Write Your Screenplay Podcast

The concepts of plot and structure are ideas that get mixed up all the time. They are words that are often used interchangeably, but that in my opinion actually mean very different things. I like to think of plot as the crap that happens in your movie, or for that matter in your life. And I like to think of structure as the choices a character makes in relation to that plot. The choices that chang...

There’s just so much we can learn as writers from Deadpool, and not just because the film manages to do that rarest of feats: to be an intelligent, creatively successful superhero movie, but also because Deadpool manages to both follow the rules of superhero movies and break them in really exciting ways. The first rule of superhero movies that every single person knows is that your super hero is s...

As we discussed in Part 1 of this podcast, when TV producers ask you to write a TV Bible with your pilot script, they usually request it in a pretty strange form. And a lot of writers get confused about what producers are actually looking for when they ask for a TV Bible and what’s supposed to go in it. Most TV Bibles include a series logline, character bios for all the main characters, episode su...

We’re going to take a little detour from our regularly scheduled podcast and bring you an interview by Jacob Krueger Studio Director Chris Littler, with filmmaker Adam Bowers. Adam shot a feature film, New Low, for $2000 and ended up a official selection of the Sundance Film Festival in 2010. He then managed to parlay that success into Paperback, a second feature at a much higher budget, which pre...

Whether you are one of the many that loved Star Wars: The Force Awakens and saw it again and again, or one of the disappointed few who were frustrated with the rehashed scenes and safe choices of the film, there is no doubt that there is a ton that you can learn from this movie as a screenwriter, particularly when it comes to rewriting your screenplay. As I was watching Star Wars: The Force Awaken...

What the heck is a TV Series Bible anyway? How do you write one? And why do you need one? The truth is, the idea of a Show Bible, as many people talk about it today, is total fiction. But like many fictional ideas, it’s become a reality that we now need to deal with as TV writers. If you ask Jerry Perzigian, who teaches our TV Comedy Classes, he’ll tell you that in his entire thirty-some year care...

As we continue to build out the new home for Jacob Krueger Studio (in expectation of a Jan 1 move in!) this series of podcasts will explore the many ways in which building out a space is like building out a script, taking some of the lessons I’ve learned in our buildout, and applying them to writing. Today’s podcast covers a topic that any screenwriter, and anyone who has ever built out a space, k...

I recently had a student ask me a pretty interesting question: “What do you do when you realize that even though you think you’re writing all these different projects, you’re really just writing the same script over and over again?” And this made me think about a couple of different questions facing writers as they move into their professional careers. The first is an artistic question: What do yo...

Over the past six months I have probably looked at about five hundred spaces all throughout New York City. And I’m not even going to talk here about the spaces that were obviously not a fit for my school, I want to talk about the ones that potentially were. Because the process of finding a space is a lot like that unenviable hunt for the perfect screenplay idea. Oftentimes during the process of se...

In Part 1 of this podcast, we used There Will Be Blood as a model for understanding the vital craft of externalizing the internal in a screenplay. But how do you go about using this technique in early drafts of your own screenplay, before you’ve got that perfect image in your head? Today we’ve invited Jessica Hinds, who teaches our Weekend-Long Craft Intensive Nov 7-8th, to give you a sneak previe...

Rather than looking at the structure of There Will Be Blood this podcast will be looking at There Will Be Blood in terms of a concept called externalizing the internal. Often times when we're not externalizing the internal it's because we have not actually seen it yet in our own mind’s eyes. We haven't looked closely enough yet to see it exactly the way it needs to play out on screen. We've got a...

The success of The Martian is extremely exciting if you’re a screenwriter, especially because it breaks so much of the traditional Hollywood dogma. Often, as screenwriters, we think that our movies have to exist within some kind of orthodoxy: that there are certain things that you are just not allowed to do, and if you do them somehow you have no chance of writing a movie that’s a hit. And yet, Th...

Now this is a really extraordinary true story, based on the life of Whitey Bulger, and featuring one of Johnny Depp’s all time best performances. And we’re going to be discussing some of its most compelling scenes and the elements that made them work in this podcast. And yet, at the same time, despite the power of Johnny Depp’s and the supporting cast’s stellar performances, there is something abo...

