Draft Zero — Screenwriting Podcast & Deep Screenplay Analysis
Latest Episode
DZ-131: Negative Character Arcs vs Negative Feelings
How do you make an audience feel negative when the character's arc isn't?
Listen to learn how to control your audience’s perception of your character arcs.
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In our fourth entry into our series on character arcs, we explore both what makes an audience perceive a character arc to be “negative” AND separately what makes the audience feel negative about a character arc. The individual arc, as Chas puts it, is only one lever
We dive into BACKROOMS, IF I HAD LEGS I’D KICK YOU and ANATOMY OF A FALL, further developing craft tools we’ve looked at earlier in the series - repeated character beats, emotional events, operant conditioning - as well exploring newer ones in more depth, such as relationship questions and symbolism… →
"One of the things that I think you can take from these films is: the kind of structural decoupling of when the characters change, and when the audience’s relationship to elements, character or world or the film itself kind of change."
— Stu Willis | DZ-131: Negative Character Arcs vs Negative Feelings
Recent Episodes
DZ-130: Positive Character Arcs
How can repeating the same beat dramatise a character changing?
Listen to understand how to dramatize a character's internal change.
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Welcome to our third entry in our character arc series; and the first where we talk about characters that actually change. And positively, too… →
DZ-129: Steadfast Character Arcs - Agents of Change
How do you write a satisfying story when your character never changes
Listen to learn how to move an audience with a character who never changes.
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Do characters need to change for you to have a satisfying story? That’s a question we’ve been asking since, like, episode five of this podcast. And we’re finally talking about them - whatever you call ’em: steadfast, resilent, or flat arcs… →
DZ-128: What even is a Character Arc?
What effect does character changing have on the audience?
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 feel about it?
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Stu, Chas and Mel finally begin their long-awaited journey into CHARACTER ARCS. In this “primer” episode, we try find some learnings and analytical lenses that we can then apply in future breakdowns… →
