had isolated each of those visual moments of action, and that allowed him to know exactly what he needed as a director.

But that also allows you flexibility and huge budget savings when something goes wrong. When you don’t get your location, or it starts to rain, or you’re running behind and you don’t have the budget to pay overtime---you can actually make the cut on the page and see how it is going to affect the rhythm and the tone of your script.

And your inexperienced line producer isn’t going to be able to predict this. And trust me, if you’re doing a low budget movie, your line producer is almost certainly inexperienced, since you’re not going to have the money to hire an experienced one.

 

The chances are, your inexperienced line producer has already under-budgeted your production.

And if you write non-specific action, like “Jake is recording his podcast” it’s just going to exacerbate the problem.

Your inexperienced line producer isn't going to think, “Jake records his podcast, what are the shots I’m going to need to convey that in a captivating way?” He’s going to think, “Jake sitting at a desk, one shot, bang, bang, done!”

But if you write those isolated visual moments of action like we discussed last week:

“Jake’s hands tip the microphone towards his mouth. His lips move within a bushy grey beard.”

Instead, he is going to realize, “Oh, I need to get in a shot of that hand. I have got to get the close shot of that mouth. I have got to get hair and makeup to make sure that beard looks right for that close shot.”

When you learn to do this work in your screenplay, you are actually going to be writing better than the professional screenwriters.

Most professionals don’t have time to do this, and because of their reputation they don’t have to do it. They can throw it back to the director and go, “Hey, here is the story, get the gist.” They can think of it like it is a blueprint.

But, you as a young writer, an emerging writer---or if you are planning to self-direct, if you are working on a low budget, or if you are trying to break through to Hollywood, or if, as they did in A Quiet Place, you are actually doing both---you are thinking you are going to make this yourself, and meanwhile your agent is out there shopping in Hollywood… and everyone says “no.” But, finally, Michael Bay says yes, because he sees it and feels it and experiences it, and he knows it is going to work.

If you actually do that kind of writing, you are going to save yourself so much money, or you are going to make yourself so much money, and you are going to give your film so much better of an opportunity to actually get made.

And that’s all we want. At the end of the day we want our movies to get made and we want our movies to be great.

 

And writing in this way protects you. It protects you from producers. It protects you from coverage readers. It protects you from inexperienced line producers. It protects you from inexperienced directors.

And let’s say that film was made not by John Krasinski. Let’s say that the director hadn’t been such a brilliant filmmaker who could come to that original script and do his own revision and make it even stronger.

When you write this way, if you get stuck with an average producer or an average director, you’ve given them something that they can actually shoot. You haven't given them a blueprint that they have to figure out---that they need special expertise like an architect does to read. You’ve given them something that translates directly to that little movie screen in their mind.

So, the first element Isolated, the second element Visual.

The third element is called Moments. Moments mean we are going to see the greatest hits. We’re not going to see all the stuff in between. If you were writing a play, you would watch the character enter, walk across the rooftop, say “hi” to the other character and then leave. They would have to actually track all that little detail, and that is why a play is actually very little action, because we go, “Ah, we will figure that out on the stage.”

But when you are writing a film, we have the power of the cuts---these isolated visual moments of action---and that means we only need the greatest hits moments, the moments that create the impression,...

Jacob Krueger analyzes the screenplay for A Quiet Place, and teaches you how great action and great screenplay formatting really boil down to four simple concepts.

In this podcast episode, Jacob Krueger analyzes the seemingly unrelated scripts for Isle of Dogs and the Roseanne reboot, and shows you what you can learn from each about writing for political change.

Please note, this podcast was recorded prior to the recent scandals surrounding Roseanne Barr. We have chosen to leave the podcast on our site because we feel it may have information that is valuable to writers. But the analysis was based upon what the show appeared to be after the airing of the pilot. As recent events have shown, rather than taking advantage of her unique opportunity to use her artistic platform to begin a healing for a torn apart America, as I had hoped when recording this podcast, Roseanne has instead used her platform to further fracture us through hate, reminding us of a darker side of what art can do when used in the wrong way. On my podcast I have always tried to separate the art from the artist. But this episode certainly reflects a mistake on my part in failing to note the difference between the real Roseanne and the character she plays on her show.

This week we are going to be talking about two scripts that seem to have nothing in common.  The first is Isle of Dogs by Wes Anderson. And the second is the pilot of the new Roseanne.

Wait, what?

