DZ-131: Negative Character Arcs vs Negative Feelings
Listen to learn how to control your audience’s perception of your character arcs. In our fourth entry into our series on character arcs, we...
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TV & Film
Draft Zero: a screenwriting podcast
Two emerging screenwriters – Chas Fisher and Stuart Willis – try to work out what makes great screenplays work. Discovering what it takes by analysing what successful writers put on the page...
Episodes
20 of 137 episodes
Teaser: Negative Character Arcs
Teaser for our next episode: DZ-131. Please watch BACKROOMS, IF I HAD LEGS I'D KICK YOU, and ANATOMY OF A FALL.
DZ-130: Positive Character Arcs
Listen to understand how to dramatize a character's internal change. Welcome to our third entry in our character arc series; and the first w...
Teaser: Positive Character Arcs
Teaser for our next episode: DZ-130. Please watch BARBIE, WIDOWS, and ALL OF US STRANGERS so you can learn about positive character arcs.
DZ-129: Steadfast Character Arcs - Agents of Change
Listen to learn how to move an audience with a character who never changes. Do characters need to change for you to have a satisfying story?...
DZ-128: What even is a Character Arc?
Listen to separate the three layers of an arc -- does the character change? How do they feel about it? And how is the audience positioned to...
DZ-127: Secrets and Clues 2 - The Cost of Revelation
Listen to learn the emotional impact of revealing secrets vs discovering them. In this episode Stu, Chas and Mel apply the Landmark–Hidden–S...
DZ-126: Secrets and Clues
Listen if you want to understand how hidden information drives character motivation and plot structure! “Getting information puts your chara...
DZ-125: Oscars one-shot - BLUE MOON
What craft tools make a low-budget, contained, period drama riveting? Explore how narrative POV, interweaving relationships, hooky dialogue,...
DZ-124: Making the despicable compelling
How does Film Noir show us terrible people doing terrible things without endorsing it? Mel and Chas continue to explore what Noir (the genre...
DZ-123: Flawed Characters in Noir
What can Film Noir teach us about character arcs and audience engagement? In this two part series, Mel and Chas use Noir (the genre) as a le...
1dZ-01: Arkyvrs - A Mansion Most Vile - Ep1
What happens when a group of filmmakers play a ragtag group of filmmakers in a gritty sci-fi horror? "Ignite the fire within and explore unk...
DZ-122: Escalating Antagonism Across Genres
How can you apply horror ideas to action and comedy? In this episode Chas, Stu and guest Kim Ho continue their exploration into the power(s)...
DZ-121: Escalating Antagonism in SINNERS
How do the antagonistic forces in your story escalate distinctly from the protagonists' journey? We often struggle to develop the middle sta...
DZ-120: Subtext is overrated
Or, how focusing on good drama will result in good subtext. We often hear how subtext is important for good screenwriting. We're here to tel...
DZ-119: Final Character Choices & Great Endings
How does your protagonist's final choice resolve the plot, character arc and theme? In this episode, Stu and Chas focus solely on the final...
DZ-118: Adolescence and tension through questions
How do dramatic questions create tension? In this episode, Stu and Chas delve into the cultural phenomenon of ADOLESCENCE. We try to find th...
DZ-117: Tonal shifts
How can we teach our audience new storytelling rules in the middle of our story? Following on from our episodes on establishing tone through...
DZ-116: Writing physical comedy
How do you make extended technical scenes funny on the page? Mel joins Chas to tackle physical comedy. We limited our homework selection to...
DZ-115: A Christmas Special - Rewatching & Rituals
What magic do Christmas movies use to make them so rewatchable? In this "backmatter" episode of Draft Zero, Stu, Chas, and Mel Killingsworth...