Words
Every episode tagged Words, newest first.
2026
"It’s essentially using the slug lines as like emotional guideposts as opposed to formal slug lines. You have to have your own theory, you have to have a reason, but it can be very helpful especially once you get into the room with the actors and start figuring out where those emotional breaks are — essentially they are looking at where are the emotional breaks, what feels like a complete scene versus where we have to move on, and then labeling it accordingly."
— Mel Killingsworth | DZ-125: Oscars One-shot - BLUE MOON
DZ-125: Oscars One-shot - BLUE MOON
What craft tools make a low-budget, contained, period drama riveting?
AI✦Chas and Mel dissect how nearly every line of dialogue functions as a hook, a play on words, or a callback, with pop culture references woven through 1940s context in ways that don’t require prior knowledge to land, and how this demands performers who can keep up with the repartee.✦
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… →
Films:
Blue Moon (2026)
2025
"Every scene has plot, language and physicality and they’re all going at 100 miles per hour"
— Mel Killingsworth | DZ-116: Writing Physical Comedy
DZ-117: Pulling Off Tonal Shifts
How can we teach our audience new storytelling rules in the middle of our story?
AI✦Chas and Mel repeatedly examine how action line description--’the big print’--signals tone and prepares audiences for shifts, particularly noting Swiss Army Man uses it ’to greater lengths to tell us how to feel as an audience.'✦
Listen if you want to write tonal pivots that land on the page without a director's toolkit.
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Following on from our episodes on establishing tone through action lines and through character, this is what we have been building up to: how to pull off a tonal switch… that does NOT throw the audience out of the film. And, in particular, how to pull that off on the page when writers don’t have framing, lighting, music, editing, etc. at our disposal… →
DZ-116: Writing Physical Comedy
How do you make extended technical scenes funny on the page?
AI✦Mel and Chas detail how judicious use of ALL CAPS, ellipses, and m-dashes in action lines recreate visual gags on the page, and when to let a paragraph go long to draw attention to itself--a technique all three scripts deploy differently.✦
Listen to learn how formatting--white space, caps, dashes--becomes your comedy toolkit without a director.
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Mel joins Chas to tackle physical comedy. We limited our homework selection to extended scenes (as opposed to moments and sight gags) in live action projects and – with the help of our Patreons – selected early sequences from BRINGING UP BABY, the pilot for HAPPY ENDINGS and that wonderful food poisoning scene in BRIDESMAIDS… →
Shows:
Happy Endings 1x1
2024
"Voiceover is such a great tool for efficiently providing backstory, efficiently dramatizing the internal, efficiently providing character motivation."
— Chas Fisher | DZ-110: Voiceover
DZ-113: Tools For Filmmakers To Talk To The Audience
What tools help ensure that you as the filmmaker are not misunderstood?
AI✦Mel, Stu, and Chas spend the episode cataloging how filmmakers communicate directly with audiences through meta-storytelling and structural choices that sit outside the story world.✦
Listen if you want to explore how you can make your creative hand visible through meta-storytelling and structural choices!?!
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In our final (ha!) episode looking at Talking Directly to the Audience, we turn away from character-and-text based craft tools to look at other ways that filmmakers - whether they be directors, writers, editors, or anyone else - can make the audience feel their ‘hand’ more. To that end, Mel, Stu and Chas dive into ADAPTATION, STORIES WE TELL and THE FORTY-YEAR-OLD VERSION… →
DZ-112: Breaking the 4th wall
How is the effect of breaking the 4th wall different to voiceover?
AI✦Mel, Chas, and Stu examine breaking the fourth wall as the most blatant tool of direct audience communication, analyzing how characters looking directly at the camera create a fundamentally different effect than voiceover.✦
Listen to understand how breaking the 4th wall directly involves the audience in a character's emotional present.
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As part of our series on how filmmakers can directly communicate to the audience, we finally examine the most blatant tool of them all: when character look directly down the barrel of the camera… and thus look directly at us, the viewer. Chas, Stu and Mel take the craft tools/levers they identified in previous episodes and use them to examine the tv-version-of HIGH FIDELITY (“Top Five Breakups”), ABBOTT ELEMENTARY (“Attack Ad)”) and - of course - FLEABAG… →
DZ-111: Unreliable Narrators and FIGHT CLUB
How does the unreliability of a narrator impact the way a story is told?
AI✦Fight Club’s voiceover functions as the connective tissue that stitches together a deliberately disconnected sequence-driven structure, making it central to how the film’s unreliability operates.✦
Listen to learn how unreliable narrators shape storytelling through voiceover, structure, and control.
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In this episode, Stu and Mel (sans Chas!) take a deep dive into FIGHT CLUB and its use of the unreliable narrator. This is a bridging episode between our previous episode on VOICEOVER and our forthcoming episode on TALKING TO CAMERA as Fight Club does both.… →
Films:
Fight Club (1999)
DZ-110: Voiceover
How can you use voiceover without it feeling like a cheat?
