Write Your Screenplay Podcast

Pulp Fiction: A Simple Trick For Shaping Your Audience’s Expectations

This episode is going to be a throwback to Pulp Fiction. I recently rewatched the film in preparation for the ProTrack mentorship session with one of my students. There are so many lessons in this film that will be really valuable for you all, so I’m excited to share them with you.

Pulp Fiction, on its surface, seems to be completely revolutionizing what screenwriting structure looks like. 

Pulp Fiction unfolds out of chronological order. It has these long, long, long scenes. It has monologues, it has dance, and it has all these things that we don’t typically see in movies. Pulp Fiction looks like it’s doing something completely wild and complicated. And yes, it is. 

But at the center of Pulp Fiction is something so incredibly simple. And I want to talk about this one simple idea because this is an idea that you can use in your writing.

Here’s the simple screenwriting idea that all of Pulp Fiction grows from: You never give them exactly what they’re expecting.

We talk a lot in this podcast about getting in touch with your voice. If you have taken my Write Your Screenplay Class, you know that there are actually four phases of writing, and the phase where you’re getting in touch with your voice is really just one of those phases. 

One of the phases of writing that we haven’t talked a lot about on this podcast is a phase I call The Audience draft.

How do you manipulate the audience’s expectations? How do you surprise the audience? How do you track the journey that the audience is having and the way it relates to your main character’s journey. 

But there’s a deeper thing that we can do as we write The Audience Draft. We can use The Audience Draft to actually push ourselves past our own inner sensor. In other words, by surprising the audience, we can also surprise ourselves. And we can also surprise our characters. 

 

This is one of the things the screenplay for Pulp Fiction does so brilliantly: it sets up really clear expectations for the audience, and then it both delivers upon and violates them, in wonderfully entertaining ways. 

For example, in the first scene, we’re going to watch this loving couple, played by Amanda Plummer and Tim Roth, plan a robbery of a diner. We think we know where we are: Oh, these crazy people who are so madly in love with each other are going to rob this diner, and we’re going to watch their little heist movie.

Their expectations around robbing the diner are set so clearly. They’ve talked about all the hard places to rob and why the diner is going to be the easiest possible place to rob. 

Once you set those expectations, you know it can never happen like that. 

You can never give your characters what they’re expecting. And you can never give your audience what they’re expecting. It has to happen in a slightly different way. 

How do we surprise the audience’s expectations? 

Well, rather than watching these two rob the diner, we cut away, and suddenly we’re in a completely different story! 

That’s a shock for the audience, the audience is asking themselves, Oh, how are these two storylines going to match up? 

 

How do you surprise the audience’s expectations? Well, that’s going to come a little bit later. But you can see that there’s a string of the plot of Pulp Fiction that Tarantino’s choice to cut away leaves dangling for us.

We don’t forget about that string even though we lose track of it. And when it comes back together in a way that we could never have anticipated, it’s so much fun for us to experience. 

We’re going to cut away from Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer.

Structure is a Puzzle

This week, we’re going to be talking about screenplay structure in what may be a different way than you have experienced it before.

Usually, when people talk about screenwriting structure, they might be talking about outlines, or plot, or the kinds of things that might have to happen, or Three Act Structure, or Seven Act Structure, or The Hero’s Journey, or any of the millions of other permutations by which people try to understand structure with their intellectual brains. 

What we’re going to be talking about instead today is a simple metaphor that might help you understand the process of finding structure for your screenplay and how to do that in an organic and intuitive way. 

Sometime in your childhood (or in your adulthood!) you probably have had the experience of putting together a puzzle.

I want you to imagine 1000 piece puzzle, one of those really complicated ones with a lot of intricate detail and a lot of pieces that maybe look similar or even the same. On the cover of the box, there’s a picture. You’re trying to create that picture. 

When you’re just looking at 1000 puzzle pieces, it can become completely overwhelming. In fact, if you just start trying to put random pieces together, you’ll probably just get overwhelmed and quit, just like most screenwriters do when they try to figure out the structure of their screenplays.

You need a process to group those pieces so you can start to make sense of them.

When you’re putting together a puzzle, you’re going to start, usually, by looking for the corners.