Well keep listening, because as different as they are in every aspect of their execution, their style, their politics, their genre and their format, Isle of Dogs and Roseanne do have one incredibly important thing in common:

They’re both a lesson in the power of movies and TV shows to grapple with real socio-political issues, and make real change in our society.

And what’s so fabulous about both of these scripts is that they do so without sacrificing their political beliefs, without dumbing anything down for their audience, and without compromising their artistic integrity or their commercial or critical success.

Isle of Dogs is a ridiculous movie about a ridiculous concept.

And when I say Isle of Dogs is a ridiculous movie about a ridiculous concept, I’m not referring to the ridiculous concept of a Japan of the near future in which dogs are banished to a mysterious island by a cat loving corrupt leader… or the unlikely story of his adopted child’s flying a stolen airplane to the land of garbage save his beloved pet, Spots.

When I say ridiculous story about a ridiculous concept, I am talking about the concept underneath: the real theme of this movie.

Because this isn't a movie about dogs. This isn't a movie about the war between cats and dogs. This isn't a movie about a closeted cat lover who wants to banish dogs from his corrupt future Japan.

And this is not just a movie the power of the visual image-- though Wes Anderson’s approach to Isolating Visual Moments of Action is at once a master class in how to write action in a screenplay, and a complete violation of every rule you thought you knew.

And yes, I can’t help but wax poetic about how Wes Anderson somehow manages to fuse the rules of theatre and film, creating set pieces like a giant stage, and then populating them with oddly poetic images… or how he uses that poetry at once as an homage and a satire of a world that he loves, treating the ridiculous with piety, and the serious with ridiculousness...

But that’s not what the movie is about either.

Isle of Dogs is a movie about racism and politics. In other words, Isle of Dogs is a movie about America.

And it is interesting because Wes Anderson has taken a lot of crap actually for this movie. Some critics feel that Isle of Dogs is guilty of cultural appropriation in its depiction of this future Japan; other critics have argued that having a white exchange student as a savior is degrading to the Japanese characters at the center of the movie, a recreation of the old white savior trope.

And maybe these things are true. Maybe these things would be true if this was a movie about Japan.

But, really this is an homage to Japanese film making by a filmmaker who loves Japan, and who loves Japanese filmmakers.

And more importantly, this is a movie about America.

This isn't a Japan that looks like Japan. These aren't dogs that act like dogs. This isn't a political landscape that looks like a real political landscape.

This is a satire of the most ridiculous part of our human nature.

This is a movie that looks at the ridiculousness of racism, that looks at the ridiculousness of deporting people based on what they are rather than who they are-- in this case, the fact that they are dogs-- which is just as ridiculous as banishing someone from the United States because they happen to have been born in Mexico, or some other country.

This is a movie about totalitarian law and corruption. This is a movie about playing the media. This is a movie about the way that actual science gets dismissed in favor of politics. This is a movie about the fact that our leaders tend to be puppets that are manipulated by much darker forces behind them. This is a movie about the idea of equal debate in a world where total falsehoods and totally true statements are given equal weight.

This is a movie about a black dog and a white dog who don’t realize that they are brothers because they seemed to have come from such different backgrounds.

This is not a movie about a bunch of stupid dogs, and it’s not a movie about Japan—it is a movie about us.

What is wonderful about Wes Anderson--and this is such an important thing if you are writing a political movie-- What’s so wonderful about him is that he managed to make a political movie without making us feel political. Without getting up on a soapbox. Without isolating the people on the other side but rather, holding up a ridiculous, magical mirror in which we could examine ourselves and maybe change what we believe.

A lot of us are mad about politics right now. A lot of writers are mad about politics. And a lot of writers who don’t agree with my politics (and I am somewhere far, far, far, to the left), are equally angry about politics right now.

If you watched the reboot of Roseanne what is incredibly powerful and what made that reboot so darn effective and successful is that, like Isle of Dogs, rather than getting up on a soapbox and preaching to the choir, it trusted its audience to form their own opinion.

Which is interesting, because we’re talking about two writers on completely different sides of the political spectrum: One, Roseanne Barr, an unabashed Trump supporter, and the other, Wes Anderson, making an allegory about racism and xenophobia in a magical dog hating Japan.

But both writers take the same approach, which is basically to say, “Hey, we trust our audiences to form their own opinions. Rather than getting up on a soapbox and moralizing, what we are going to do is we are going to give our audiences a chance to look at themselves.”

Both Isle of Dogs and Roseanne make their political points by transcending politics-- and focusing instead on the heart of all screenwriting-- by focusing on characters, and relationships and the things that really matter to us.