AI✦Chas, Stu, and Mel apply four levers to distinguish when voiceover works as character revelation rather than expository shortcut, using Veronica Mars, The Emperor’s New Groove, and Pain & Gain as models.✦
Listen to explore how voiceover can set tone, reveal character, enhance empathy, and create tension.
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DZ-109: Talking DIRECTLY to your audience
What are the different ways a filmmaker can ask something of the audience?
AI✦Chas and Stu build a taxonomy of direct audience address by isolating four levers: diagetic to non-diagetic, who is talking, whom they’re talking to, and when in time the communication originates.✦
Listen if you've wondered what a character actually wants when they're talking directly to the audience!?
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What are the different ways a filmmaker can ask something of the audience… →
Films:
Fight Club (1999)
, Fleabag (2016)
, The Big Short (2015)
, F for Fake (1973)
, Star Wars (1977)
2022
DZ-86: Backmatter - Minimum Viable Product
How do you determine what is your MVP?
AI✦The MVP and minimum loveable thing framework forces you to identify what’s actually essential to your story--the non-negotiable core that defines your project.✦
Listen for screenwriting lessons from 2021, strategies for pitching projects, and insights on running a writers workshop
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In their annual full backwater episode, Stu and Chas let out their pandemic hair, drop the ruse of objectivity, and allow themselves to have even more options about writing and the business of writing… →
Films:
Die Hard (1988)
2021
DZ-82: Dramatising Given Circumstances in WATCHMEN
How can you elegantly convey given circumstances and exposition?
AI✦The episode examines how both Snyder and Lindelof convey massive amounts of exposition -- character worldview, backstory, and world-building -- through the lens of given circumstances, demonstrating that the same information lands differently depending on presentation order and tonal context.✦
Listen if you're drowning your readers in world-building and can't figure out how to make it awesome!
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In this final podcast release of last year’s run of LiveSoLation episodes, Chas and Stu are joined by Uber-geek Mel Killingsworth (who else?) in an epic exploration of how Dave Gibbons’ and Alan Moore’s seminal graphic novel WATCHMEN is adapted differently in Zack Snyder’s 2009 film and Damon Lindelof’s 2019 HBO television show… →
Shows:
Watchmen
DZ-76: Spotlight on Sofia Coppola
What can we learn from Sofia Coppola's on-the-page skills over her career?
AI✦Coppola’s insightful use of whitespace is central to how she constructs her scripts, creating space for actor performance and directorial choice rather than spelling everything out on the page.✦
Listen to discover how Sofia Coppola crafts character performance on the page and uses whitespace to create her distinctive cinematic voice
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Following the success of the Tips from Tarantino episode, we have again decided to look at three different scripts from over the course of a long screenwriting career from a single writer to see what we can learn. Our beloved patreons not only selected Sofia Coppola as said writer, but also selected the scripts to analyse: LOST IN TRANSLATION, THE BLING RING and THE BEGUILED… →
2020
DZ-75: Fury Road & Visual Storytelling
How can you do powerful storytelling... without dialogue?
AI✦The hosts examine what happens when you strip dialogue down to grunts and a single memorable line, forcing every other storytelling tool to carry the weight of character and plot.✦
Listen to hear how visual storytelling can carry an entire narrative with minimal dialogue.
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Stu and Chas are joined by filmmaker, podcaster and writer Lia Matthew Brownn to deep dive into FURY ROAD and its astounding visual storytelling, both on the page and on screen. We talk about setups and payoffs, given circumstances, image systems, environmental storytelling, and how the relationship between Furiosa and Max is built over the course of the story with very little dialogue (besides Tom Hardy’s grunts and the odd bellow of “MEDIOCRE!”).
You can also watch the complete live stream on YouTube or just the breakdown of the Furiosa/Max fight (which isn’t in the podcast) here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8uYAbEcQeQ&feature=youtu.be… →
Films:
Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
2019
DZ-62: Unfilmables 3 - As Ifs & Emotional Context
How do you know if your unfilmable is good... or if you're just being a wanker?
AI✦The entire series culminates here as Chas and Stu apply their learnings by critiquing unfilmables in each other’s actual scripts and discussing what separates a justified stylistic choice from self-indulgence.✦
Listen if you want to learn how to write tone and emotional context on the page.
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In this third and 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 episodes 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… →
DZ-61: Unfilmables 2 - Moments of Awe
How can unfilmables help you create those cinematic moments of awe?
AI✦Chas and Stu return to unfilmables specifically to examine how writing moments that feel beyond the page--moments of awe--can actually be shaped and controlled through deliberate craft choices.✦
Listen if you're writing a moment that feels too big for the page (but you need it on the page).