You’re looking for pieces that have a very specific shape, a shape that makes sense, a shape that can be a central building block for your puzzle. 

What’s nice about the corners is that in pretty much any puzzle, you’re only going to have four of them. So you do have to sort through a lot of pieces to find those corners, but you don’t need to actually find a lot of them to start building. Once you find those corners, you can start to place them. 

In screenwriting, we also need to look for those corners. We need to look for those corners in order to find the shape for our structure. 

But our challenge is a little bit different than the challenge of putting together a simple puzzle. 

See, with a simple puzzle, you always have that picture on the box. It’s not a vague picture. It’s not a general picture.  It’s not a picture that’s clouded by your subconscious mind, or your dreams. It’s not a picture that’s shimmery and changes as you think about it, and maybe first looks like this and then looks like that. 

In putting together a puzzle, we have a picture that looks like a picture and we have pieces that look like pieces. They already look like pieces. And we simply have to sort through the pieces that already exist in order to find those corners.

In screenwriting, we have to make the puzzle pieces that we will build the structure of our screenplay.

We have to actually create the pieces! And even as we create them, though we may have a sense of what that final picture looks like, we don’t have an exact image to build towards. We have to develop our own image along the way. 

Screenwriting structure is like putting together a puzzle. But it’s like putting together a puzzle where you have to make the pieces and where you don’t know exactly what the final image is going to look like. 

That means you need some different skills in order to succeed.

What a lot of people do is try to figure out an outline for what they imagine the “image on the box” will turn out to be. They try to say, okay, there’s going to be a puppy dog in the bottom left corner, and there’s going to be a cute little Victorian cottage up to the right.

Homeland: Getting Staffed on a TV Show with Jonathan Redding

Jake: My guest today is Jonathan Redding. Jonathan is the newest faculty member at Jacob Krueger Studio. 

Jonathan was a writer on Homeland, which, if you haven’t watched, is an extraordinary show. We’re going to be talking about how Homeland was built, and what was it like to be in that room, especially as your first staff gig as a staff writer. 

Jonathan began as a playwright and a dramaturg. And we’ll talk a little bit about the journey from playwriting to TV drama writing and how those things are related and connected. Jonathan, why don’t you just start off by telling us a little bit about your journey.

Jonathan: I shall, but first, just let me say thank you so much for having me on. I am a fan of this podcast. And I’m so excited to be here. I’m so excited to be working with you. This is really fun for me.

The big thing for me, Homeland was when I first got staffed. That was really my introduction into the industry. I had been pursuing it for quite a while before that, but I had mainly been in the theater world. I had been a playwright and a dramaturg and an actor. 

I had been resident playwright to a theater in Santa Monica called The Broad Stage Regional Theater for a number of years, and while I was there, I got to work alongside some incredible artists: Mikhail Baryshnikov, Shakespeare’s Globe of London and Anna Deavere Smith came, and did workshops with us.

I was part of the early development process for Hadestown. Anaïs Mitchell still just had the concept album because Dale Franzen. who wound up being the executive producer of the Broadway run, was at the time, our artistic director. 

That was back when it was just first being workshopped, with actors singing it live, and trying to put together some simple kind of movement and things to it. 

Prior to that, I had my own company called the Los Angeles Theatre Ensemble, who are perennial Ovation Award nominees out here. And had a number of celebrated and award-winning plays, including The War Cycle, which was a trilogy of plays.

Still, breaking in was a struggle for a long time. I had been writing specs and features for a long time. When I first came to town, I brought with me spec episodes of The Shield and Lost, they were in the middle of their runs. That is how long ago I started this march.

Homeland was my first show. It took so long! So long to get to.

Jake: I think it’s actually very heartening for students to understand that, yes, some people get lucky– and I always say, you never know when luck will come! Luck could happen tomorrow, luck could happen in 10 years. But I think, the people who are successful are often people for whom the luck doesn’t necessarily happen when they want it to, but they keep writing, they keep pushing, and pushing and pushing. 

It’s very valuable to understand that it may take you a long time to build a career. And that’s not because you’re failing. That’s because you’re doing something really hard.