If Isle of Dogs is  a poetic masterpiece set against a ridiculous world, Roseanne is a couch, a studio audience, and a bunch of laugh lines, set against a very real world.

In Roseanne what happens is we get to look at a family that we love and that loves each other, Roseanne has always been the symbol for white trash dysfunction, a family that is so messed up, but underneath it really loves each other.

That’s why Roseanne was welcomed into so many houses and so many homes for such a long time with so much success. Because Roseanne gave us an opportunity to laugh at ourselves, but also to see ourselves clearly, not as the perfect people that we are supposed to be, but as the totally messed up but well intentioned people that we actually are.

It allowed us to see our families that way. And our friends that way. And even the people we don’t agree with that way.

Who would have thought that a reboot of Roseanne, might be the thing that actually begins the healing of America in the wake of the horrific political crisis we have been through.

That a show like Roseanne would be able to take these two extreme points of view and somehow bring them back together. That a show like Roseanne would help us remember -- you know what?-- at the end of all this, at the end the day we still love each other.

Roseanne is going, “Okay look, I believe this, and my sister believes this, and we are estranged over the rift between us so badly that we have forgotten the fact that we love each other. And somehow through humor, comedy and love we are going to agree to disagree, and remember that at the end of the day we are sisters, or we are brothers, or we are family.”

That we are actually all the same, and that we are actually all going through the same stuff together. Even the people who support the party and the politicians that you don’t believe in... So, as a screenwriter this is why you are here. You are here to change the social fabric of your world.

But that doesn’t mean getting up on a soapbox. In fact if you do get up on a soapbox, if you make one of these moralistic movies about the way things are supposed to be, here is the only thing that you can be guaranteed: the only people who will listen to you are the people who already believe what you are saying.

You are going to be preaching to the choir and you aren't going to convince anybody.

But, create a show like Roseanne and you give people a chance to actually look at themselves, to actually look at how ridiculous, and how beautiful, and how loving, and how messed up we all actually are. You give them a chance to actually come out the other side and remember who we can actually be.

So, Roseanne takes one model, “Hey let’s look at this honestly, let’s look at the real intentions and the real misconceptions, and the real extremes on both sides, and let’s show America a model for how those two sides can actually come together, not in perfect harmony but in beautiful dysfunction.”

...

In this very special 100th Episode, Jacob Krueger and Audrey Sussman PhD discuss how learning to nurture the inner artist that is the source of your creativity can change not only your writing, but also your life.

Jake: Hi, I’m Jacob Krueger, and thank you for tuning into a very special episode of The Write Your Screenplay Podcast. This is our 100th episode. I’m so incredibly excited, proud and grateful to all of the listeners that have made this possible for 100 episodes.

So, I was thinking, “What am I going to do for my 100th episode?” I wanted to do something special? So, I decided to go back to the source.

And for that reason, today I’m going to be interviewing my mom, Audrey Sussman.

I’m excited to talk to my mom on this podcast for a couple of reasons.

First my mom taught me everything that I know as an artist. I have the only Jewish mother in America who found out that her daughter was going to be a doctor and responded, “Oh, my God, but you could have been an Opera singer!”  

So, I’m incredibly lucky to have had a mother who supports my artistic life, and that is something that a lot of people don’t get.

in addition to that, my mom taught me everything I know about writing, and not because my mom is a writer, but because my mom is a hypnotherapist.

Her work is about the stories that we tell ourselves, not on the conscious level but on the subconscious level, and how those stories take us on journeys of change-- how we can actually change who we are by changing the stories.

In this way my mom taught me how to induce a trance in a reader: how to allow a reader to experience a fictional story as if it was real.

She taught me how to use image and sound and feeling, and the other modalities that allow writing to feel real and stories to feel real.

She showed me how to build structure-- how the human mind puts structure together.

And she taught me how to do rewriting-- not how to rewrite a script but by how to rewrite your life! How to change the way you tell yourself the story of your life—not by making it fake, but by finding different layers, and different values to the truth.

Another reason I’m very excited to have my mom here is she teaches classes at the studio. She teaches two classes: The Inner Game which is our class about how to take care of the inner challenges to your writing—the subconscious challenges, the fears, the confidence, the procrastination, and also how to connect to your characters on a more profound level. And she teaches our Writing Lab, which is our experimental laboratory where we really push the edges of how writing works.

 

So, thank you, Audrey, so much. It’s weird to call you Audrey-- but thank you, Mom, for joining us here today.

