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DRAFT ZERO

Draft Zero — Screenwriting Podcast & Deep Screenplay Analysis

Recent Foundational Deep Cuts

Latest Episode

DZ-126: Secrets and Clues

How can Secrets and Clues motivate characters?
DZ-126: Secrets and Clues
Listen if you want to understand how hidden information drives character motivation and plot structure!
⏱ 1h 28m
Structure · Character · Scenes |30 Apr 2026
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“Getting information puts your character in danger. And danger rewards your character with information." — One of three ideas we steal from game design in this episode. In this two part series, we talk about how secrets, clues and hidden information motivate characters and may (or may not) help you plot from a character perspective. Part One (this episode) looks at WAKE UP DEAD MAN; while Part Two looks at SIDE EFFECTS, and the pilot episode of SHRINKING… →
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AI✦The episode's central framework examines how secrets (information characters know exists but must unlock) and hidden clues (invisible until characters pay a cost) motivate character action across WAKE UP DEAD MAN and other narratives.✦

"If it’s hidden, it can only be retrieved at a cost. If it’s secret, we need some kind of skill check."

— Stu Willis  |  DZ-126: Secrets and Clues

Recent Episodes

DZ-125: Oscars One-shot - BLUE MOON

What craft tools make a low-budget, contained, period drama riveting?
DZ-125: Oscars One-shot - BLUE MOON
Listen if you want to understand how narrative POV, screenplay format, and dialogue craft can elevate a contained biopic into an Oscar-nominated film
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BLUE MOON is a talky, period-drama that film about an obscure songer-writer in the 1940s. Yet, it attracted world-class talent AND Academy Award nominations, including for it’s script. Join Chas & Mel as they explore how narrative POV, interweaving relationships, hooky dialogue, and even the screenplay format itself make the script for BLUE MOON so great… →
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AI✦Mel and Chas break down how Blue Moon's almost total commitment to Larry Hart's perspective--he's absent from only two beats in the entire film--shapes both the script's structure and the audience's emotional experience of his decline.✦

DZ-124: Making the Despicable Compelling

How does Film Noir show us terrible people doing terrible things without endorsing it?
DZ-124: Making the Despicable Compelling
Listen if you need audiences to root for characters who do terrible things
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Mel and Chas continue to explore what Noir (the genre) can teach writers of all other genres. In particular:… →
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AI✦The episode isolates voiceover and given circumstances as tools that contextualize why characters make incredibly stupid or morally grey choices for understandable reasons.✦

DZ-123: Flawed Characters in Noir

What can Film Noir teach us about character arcs and audience engagement?
DZ-123: Flawed Characters in Noir
Listen if you want to write morally compromised characters without endorsing their choices.
⏱ 1h 22m
Character · Theme · Scenes |31 Dec 2025
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In this two part series, Mel and Chas use Noir (the genre) as a lens to interrogate flawed characters. How can characters doing reprehensible things still engage audiences? How can you ensure representation isn’t endorsement? And whether these characters undergo transformative arcs, or simply reveal their true natures… →
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AI✦The core tension across both films is how characters doing reprehensible things still engage audiences--Neff lies to himself about saving Phyllis from a loveless marriage, while Marlowe operates by a code that doesn't always align with justice.✦

Foundational Episodes

Beginner's Guide →

DZ-31: Tools for Better Dialogue 1

How does dialogue serve to reveal character?
Chas & Stu are joined once again by the renowned script developer and producer, Stephen Cleary. In the first part of our series on writing better dialogue (there will be more!), we take a close look at how dialogue serves character: individuating characters, revealing characterisation, shifting status, and much more… →
⏱ 2h 5m
Character · Words · Scenes | 10 APR 2016
Listen if your want your dialogue to individualizes characters, reveal characterization, and shift status!
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DZ-3: Making Unlikeable Protagonists Compelling

How do you make obnoxious a-holes compelling
Stu and Chas delve into unlikable protagonists in comedy. How do filmmakers keep us watching characters who should alienate us? To answer this question, Stu and Chas look at the first 20 pages of HOT FUZZ, AS GOOD AS IT GETS and - of course - GROUNDHOG DAY… →
⏱ 1h 20m
Character · Audience · Genre | 30 MAR 2014
Listen if you want to understand how filmmakers make audiences care about deeply flawed protagonists
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DZ-19: Car-Crash Characters

How do you make unlikeable characters compelling to watch... in drama?
Stu and Chas revisit a topic from a year ago: how do screenwriters make unlikeable characters compelling? This time, we turn our focus to dramas and analyse how AMERICAN HISTORY X, YOUNG ADULT, NIGHTCRAWLER all make their asshole protagonists compelling to watch. We expand our original list of five writer’s tools to include a few more for your tool belt… →
⏱ 1h 59m
Character · Audience · Process | 1 MAR 2015
Listen when you're writing a protagonist who does terrible things but you need the audience to keep watching.
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DZ-41: Theme and Worldview

How can your characters' worldview dramatise your theme?
In this episode, Stu and Chas tackle one of the more esoteric topics in screenwriting (and writing in general): theme! To help us tackle this topic, we decided to look at television pilots, because we felt that television requires the theme to be more explicit. Our zig-zagging (and long) discussion covers thematic engines, music themes, thematic loglines, punishment vs reward, and - perhaps most of all - the worldview of characters… →
⏱ 2h 32m
Theme · Structure · Process | 24 MAR 2017
Listen if theme feels abstract - we talk how how to make it visible through what characters believe.
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DZ-67: Writing Passive Protagonists & Melodrama

How do I tell a powerful story where the protagonist cannot drive the plot?
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… →
⏱ 2h 58m
Structure · Tone · Character | 30 APR 2020
Listen if you want to write powerful stories centred on characters without much agency.
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DZ-56: Character Motivations 2

Workshopping ways to fix character motivations.
In this second part of their exploration of character motivations, Chas and Stu dive into what makes “BAD” screenplays NOT work. They examine at moments where they (and maybe you, dear listeners) did not believe a key decision being made by a character and so were taken out of the movie. In a departure from the Draft Zero format, they apply the tools they developed in Part 1 to workshop potential fixes to these beats… →
⏱ 2h 16m
Character · Process · Audience | 30 MAR 2019
Listen if you want to understand how character decisions can break a screenplay and how to fix them
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