Jonathan: Yeah. It’s like Theseus’ boat. You start out with your piece of material, your one or two scripts, and you think, this is the thing, and it’s going to get me there. 

And then by the time you’ve actually reached a destination, or reached some far long part of your journey, every part of the boat underneath you has been replaced, patched over and become new. And you are the constant. 

Jake: Yeah. I love that as a concept, especially because there’s so much bad advice out there. I get writers all the time, saying, well, this person told me I should write this script. And then I write that script. And then somebody else said, I should write something like this instead. So I wrote that. And then somebody else said I should write something like this other thing.

The Inner Game of Screenwriting with Christian Lybrook

Jake: I have a special guest today, Christian Lybrook, who is one of our ProTrack mentors at Jacob Krueger Studio.

 

I’m especially proud to have Christian here because Christian came up through our program. He’s an extraordinary writer. He has produced and directed his own work, he’s managed to maintain a career as a writer from Idaho! ( we won’t tell anybody, Christian) And he’s also just a sensitive human being with incredible emotional intelligence, towards both his characters and the writers that he mentors. 

We’re going to be talking about the inner game and the personal side of becoming a writer today with Christian. Welcome, Christian, thank you so much for being here.

 

Christian: Thanks for having me. As you know, one of my favorite pastimes is chatting about all things screenwriting. Happy to be here.

Jake: Tell us a little bit about your journey as a filmmaker. What has that looked like? And what do you think was most important thing in making the transition from being someone who is dreaming of doing this to being someone who’s doing it?

Christian: Yeah. Great question. You know, when I think about my journey as a screenwriter, everybody knows that every journey is different. And anybody who’s listening to the podcast, you’re going to have a different version of what your story is. 

But I think it’s helpful to talk about these stories, because they can be illustrative of the things that we have faced and the things we have to overcome. I wast somebody who didn’t go to film school, I wasn’t somebody who grew up in the business, I didn’t grow up in LA or New York.  And for a long time, I was always interested in film and screenwriting. But I didn’t think that I could do it because I didn’t know how to get into the industry. 

I grew up on the East Coast. I was born in Massachusetts and moved around a lot. But by the time I was kind of pursuing writing, I was in grad school in Alaska, which is about the farthest away you can get from LA and still be in the United States. 

I took a screenwriting class as I was getting an MFA in Creative Writing. And I was focused on fiction, primarily because, although I secretly wanted to be a screenwriter, I just didn’t know how to complete that training. And I took one screenwriting class, and that immediately ignited something in me, but I still was literally thousands of miles away from the industry. 

And living in Alaska, and trying to make it as a screenwriter just seemed like a ridiculous ask. So  I stayed focused on prose, and eventually, I followed a girl to Idaho. And that’s where I am today.

One of the nice things about Idaho is it’s a very small place. And you could do things and meet people much more easily. It’s a very small community. You meet one person and they’re going to introduce you to the next person, and the next person. 

But it was also at this time when technology was being democratized. And for the first time, if you owned a video camera and a computer, you could make a movie. And that was really my entree into taking a stab at this stuff. Because I didn’t have to be in LA. I realized I didn’t have to be surrounded by pros, I could just make it up as I went along. 

The first short film I made was with some buddies. None of us had training, none of us had experience. And we all thought, how hard can it be? 

It turns out, it’s really fucking hard. 

But it was a great introduction. And there are elements of it that I fell in love with. I taught myself how to edit.

The Bear: The First Image and the Opening Sequence

This week, we’re going to be talking about The Bear. 

We’re going to be analyzing the first image of The Bear and the opening sequence of the pilot. We’ll be talking about the importance of the first image in your screenplay not only when it comes to selling your script but also on a creative and structural level. And most importantly, we’re going to talk about how to make the first image work for you in your screenwriting. 

The first image of your screenplay, just like the first image of The Bear, is the most important image in the whole script.  That’s because it’s the only element that you know that every reader is actually going to read!

When a coverage reader reads your script, they are actually making the decision from that very first image: am I going to read, or skim? Is this going to be cool? Or is this going to suck? Am I excited about this? Or is this just another script I’ve got to slog through? 

