Draft Zero: a screenwriting podcast

Listen if you want your character introductions to pop! Stu and Chas argue about different techniques for introducing characters and whether character descriptions are even necessary. This is important for writers, as we only have words to compensate for the whole range of cinematic expression. And so Chas and Stu explore techniques like introducing characters through action, having other people d...

Listen to make your character relatinships more dynamic. Stu and Chas explore an idea they both came across studying theatre: status and by extension (or juxtaposition) power. Is a story where a character changes status or experiences loss (or gains) in power more compelling? In order to explore this source of drama, Stu and Chas limit themselves to scenes where the status or power of a character...

Listen to learn how impactful rewriting can be. Stu and Chas look at AMERICAN BULLSHIT (the 2010 Black List spec script by Eric Warren Singer) and the film it became… AMERICAN HUSTLE (co-written and directed by David O'Russell), which garnered 10 Oscar nominations in 2014. With both Singer and O'Russell credited on HUSTLE, Stu and Chas explore what O'Russell changed and what stayed the same from B...

Listen if you want to understand how a single key scene between protagonist and antagonist can unlock the entire structure of your story! Can one scene be the key to unlocking the whole story? Stu and Chas are joined once again by the inestimable Stephen Cleary to explore his idea of 'key scenes'. Scenes like the diner scene in HEAT. Or the boardroom showdown in MARGIN CALL. These scenes are not o...

Listen to learn about the most powerful tool in screenwriting: narrative POV. Stu and Chas delve into audience point of view - not character point of view! Does your audience know more, less or the same as your characters? And does changing this within a scene trigger or heighten the desired emotional response? To test this theory, we look to the genre that changes the audience's point of view the...

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...

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 th...

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...

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...

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...