Tone is one of those really challenging things for writers, particularly on a movie like Diary of a Teenage Girl, which touches on some extremely controversial, taboo and uncomfortable subjects. In lesser hands, rather than being the delightful (but disturbing) movie that we saw at the theatre, Diary of a Teenage Girl would be a Lifetime movie: yet another tear jerking melodrama about a child vict...

It’s an incredibly exciting time for writers of miniseries. The genre was all but dead in the water a couple of years ago, but recently we’ve seen a resurgence in miniseries sparked by the success of True Detective. In a way, the miniseries is the ideal form of storytelling for a screenwriter. In feature films, we are limited in many ways by page count, trying to squeeze a life-changing journey in...

Often, as writers, we get so hung up on linear, narrative structure that we forget that there are completely different forms of screenplay structure that can be equally moving and powerful. So for today’s podcast we’re going to take a blast to the past, and look at a film that seems to diverge in almost every way from the traditional forms of structure we’ve been talking about on this podcast: Ter...

'Tangerine' is a brilliant illustration of just how little you need to actually succeed as a screenwriter or a filmmaker. To make a successful film you do not need millions of dollars. To make a successful film you do not need years and years and years of experience. To make a successful film you do not need to follow the rules or follow a formula. To make a successful film there are really only t...

Often times we think of formatting as the grammar of the screenwriting. We think of it as this very simple, basic, elemental set of rules that you go and look up in The Hollywood Standard in order to do properly. But the truth of the matter is formatting is much more than grammar. It's a way of speaking to your audience, thinking about your movie like a filmmaker, and capturing the visual eye of y...

"Trainwreck" could so easily have been a movie about pointing fingers at the trainwreck girl that we all have known, or the trainwreck guy that we all have known. But the truth of the matter is that "Trainwreck" is not about a skanky trainwreck of a girl. "Trainwreck" is about a beautiful and broken girl who's trying to fall in love, who's finally got an opportunity to be with someone good, but ca...

Whether you loved or hated "Me, Earl and the Dying Girl," you have to admit that the movie is deeply emotionally moving, both in its humor and its sadness. It’s not easy to move an audience emotionally. Especially when they come to a movie called "Me, Earl and the Dying Girl." It’s not easy to actually move them to a point of personal exposure with a film like this, because of the protective wall...

As we watch INSIDE OUT, we're not just watching the story of the little girl, Riley, at the center of the movie. We’re also watching the story of the archetypes inside Riley’s head as they shape both Riley’s and their own realities. READ PODCAST TRANSCRIPT: http://www.writeyourscreenplay.com/2015/07/11/podcast-inside-out/ Find out more about Jacob Krueger Studio: WRITER RESOURCES: www.writeyourscr...

How do you write a script? You don't write a script by applying a bunch of principles. You write a script by looking inside and finding the piece of you that you're not inviting to the table. Find out more about Jacob Krueger Studio: WRITER RESOURCES: www.writeyourscreenplay.com/blog WORKSHOPS & SEMINARS: writeyourscreenplay.com/classes

Forget whether ultra-violent action movies make you happy or make you want to run for the hills because we're going to talk about Mad Max: Fury Road in terms of the things that we can all learn from it, as screenwriters, regardless of the genre that we are writing in and regardless of the challenges that we're having in our writing. Find out more about Jacob Krueger Studio: WRITER RESOURCES: www.w...

There are two right ways to build with Legos and there are also two right ways to build a film. There's the purely organic way, where you just follow all of your instincts. And then there's also the other way, where you sit down with a producer, manager, agent, writing partner, or director and you ask them, "what do you need?" And you find a way to deliver what they need. In this podcast, Jacob Kr...

Today we are going to be talking about the genre of movies that I affectionately like to call “The Big Dumb Action Movie,” with the latest installment of THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS franchise, FURIOUS 7. Find out more about Jacob Krueger Studio: WRITER RESOURCES: www.writeyourscreenplay.com/blog WORKSHOPS & SEMINARS: writeyourscreenplay.com/classes