When a producer, director, manager, agent, or star reads the first image of your script, from that very first image they are making a decision: Is this script for me? Is this something I’m going to want to make? Is this one strong enough to take home to read tonight compared to all the other ones on my desk or iPad? Is this the one that’s most likely to actually be good? 

This may seem like jaded Hollywood B.S., but it’s not. Because the first image is also the image that the audience uses to decide if they’re going to watch your show. Is this show for me? Is this movie for me? Do I want to stream this? Or do I want to flip to something else? 

Netflix has actually proven that audiences make a decision about whether they’re going to watch your show or movie in the first 10 seconds. 

Think about that! The first 10 seconds! 

Yet, despite this, many writers throw away their first image! Many writers simply don’t understand that the first image is the moment that pulls the reader into the script, or fails to pull them in. 

Another reason the first image is so important is that the decision to buy a script or to option a script is an emotional decision. 

You may think that people are buying your script, because it’s “four quadrant” or because it has this element or that element. Sure, that’s a part of it. But usually, someone’s actually buying your script because they had an emotional experience when reading it, an experience that made them say to themselves, I’ve got to do this, I need to do this, I absolutely need this script. 

You can think of the first image in your screenplay or pilot like the first moment on a first date. No matter what happens next, that’s the moment that’s going to set your expectations.

You might have a lot of great stuff (or terrible stuff) that comes after that first image in your screenplay. But that first image is going to determine the way that the reader feels about the rest of the script. Everything else in the script is going to happen in relation to that first image.

Many years ago, I used to direct off-Broadway and off-off Broadway theater. And I realized very quickly that when people come to see off-off Broadway theater, just like when most coverage readers sit down to read a script, they are not expecting to have a good experience.

When people come to watch off-off Broadway theatre, they’re actually coming to support their friends. Most of your audience is there as charity. And what they’re really doing when they sit down is praying! Please, please, let it not suck! Please let me not have to have this negative experience, and then have to go pretend to have liked the play and act supportive of my friend! Please let it not suck!

They are not coming into an off-off Broadway play thinking, I hope this is awesome.

How to Transition from Playwriting to Screenwriting 

This episode is for the playwrights among you. We are going to talk about how to make the transition from playwriting to screenwriting, the difference between plays and screenplays, and how you can use some of the incredible skills you have as a playwright in order to make the transition into screenwriting or TV writing. 

What is the difference between playwriting and screenwriting? And how do you make the transition from playwriting to screenwriting or TV writing?

There’s an interesting phenomenon happening in TV writing. TV producers are looking for playwrights to staff their writers’ rooms. 

There’s a vast number of playwrights who are making that transition into screenwriting– a field that’s very different from the one that they’re used to. 

And why are playwrights getting staffed in writers’ rooms? Because quite frankly, playwrights are a lot better trained than most screenwriters. 

There’s a simple reason for that. Choose the playwright of your dreams, and pretty much guaranteed, they are teaching at some university. Nearly all playwrights need to subsidize their income with these teaching positions. Whereas successful screenwriters get paid vastly more than playwrights. And for that reason, there are just far fewer experienced screenwriters who are teaching. 

 

Unlike playwrights who are mostly trained by experts in playwriting, most screenwriters have actually learned by taking classes with and reading screenwriting books by academics, not by working screenwriters.

As a result, these books and classes tend to be much more academic, much more conscious mind focused, and quite frankly, a lot less interesting than those about playwriting.

Unlike screenwriting, most playwriting education begins not with craft, but with character. 

This causes a challenge for many playwrights as they transition from playwriting to television writing or from playwriting to screenwriting. 

They have this intuitive organic process that they have developed over time, that works when they are writing a play. But when they start to read books and seek mentorship about screenwriting, if they don’t find the right teacher, they will often learn a lot more about how to plan a script than how to actually write one!

Rather than learning how to develop a great movie or tv show from the blank page, they’re learning how to reverse engineer one, deconstructing it like a critic, rather than learning the process of developing it like a screenwriter. 

This can cause tension in the writer and often cause their screenwriting to go flat in a way that their playwriting does not.

Of course, if you’ve never been a playwright, the effects of this can be even more dramatic. 