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In this second part of our series on 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… →
Films:
You Were Never Really Here (2017)
, Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993)
, The Invitation (2016)
, Moonlight (2016)
DZ-60: Unfilmables 1 - Engaging imagination
How can unfilmables enhance the experience of your script?
AI✦The entire episode interrogates why ‘unfilmables’ -- those allegedly forbidden techniques -- work brilliantly in produced specs, and Chas and Stu systematically deconstruct how writers get away with writing things that can’t be seen or heard.✦
Listen to discover how *produced* screenplays use unfilmables to shape tone, performance, and humour on the page.
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*AKA Why your screenwriting guru is wrong *… →
Films:
Lethal Weapon (1987)
, Hereditary (2018)
, A Quiet Place (2018)
, Killing Them Softly (2012)
, Spartan (2004)
, The Girl on the Train (2016)
, The Nice Guys (2016)
, Drive (2011)
, Michael Clayton (2007)
, The Tree of Life (2011)
, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)
, Killing Eve (2018)
, Fleabag (2016)
, Sharp Objects (2018)
, Battlestar Galactica (2004)
DZ-58: Game of Thrones - Character Exposition
How can you let your characters tell us how they feel?
AI✦This episode directly addresses how to use dialogue in reunion and first-meeting scenes to let characters tell us who they are rather than what happened.✦
Listen to understand why what a character *doesn't* say reveals more than exposition ever could.
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In watching Season 7 (and the first three episodes of Season 8) of Game of Thrones, Stu noticed that there were lots of scenes where characters either met for the first time or were reunited after a long time apart. In these scenes, the audience knows (or thinks they know) more than either character. And so the fascination, power and subversion comes from what the characters choose to reveal... or not… →
Films:
Game of Thrones (2011)
Shows:
Game of Thrones
2018
DZ-53: Antagonists! 5 - vs Audience
What if there is no antagonist?
AI✦The episode identifies direct address to the audience as a specific technique these films deploy to become antagonists themselves, collapsing the boundary between film and viewer.✦
Listen to turn narrative uncertainty itself into the engine that keeps viewers compelled.
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It’s time. The Epic Deep Dive(TM) into Antagonists has reached its shuddering conclusion. And for this Part V - by choosing films that have no obvious singular antagonist (and in some cases no obvious narrative either) - Stu and Chas realised there was indeed a final category of antagonists: the films themselves. Where the film (and the filmmaker) are engaging directly with the audience. Where the films are... VERSUS AUDIENCE… →
Films:
Ocean's Eight (2018)
, The Second (2018)
, F for Fake (1973)
, Sans Soleil (1983)
, Forrest Gump (1994)
2017
DZ-44: Marvel - First Acts and Establishing Characters
How can your first act effectively establish your character journey?
AI✦The breakdown of MCU first acts reveals how these films handle the burden of establishing a new world, character backstory, and narrative stakes without grinding momentum to a halt.✦
Listen if your first act exposition feels clunky--the MCU has a schema for burying backstory inside character introductions.
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First Acts are hard. They have to set so much in motion, especially setting up characters. To help them understand how to write effective first acts better, Stu and Chas turn their analytical gaze to a franchise that has been refining and reiterating its first act “schema” for over a decade... THE MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE… →
DZ-39: Backmatter - Hitting LA, Receiving Feedback, and a Roguish One
How can writers make use of their time when hitting LA?
AI✦Follow-up listener questions about the two-part Exposition episodes indicate Stu and Chas fielded real reactions to their framework for handling backstory and world-building information.✦
Listen if you're about to network at a festival and have no idea what writers actually do with their time there.
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In another backmatter-only episode, Stu & Chas zig-zag through a range of topics. We talk about Chas’ experience(s) hitting both Los Angeles and the Austin Film Festival, effective networking, career capital, the art of receiving feedback, and Stu’s harsh Three Strikes Rule. We look back at the most important lessons we’ve learned about storytelling in 2016 and that leads us to talk about character choices in a little-known and little-talked about film called ROGUE ONE… →
2016
DZ-38: Excelling at Exposition (Part 2)
How can exposition twist your story in new directions?
AI✦Exposition is the explicit subject of this episode, and Stu & Chas examine how great writers transform it from information delivery into dramatic revelation that shifts story direction.✦
Listen to learn how to use exposition as dramatic revelation rather than mere information delivery.
