Draft Zero: a screenwriting podcast

Stu and Chas are joined by Stephen Cleary following his exploration into Melodrama, and together they try to reclaim the word from its pejorative meaning. By examining powerful Melodramas (with many tangents) the three hosts try to unpick what makes Melodrama an alternate story paradigm to the Hero’s Journey.

We hope you are all staying healthy and safe. Due this difficult time of lockdown, Chas and Stu have decided to “regularly” do special live-streamed episodes (via YouTube Live) of Draft Zero that we are calling LiVEsolation. After they’re streamed, recordings of the livestreams (including the chat!) will be on our YouTube channel for later viewing. We recommend you like our facebook page to keep up to date with our schedule and subscribe to us on YouTube to see all the videos.

Chas and Stu are joined by special guest - filmmaker Mel Killingsworth - to talk all things Star Wars. Well… focusing on The Mandalorian and The Rise of Skywalker and wherever else our tangents take us. Our primary lens is look at how both shows handle “fan service” — but really its about how you handle character motivations when your audience has more knowledge than your characters, especially knowledge from outside the show itself.

This episode, Chas steps down as co-host (kinda) and is interviewed by Stu as a guest, alongside director Ben Mizzi, about the short rom-com that Chas wrote and Ben directed & produced. The episode covers taking an idea from pitch to screen, working with a director, directing performance on the page, and marketing and distribution strategies for short films. If you are thinking of producing your own content, well worth a listen!

Stu and Chas indulge themselves by offering personal opinions based on their own personal experience. To that end, they discuss: what is and is not in your control in relation to an emerging writing career; choosing what project to develop next; using the Black List site to gain traction; the difference between treatments for pitching as opposed to for development; the difference in writing style when writing on spec as against work for hire; and guest David Wappel shares his thoughts on anchoring nouns.

Stu and Chas have kidnapped Stephen Cleary to once again develop some craft tools around dialogue. In Part 2 of this series, we analyse key scenes from films and TV shows famous for their dialogue, namely FLEABAG (Season 2, Episode 5), JUNO and DEADWOOD (The Pilot). The biggest tools we explore are: the hook and eye; how dialogue can reveal status and empathy; rhythm; contrast and affinity; and pacing.

In this final part of our series on unfilmables, Chas and Stu turn their critical eye to... each other’s work! They take their key learnings from the previous ep and apply them to rewriting scenes from their own projects. They discuss metaphors, emotional context, and how you can write tone on the page without resorting to unfilmables. They are also joined by Carissa Lee to discuss her perspective as an actor on the scripts we’ve been reading; and they answer listener questions about unfilmables.

Chas and Stu continue their deep dive into how writing the “unfilmable” can enhance your script. Rather than looking at micro moments, they turn their gaze to ‘moments of awe’ — those often breathtaking cinematic moments that feel beyond writing. But are those scenes actually unscriptable? In this episode we look at sequences from YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE, SEARCHING FOR BOBBY FISCHER, THE INVITATION, and MOONLIGHT.

In this episode, Chas and Stu deep dive into the controversial area of “unfilmables” — those alleged screenwriting sins, where a writer writes a line that (apparently) cannot be seen or heard. But many produced spec scripts use unfilmables to great effect. So how and why do they “get away with it”?

A short-shot into Avengers Endgame. What began as an exploration of how to dramatise character change swiftly became an exploration of how to position audience in relation to your characters. Do you want the audience empathising with the characters? Feeling what they are feeling in the moment? Or do you want your audience sympathising with your characters? Being rocked by surprise after the fact? Reminding your audience of their own personal relationship with the characters.

while we thought this episode would be an extension of our previous musings on exposition, in nearly every great scene we assessed, the characters basically said “screw talking about plot or backstory” and instead exposited about their character. How it feels to be them. How they have, or have not, changed. And so this episode unexpectedly but rewardingly pivoted to learnings on how to set up and sell character exposition.

It is time (in fact, well past time) for our semi-annual #Backmatter episode. For the uninitiated, this is an episode where Stu and Chas discuss career and craft-related topics beyond what makes great screenplays work. To that end, Stu and Chas dive into: a five year review of Draft Zero and how it has changed their writing craft and process; a discussion on the aesthetics of writing; learnings for emerging writers in having their work produced; and finally forgiving yourself for not writing.

Chas & Stu examine moments where they did not believe a key decision being made by a character and so were taken out of the movie. They apply the tools they developed in Part 1 to workshop potential fixes to these beats. Character decisions that come under the microscope are AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR (again), SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY, DIE HARD (which is a good example for contrast, not a bad one!), PREDATOR 2, SICARIO 2: DÍA DEL SOLDADO and PROMETHEUS (with an honourable mention to A PRINCESS BRIDE).

In part 1 of this 2-part episode, Chas & Stu look at examples of good character motivation.  We’ve all watched movies where we don’t believe the motivation of a character or characters. We may have even written scripts where readers don’t buy the character’s choices. To help us solve the problem of how to improve our character motivations, in this episode we explore great examples of character motivation and how they have helped the audience believe a character’s decision. 

Chas and Stu are joined, once again, by the inestimable Stephen Cleary. This episode is a spiritual sequel to our last episode with Stephen, the one on sequence structure. We talk about a different type of sequence: the thematic sequence. By limiting (or removing all together) questions related to character or plot, filmmakers can force their audience to engage with the deeper, underlying meaning of the story.