Audrey: I’m really delighted to be here. As I was listening you tell the story of how you learned from me, it is interesting because all I was doing was being a mom who knew how to listen. That just was natural––it was such a natural way of interacting where you are always looking for the good in the person. You are always figuring if a person is feeling a certain way, especially my child, there must be a reason for it. Looking for those stories that you might have been telling yourself-- that was just how I parented and I was always looking for the good. And it sounds like you do the same with your students. I hear you when you teach.

Jake: That is probably the most valuable thing that you can learn as a writer. It is so easy to find the bad, and a lot of us, as parents to our inner creative children-- if we ever said to another child what we say to our little inner artist child, someone would be calling child services immediately.

And part of being a writer is learning how to be a good parent to that creative child. Because we do need to be a parent to that child; we can’t just neglect that child and leave that child out in the wilderness, or that child will experience a lot of the negative things that happen to artists.

We have to be a parent to that child, we have to help guide that child towards the places that they need to go creatively, to learning the skills that they need to learn to succeed.

But, a lot of us get way too aggressive with that child, and I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that.

Audrey: I was thinking of a story. A parent plants some seeds in the ground, and they are supposed to be flowers. And three days go by, and the parent is like, “Well why aren't these flowers yet?” And they dig them up and they’re still seeds! Covers them up, waters them. Next day, waters them. A week goes by and the parent is like, “What is going on here, where are the flowers?” and he starts stamping on the dirt.

That’s sometimes what we do to ourselves. “Why don’t I have this done? Why didn’t I write the pages I said I would?” And instead of just watering the seed and saying, “Hey let me just spend five minutes doing something, fifteen minutes, let me look for the good,” we are stamping on it, because we are angry that the flower hasn’t bloomed.

It doesn’t work like that.

Jake: I think that metaphor that you just gave of digging it up is such a powerful metaphor. Because we do this to our scripts all the time. You start something and it is something you believe in, but it is in an early form. It is still a seed. It isn't a plant yet. Or, you expect it to be a flower, but it turns out it is a beautiful tomato plant.

And instead of trusting that the material is going to take the shape that it needs to take, sometimes we end up just digging it up, or reinventing it, or throwing it out, or giving up on it, or trying to shape it into something that it doesn’t want to be.

Audrey: You know, it’s funny, when I was a kid I used to write poetry. And I never thought much about it; I never thought it was good or bad, I just wrote.

And that is the freedom of a child-- who knew that this was poetry! It is beautiful poetry. Some of it was a little deep and sad, but I look back on it as an adult and I think, “Oh my, if I sat down to write with all that stuff we do to ourselves as adults, I wouldn’t have had that beautiful poetry.”

Which makes me think about-- I call them filters through which we see life. You know, if you write something and then you think it is great, and then you look at it the next day and you are like, “Oh this is a piece of trash!” Don’t throw it away.

Because three weeks or a year from now you might look at that and you are like, “Oh my God, did I write this?”

Even daily our own filters change.

Jake: Yeah, it is interesting because that happens with feedback as well. Most scripts that go out aren't really ready to go. Most people rush it. They still have the seed, and they are trying to pretend it is a plant-- it is very easy not to put enough time in as a gardener, or to kind of see the beginning and go, “Let me duct tape and chewing gum some leaves on there and we will just pretend it is full grown.”

But, every once in a while you have a script that really is ready to go. You have really done the work and you have created something that is beautiful to you,  that is surprising to you in some way-- that maybe goes even beyond what you expected it to do.

And sometimes that happens and you have to recognize that other people have filters too. You are going to get a lot of very negative feedback sometimes. And it is important to recognize what happens as an artist that if you let all that feedback bounce you around, if you react at every bit of advice and every bit of feedback.

Don’t get me wrong , I believe in mentorship. I would be nowhere without my mentors. And that is what we try to provide here at the studio, that kind of mentorship so that you have people to bounce ideas off of. But, there is a big difference between bouncing ideas and being told what to do. And there is a big difference between the kind of feedback that opens a door for you, and the kind of feedback that tries to force you to do something that serves somebody else’s filters but not necessarily your own.

Audrey: And that is one of the things in The Inner Game that we are doing. If any artist knows the core is safe, the core of who they are is safe, it is so much easier to hear feedback, because it’s not about you.

And so in The Inner Game what we are looking at is: how do we change the voice in the back of your head, so that you know you are safe no matter what? And then you can hear what we call criticism or whatever, take in the parts that work and still stay true to your voice and what you believe.