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In the second part of Draft Zero’s two-part episode on “Exposition”, Stu & Chas take an even deeper look at this notoriously challenging part of screenwriting. For many stories there are pre-existing facts (or given circumstances) that need to be communicated to an audience, and often we rely on dialogue to do it. But exposition can do more than just communicate, it can serve as dramatic revelation that twists a story into a new direction or provides an emotional payoff - or both!. So how do great writers make exposition work for the story, rather than just tell audience stuff they need to know? And how can writers go wrong… →
Films:
Gone Girl (2014)
, Shutter Island (2010)
, Ghostbusters (2016)
, The Matrix (1999)
, The Matrix Reloaded (2003)
, Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
DZ-37: Excelling at Exposition (Part 1)
How can you successfully integrate exposition into your story?
AI✦The episode’s central focus is breaking down how great writers integrate necessary information--world rules, locations, character backstories, motivations--without halting narrative momentum.✦
Listen if your exposition scenes feel like information dumps disguised as dialogue.
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In Draft Zero’s first two part episode, Stu & Chas take an in-depth look at one of screenwriting’s most common challenges: EXPOSITION. For many stories there are pre-existing facts that need to be communicated to the audience — whether those facts be about the rules of the world, the nature of a location, character motivations, character backstories or just character names. So how have great writers made exposition move the story forward, rather than stopping it to tell the audience stuff they need to know… →
Films:
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
, Short Term 12 (2013)
, Inside Out (2015)
, The World's End (2013)
, The Big Short (2015)
, It Follows (2015)
, Jurassic Park (1993)
, Jurassic World (2015)
DZ-31: Tools for Better Dialogue 1
How does dialogue serve to reveal character?
AI✦Stephen Cleary breaks down how dialogue individualizes characters through speech patterns, word choice, and verbal tics that make each voice distinctly recognizable.✦
Listen if your want your dialogue to individualizes characters, reveal characterization, and shift status!
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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… →
Films:
Analyze This (1999)
, Notting Hill (1999)
, The Remains of the Day (1993)
, The Avengers (2012)
2015
DZ-20: Writing Strong Secondary Characters - Trinity, Bechdel and a Bamboo Killer
How can the Trinity Syndrome help you write better secondary characters?
AI✦The Bechdel Test anchors the conversation around whether female characters speak to each other about something other than men, making dialogue a diagnostic tool for catching the Trinity Syndrome in your own work.✦
Listen when you're writing secondary female characters and need them to have more depth.
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Chas & Stu are joined by Bamboo Killer (aka Emily Blake) - one of the co-hosts of the Chicks Who Script podcast. They take a critical look at secondary female characters in mainstream movies through the lens of the oft-cited Bechdel test and the new, less-cited, Trinity Syndrome. The Trinity Syndrome berates movies for creating a “Strong Female Character With Nothing To Do” (like Trinity in the Matrix sequels) and raises a list of questions for filmmakers to ask themselves about their (female) characters… →
Films:
Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011)
, Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)
, How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014)
2014
DZ-16: Masters of Time and Whitespace
Does manipulating time on the page make your script feel more cinematic?
AI✦Khrob Edmonds and the hosts center white space as a primary tool for manipulating time on the page, showing how strategic blank space recreates cinema’s pacing.✦
Listen if you want your screenplay to feel cinematic before a director ever reads it.
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Chas and Stu are joined by Khrob Edmonds - an award-winning filmmaker - to discuss manipulation of time… →
Films:
Pulp Fiction (1994)
, Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
, The Bourne Identity (2002)
, The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)
, The Untouchables (1987)
, The Woman in Black (2012)
, Up (2009)
, Whiplash (2014)
DZ-15: World Building Rules, Okay?
How does setting up rules help you build a world?
AI✦Chas and Stu demonstrate how to deliver necessary world information in opening pages through techniques like title cards and outsider characters, sidestepping clumsy exposition while still teaching your rules.✦
Listen when your opening pages feel like exposition dumps (which is bad, okay?)
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In our most epic/longest episode yet, Chas and Stu tackle world building in films. Specifically, how the rules make something a world and not just a setting. Starting with world-centric genres like sci-fi and fantasy, we also cover horror, crime drama and - er - “other”. We discuss a variety of techniques for setting up the rules of the world, including cold opens, voiceover, title cards and outsider characters! We’ve limited ourselves to the opening 3-5 pages... mostly... because (so the theory goes) they’re the pages that teach the audience how to read/watch your story/film… →
Films:
The Matrix (1999)
, Inception (2010)
, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
, Jurassic Park (1993)
, Pan's Labyrinth (2006)
DZ-14: Writing For Actors with Succession's Sarah Snook
How can we make our screenwriting more appealing to Actors?
AI✦Tracy Letts’s dialogue--drawn from his background as both playwright and actor--demonstrates how writers can craft lines that feel natural while giving actors rich material to perform.✦
Listen to understand how writers can craft more compelling material for actors (and how they approach scripts)
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In this episode, Chas and Stu are joined by a very special guest, SARAH SNOOK - star of Succession, Predestination, Jessabelle, and Oddball, amongst many others - to discuss ACTING and it’s relationship with WRITING… →