Playwrights at least have that strong foundation in character underneath them, which can sometimes help them transcend the formulas that are being taught when it comes to screenwriting. 

Whereas if your only education isn’t screenwriting, there’s a good chance that you’ve barely been taught how to write character at all. 

And yet, if you look at the best movies, the best movies are all about character. The best TV shows are all about character, the structure of the shows and these movies is all about character. 

That’s true whether you are writing a blockbuster popcorn movie like Top Gun: Maverick, which, (despite the concerns I bring up in my previous podcast), succeeds because it is not really about the air-fights, but about the relationship between Maverick and Rooster, between Maverick and Penny, between Maverick and Hangman, between Maverick and the Forces of the Army. As much fun as the stuff happening in the sky might be,

Top Gun: Maverick – All Writing Is Political

This week, we’re doing something special. I’m actually sharing a video from my latest Thursday Night Writes Class. This is the free class that I do every Thursday night.  But this particular lecture, I felt was so timely and so important that I wanted to share it with everyone on the podcast. You’ll notice we had some sound issues. The sound is not as good as you would normally expect from the podcast. But I think you will get a lot of value out of this content. And hopefully, it will affect your writing for the better. 

If you do the exercise, and you’d like to share your results, feel free to join the JKS Writers Collective Group on Facebook, and you can share your results there and get feedback from our community. Thank you so much. And enjoy.

I went to see Top Gun: Maverick a couple of days ago. And I had an amazing time. And then I got really angry. And it’s not a popular thing to say that Top Gun: Maverick got me angry. Everybody loves this movie.

But I got angry. 

I got angry because I think Top Gun: Maverick is such a missed opportunity. Because the film has dumbed down war to a place where we can all feel so good about it. 

It’s dumbed down war to a point where there are no consequences, there is no death– there’s not even a moment like Goose’s death in the first movie. There are no consequences to being a maverick and refusing to follow any rule. And anybody in charge is a total idiot, so there’s no risk in being a Maverick, because you’re so obviously right and everyone else is so obviously wrong. And the girl that you’ve wronged, again and again, and again, is still going to be there waiting for you forever– apparently for the last 30 years. And, nothing we do is going to have any frickin’ consequences. 

I think part of the reason Top Gun is doing well is for exactly that reason. All of us want to escape right now. Who doesn’t want to escape? 

I’m not arguing that Top Gun: Maverick is anything other than a successful screenplay.

Sure, we can get into the formulaic aspects of the film’s structure. And if we wanted to get really specific about its applicability as a model for new writers. It’s not. You can’t sell Top Gun: Maverick as a new writer. You can’t follow a formula that is predictable and succeed unless you happen to own a franchise that everyone in the world is nostalgic for. 

But outside of those issues, the screenplay for Top Gun: Maverick is tight as hell. And it’s doing everything the writers want it to do. It’s a joy ride. It gives you the fun you’re looking for. It’s got well-built characters that all have really clear wants and go on really clear journeys. And it’s got some of the most incredible stunts ever filmed. 

And no one could argue that it’s been anything but totally financially and critically successful. 

But it’s still a missed opportunity.

 

Top Gun: Maverick wants to be a piece about drones. It wants to script who we’re becoming as America. 

It wants to be a film about the difference between being the pilot in the pilot seat and making decisions based on what you know is right and wrong. And being a drone, following a plan without conscience or connection, where there is no feeling in war, where you are playing a video game. 

The script starts out with that promise.

It starts out like this: Maverick you’re the old guard. We’re getting rid of you. We don’t need pilots anymore. We’ve got drones. (in fact, we have a mission that probably should be flown by drones considering the pilots keep blacking out from the G forces as th...

Winning Time: How To Adapt a True-Life Story

This week, we’re going to be looking at Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty by Max Borenstein and Jim Hecht, and how to adapt a true story into a TV show or feature film. We’ll be building on our conversation from my podcast about TV Bible writing, to help you understand how to translate some of those concepts into the structure of your TV Series. And most importantly, we’ll be learning how to develop your TV series structure around the hook that is most important to you. 

There are a million places online where you can read about exactly what is true and what is not true in the adaptation of Winning Time. In fact, there are sites that break down every episode into truth and fiction. So we are not going to focus our inquiry there.