Jake: I always think of it like going to the ocean. It is wonderful to get wet, but you can’t take the whole ocean home with you. So when I’m getting feedback, I want to let the waves wash over me.

 

It is a process. Like all writing, it is a process of trust. You need to trust that the part of you-- the parts that you hold on to, the parts that actually seep into your clothes, or that actually gets you wet when that water washes over you-- those are the parts you need right now. And sometimes that means letting other parts wash back out to sea.

That doesn’t mean that they won’t be really valuable things to learn later. But there is a trust process that happens-- that the sea is going to bring those ideas back to you. If you just keep on pursuing your art that those waves will keep coming in.

Audrey: Oh my goodness I must have been in my late 20s, I was taking a class, every week I would just argue with the instructor and I was like, “But this doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t make sense.” At week number six she said probably the same thing and I said, “Why didn’t you say that five weeks ago?” And she said, “But I did!” Either she changed the wording slightly or finally I was ready to hear it.

Jake: I had a teacher like that too, Joe Blaustein, who was a wonderful painter that I was lucky enough to study with in Los Angeles. And I learned a lot about feedback from Joe because Joe would never tell you what to do.

Joe would come around, he would look at your painting and he would be like, “Just take a look at this area right here,...

Jacob Krueger breaks down Season 4, Episode 9 of Bojack Horseman to show you how the writers of Bojack break the rules of structure to create the tone of the series.

This week we are going to be talking about BoJack Horseman, but we aren't just going to be talking about the series, we are going to be talking about one very particular episode, and doing a really deep breakdown: Season 4, Episode 9 which is entitled Ruthie.

A lot of the times when we talk about television, we talk about TV bibles, we talk about the idea that every show needs to have an engine, a structure that is replicable, that can be done again, and again, and again.

Selling a series is like selling a franchise, like selling a McDonalds or Starbucks-- you are selling not just the brilliance of your writing, or the brilliance of your idea, you are selling the replicability of it.

You are selling the ability to do it again, and again, and again, even if the writing team changes, even if the showrunner changes, even if the directors or in this case the animators change, that you have the same engine again, and again, and again.

And so, what is really exciting about this episode is that it shows what starts to happen, once you really understand your engine, once you really understand the formula for your series.You can start to play within it, and then you can also start to play against it.

You can start to open up new avenues of what your series can be, especially, once you’ve established what it is for both your audience and for yourself as a writer.

What is really interesting about this episode is, we don’t start in the present, we start in the future, we start with Princess Carolyn’s great, great, great, great, great, great, great granddaughter, who is telling a story about her ancestor, Princess Carolyn.

Now, if you don’t watch BoJack Horseman, let me catch you up a little bit about how this series works. BoJack Horseman is both the most ridiculous and the saddest series that you will ever watch on television. It is an animated send up of Hollywood, in a world in which some of the people are people and some of the people are part animal. And, the animal-people are basically just people except they have certain animal traits…

Pretty wild concept already for a series!

And generally in the series, what happens is we watch BoJack Horseman, who is the ultimate narcissistic movie star, and we watch the funniest possible trainwreck we could ever watch as BoJack consistently makes his own universe harder, and harder, and harder.

Princess Carolyn is BoJack’s former lover and former agent, and Princess Carolyn is a cat who is dating a mouse, and her mouse is pretty much the perfect man. And all Princess Carolyn has wanted for the whole season is just to get pregnant, and it is just not happening.

Usually we would watch Princess Carolyn’s story as a B story in an episode. But in this episode, Princess Carolyn’s story becomes the A story.

Now how do you get away with this, you aren't supposed to just be able to reverse the whole structure of your series; you’re not supposed to just change up what you’ve been doing especially in a series as successful as BoJack, why did they get away with this?

Well, what is interesting is they don’t just get away with changing the focus; they also get away with changing the structure, because we are actually going to the future. And we are going to start off watching Princess Carolyn’s great, great, great granddaughter tell the story of Princess Carolyn’s awful, awful, awful day.

So the A story is going to be Princess Carolyn’s journey, the B story is going to be BoJack’s story, and the C story is going to be this unusual thread that starts in the future, and then flashes back to our present.

And what is really cool is this is something that the series has never done before. There have been times where we flashback to the past into BoJack’s story, or even into BoJack’s mother’s story, but, there has never been a point where we have flashed from the future back to the present.

So, what is happening is the engine of the series, the rules of the series, are actually getting complicated. We are starting to riff on the basic structure which is that we are going to watch BoJack Horseman destroy his own life, but instead we are going to flip it and we are going to focus on Princess Carolyn and her terrible, terrible day as reported by her great, great, great granddaughter.