Instead, we’re going to be looking at how you, as a writer, take this giant beast of a true-life story, with all this plot, and squeeze it down into a form that you can actually structure and sell. 

A lot of writers make the mistake when adapting a true-life story like Winning Time into a TV show or feature film, of believing that the hook of their adaptation exists in the true-life story itself. 

A pitch from one of these well-meaning writers often sounds a little bit like this. 

“It’s this incredible story that’s never been told! It takes place over multiple years. It’s got the most amazing characters, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Jerry Buss, it’s got political stuff like HIV, Islam, it’s got basketball, drug addiction… so much awesome stuff, the story practically tells itself!” 

But the truth is, the story does not tell itself. And while the frenetic pace and structure of Winning Time might make it seem like it just threw all this stuff together, underneath all that is a really simple take on the material: a strong drumbeat that tells these two very talented writers and their writing team exactly what to focus on, exactly what the real story is, and what is just extraneous plot and noise. 

The biggest problem in adapting a true-life story into a TV show or feature film is that there is just so much noise. 

And where does that noise come from? It comes from the very process of writing a show like Winning Time. You see, as part of that process, you are going to do a ton of research. In fact, if you’re really doing your job, you’re going to turn yourself into an expert on the Lakers. You are going to know every little micro detail about what happened during the period of time that you’re trying to capture in your TV show or in your feature film. 

And the result of all that research, if you don’t have a really strong central premise, a really strong structure to hang that all on, is you can get distracted by all those details you’ve discovered, and lose track of the forest for the trees. 

 

When you discover an incredible true-life story to adapt, it’s easy to imagine that you are the first person to ever think of telling this story as a TV show or movie. Chances are, you’re wrong. 

Chances are, there are dozens of people who are pitching the exact same idea you are pitching. There are just so many people pitching show ideas and movie ideas every single day. 

In fact, if you’ve targeted the right producer, there’s a good chance that they have already heard this exact project pitched many times before! They’ve been looking to tell this story, and they’ve maybe heard 10 different takes on this material over the years. They’ve just never found the one that made them want to move forward. 

 

This is the most important thing when it comes to adapting a true-life story into a screenplay or pilot, finding the hook that makes your take on the material uniq...

Selling a TV Series: The Role of the Show Bible

Today we are going to talk about what it takes to sell at TV series, and specifically the role of TV Show Bible and the way it works together with the Series Pilot to make the sale. We’re going to answer the questions: What is a Show Bible? Why do you need one? What does a TV Bible supposed to do? How do TV Bibles relate to Pitch Decks? And how do you actually know if your TV Bible is working or not? 

How does a TV Bible help you sell your TV pilot?

There’s an interesting history to TV Bibles. Back in the day, the TV Bible used to be a document that was put together by a young staff writer, story editor or assistant. It was a cheat sheet for new writers when they came onto a long running show. 

For example, Jerry Perzigian, who teaches our TV comedy writing workshop here at the Studio, were talking about the difference between what Show Bibles used to be and what they are now. Jerry is an Emmy Award winning showrunner. He came up on shows like The Jeffersons, The Golden Girls and Married with Children. These shows ran for a really long time, which meant that often they would lose their original staff writers as those writers moved on to bigger and better things (or, at least, different things). 

A new flock of staff writers would come on, and these staff writers hadn’t necessarily watched every episode of The Jeffersons. They didn’t necessarily know what had happened already in the show, what was happening, what could happen, what couldn’t happen– they didn’t necessarily fully understand the engine of the show.

The Show Bible was created for these writers. 

Back in the day, the TV Show Bible wasn’t a sales document. It was an internal document, a cheat sheet that these writers could read like a training guide. 

They could look at the TV Bible for whatever show they’d just be hired on, and realize “Oh, I get it.  This is how the show works. This is the secret recipe, the secret sauce for the show.”

But today, a TV Bible has evolved into a different kind of creature entirely. Today, a TV Bible is a sales document. 

 

If you imagine your TV Pilot is the thing that gets the big fish to swallow the hook, the Show Bible is the thing that sets the hook and reels them in.

Without a great pilot, the idea of writing a TV Bible is just silly. 

Unless you are already a famous writer, the chances that you can sell an idea with just a TV Series Bible are close to zero.

The producer is not just interested in buying a great idea (they get lots of those). They’re interested in buying the successful execution of the idea. And they can only see that execution in the pilot that you write. 

 

The most important element in selling a TV Series is writing an amazing pilot.

Having a pilot that has a clear voice, a clear point of view, that feels like something we have not quite seen before, that is disruptive in some way, that grabs someone, shakes them a little bit, demands their attention and takes them on a journey– that is the most important element of selling a TV Series.

Your pilot allows the reader to fall in love with your characters, with your world. It makes them want to invite these people back into their living room again and again. 

 

That doesn’t mean your pilot has to have nice characters in order to sell. 

If you think of shows like Breaking Bad or BoJack Horseman. These aren’t nice characters, but they’re fascinating characters going on incredible journeys. 

You also don’t have to have really dark or twisted characters.

If you think of shows like Ted Lasso, or The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, these are incredible shows that have lovely characters at the center of them. 

Archetypes vs. Stereotypes: A New Look At The Hero’s Journey

Archetypes are one of the most valuable and also most challenging concepts in screenwriting. 

To understand how to use archetypes effectively, we have to go back all the way to the source, Carl Jung (famously not a screenwriter). 

We have to understand where the concept of archetypes comes from, and how it connects to a larger concept called the Collective Unconscious. 

And we have to learn how to tap into archetypes intuitively, rather than just intellectually. 

If you are trying to tap into archetypes from a purely intellectual perspective in your screenwriting, there’s a good chance that you’re not actually writing archetypes. You’re actually writing stereotypes. 

So what is an archetype? How do they work? How do you write them? How do you connect to the archetypes that live inside of you? 

That’s what we’re going to be talking about in this podcast. 

As I mentioned, archetypes begin with Carl Jung, and his idea of the Collective Unconscious. To vastly oversimplify this very complicated concept: 

The idea of the Collective Unconscious is that there’s a fabric that ties all human experience together. That even though in my waking life, I think I am Jake, and you are you, and we think that we are different and separated, in our dreams we can actually tap into a collective fabric, a shared experience, that makes us human. 

Jung believed that there were certain metaphors, certain elements, certain aspects of our dreams that actually mean the same thing to everyone who experiences them. 

And by using our subconscious mind, by using the power of our dreams, we can tap into the Collective Unconscious and step into experiences that we’ve never yet had, and parts of ourselves we have never yet met. 

In doing so, he believed that we could find the universal tie that binds us all together.

A brilliant professor named Joseph Campbell came along and took Jung’s beautiful concept of the Collective Unconscious to the next level for writers, by creating something called The Hero’s Journey

 

To vastly oversimplify Campbell in the same way we just did Jung, Campbell essentially realized that if there’s such a thing as a Collective Unconscious, there must also be such a thing as a Collective Story, a universal story. 

And if we could learn to tell that universal story, that universal story would speak to everyone. Everyone could go on that same journey together; it would mean the same thing for everyone. 

And in that way, it could move us all to a place of catharsis, of meaning, of growth, of connecting to who we are as human beings.

He called this The Hero’s Journey. 

You’ve probably heard of The Hero’s Journey if you’ve been studying screenwriting, or any kind of writing.

In fact, Campbell’s work spawned hundreds of disciples, from really incredible theorists like James Bonnet and Christopher Vogler, to more surfacy Save the Cat! kinds of approaches.

Almost every screenwriting book, and almost every screenwriting teacher, teaches archetypes in some way, and they’re all tracking back to Campbell, who’s tracking back to Jung. 

Sounds like a pretty good idea, right?

There are 21 steps of The Hero’s Journey, and a host of specific archetypal character types, and these theorists suggest that if we simply find those steps and find these characters, then we’ve got a structure and the characters of a screenplay that will have universal appeal.

In other words, if there are certain kinds of archetypal roles in every life, there must also be certain kinds of archetypal characters in every screenplay: The Terrible Father, The Emotional Mother, The Spiritual Father, The Anima or Animus, The Threshold Guardian, etc.