Why does it work?

The real purpose of a bible or of an engine, is to make sure that the audience comes back, and every time they get the same feeling but also something different.

So, when an audience comes to watch a TV show, you want BoJack Horseman to feel like BoJack Horseman; you want it to feel like BoJack Horseman in every episode. You don’t want one episode to feel like BoJack Horseman and another to feel like Curb Your Enthusiasm, even though both pieces are about similarly narcissistic Hollywood characters. You want the show to maintain its integrity.

So, here are the things that are consistent in the show, is every episode is going to be filled to the brim with pun, and of course this episode is no different: it is pun on top of pun on top of pun.

In every episode, we are going to watch a character who is loved by the people around them, make all the wrong choices that end up destroying their own lives. And always, we are going to watch this happening in the funniest way possible; we are going to be surprised when those tears end up hitting us.

And what this episode does so brilliantly is that even though it completely changes the structure focusing on Princess Carolyn and reducing BoJack to a B story. Even though it creates a random C story (usually the C story would be Todd and Mr. Peanutbutter and those characters make brief cameos in this episode). Even though all those things are happening differently, the end product does the same thing. And what is really amazing is how the end product does the same thing in a way that still feels funny.

Jerry Perzigian, who teaches our TV Comedy Classes here at the studio, is an Emmy Award winner. He was the showrunner on Married with Children, The Golden Girls, The Jeffersons. He was a writer on Frasier. If it was a hit show in the 80’s or 90’s Jerry was on it, or he was running it. He has a really interesting way of teaching: he actually runs his classes just like real writer’s rooms, where basically on your day you pitch your project to the class and everyone collaborates together on structure, and engine, on characters, on jokes.

And Jerry has a quote that I really love, which is this: “First you write it true, and then, you make it funny.”

And I think this is such a powerful lesson for screenwriters and TV writers which is, the tone is something that you can control.

And what is interesting about this episode: this episode is about Princess Carolyn’s terrible, awful, awful day. It is so freaking dark. this episode is about a woman whose only desire is to have a baby, and guess what, she is not going to have it.

And, this is about as dark a topic as you can handle. And this is a comedy; you aren't supposed to be doing this. So, how do they keep the tone from getting so dark that we would lose the fun and the laughter that brings us to a series like this? How are we supposed to laugh at Princess Carolyn’s miscarriage?

Well, the magic is actually in that structural game they are playing --by flashing into the future -- because the mere existence of this little girl from the future telling the story of her ancestor, lets us know as an audience that it is okay to laugh, that it is okay to have some fun, that as awful and dark as all this stuff gets, it is still going to be okay at the end.

In other words that little opening sequence controls the tone of the piece, it allows the audience the permission that the audience needs to enjoy themselves.

And this is the brilliance of BoJack Horseman, and we have seen BoJack Horseman play these kinds of games with us before, if you think about BoJack’s experience with his Deer Friend in earlier seasons, BoJack is constantly walking the line between tragedy and comedy, between laughter and pathos. And it is walking it in the most ridiculous way, because the writers of BoJack are geniuses with tone.

And here is the important thing to remember about tone, and it goes back to Jerry Perzigian’s quote tone you can control, you can allow anything to have any tone you want as long as there is truth underneath it.

Tone is like the plate on which you serve your screenwriting or your TV writing. And simply by changing the plate or changing the arrangement, you can actually completely change the tone of any scene.

A wiser man than me once said, “Comedy is just tragedy without empathy.”

But what BoJack actually does is somehow manage to create comedy that is both tragedy and empathy that actually lets us feel and also lets us laugh at the same time.

So, first what happens is they break their own rules, but, they break their rules for a very specific reason, because they need that permission, because, otherwise, this thing is going to go off the rails into darkness.

So, first they write it true and here is the story of Princess Carolyn’s very, very, very, very dark day, and guess what, it is too dark. And this happens to us all the time in our writing, we write something and we aren't controlling the tone, we are going off the rails, we are losing the genre of the piece.

We’re not watching The Crown here, we are watching BoJack Horseman. It has to feel like BoJack Horseman.

But, rather than just rejecting the idea, well I guess Princess Carolyn can’t have a miscarriage because that is too freaking dark, and too freaking sad, instead what happens is we run towards it.

We write the truth and then play around to create the tone that we need in the execution.

So, it is always okay to break the rules, it is okay to break the rules in your own writing, it is okay to break the rules in a series, it is okay to break the rules in a feature,...