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Anagnorisis

Every episode covering Anagnorisis.

"She specifically talks about the fact that she only feels relief. All she has been given isn’t a reward. She’s just been relieved of the burden for trial... what an awful experience to go through all that, particularly if you are innocent and you don’t even get compensation. You just get congratulations. You spent a year of your life dealing with this, and you’ve lost your husband. She’s lost her husband. Her relationship with her son has been changed."

— Stu Willis  |  DZ-131: Negative Character Arcs vs Negative Feelings

Start here

DZ-92: Insightful Recognition in Powerful Endings

How can endings prompt an audience to reflect on your story?
AI✦Stu and Chas use Aristotle’s anagnorisis as the central lens for understanding how endings move characters from ignorance to knowledge, particularly of self.✦
⏱ 1h 26m
29 SEP 2022
Listen if you want to write endings that make audiences pause and ponder (in a good way, obvs)
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Stu & Chas set out to explore what makes certain endings powerful, in particular those of LA LA LAND, INCEPTION, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN and TURNING RED. The lens they bring to those endings is Aristotle’s moment of “anagnorisis” (don’t worry - we can’t pronounce it either), traditionally when a character moves from ignorance to knowledge (particularly of self)… →

KEY IDEAS

Acquittal as Subtraction Rather Than Reward

"She specifically talks about the fact that she only feels relief. All she has been given isn't a reward. She's just been relieved of the burden for trial... what an awful experience to go through all that, particularly if you are innocent and you don't even get compensation. You just get congratulations. You spent a year of your life dealing with this, and you've lost your husband. She's lost her husband. Her relationship with her son has been changed."

— Stu Willis (02:13:11) · DZ-131: Negative Character Arcs vs Negative Feelings

Even More

DZ-83: A Very Thematic Stand-up Special!

What can screenwriters learn from the storytelling techniques used by stand-up comedians?
AI✦Alice describes how in Nanette the arc is Hannah realizing the corner she’s backed herself into through her use of jokes as a distancing mechanism from trauma, an act of recognition that reframes everything that came before.✦
⏱ 2h 31m
8 SEP 2021
Listen if you want to understand how stand-up comedians grip audiences and build emotional arcs (and what narrative tools screenwriters can borrow from comedy)!
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Standup comedians can keep audiences gripped to their every word for over an hour, and often bring them to emotional climaxes by the end. So how do they do it and what tools can apply to scripted narratives… →

DZ-4: Catharsis and the Post-Coital Cigarette

How does the end of certain films make your soul shudder?
AI✦The episode traces how recognition and revelation function as the mechanical trigger for cathartic release in these three radically different films.✦
⏱ 1h 25m
14 APR 2014
Listen if you want to make you endings great!
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Stu and Chas are joined by their first guest – illustrious script developer and producer Stephen Cleary – to explore how certain films can trigger an outpouring of emotion from the audience. Turns out that Aristotle may have figured it out a few thousand years ago and called it Catharsis… →

DZ-131: Negative Character Arcs vs Negative Feelings

How do you make an audience feel negative when the character's arc isn't?
AI✦Chas points to Backrooms’ protagonist having a moment of realization about being trapped as a lab rat, noting this anagnorisis changes how she approaches a subsequent scene despite the film never explicitly showing that shift.✦
1 NOV 2026
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… →

DZ-119: Final Character Choices & Great Endings

How do you dramatise a protagonist's internal journey through their final decision?
AI✦Finding Nemo tests the lesson Marlin has learned by forcing him to choose between saving his son and saving Dory, which means the recognition of what matters most becomes inseparable from the act of choice itself.✦
⏱ 1h 52m
18 JUN 2025
Listen if you want to understand how to better dramatise a character's internal journey
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In this episode, Stu and Chas focus solely on the final choices made by protagonists and how that reflects their character journey and successfully, or not, dramatises the internal… →

DZ-59: Avengers Endgame - Ending Character Journeys

Do you want your audience feeling with or for your characters?
AI✦The conversation turns on whether Tony and Cap reach a moment of self-recognition or change in understanding--the recognition that would constitute genuine character transformation.✦
⏱ 1h 14m
1 JUL 2019
Listen if you're interested in how to dramatise character change, position your audience in relation to characters, and explore the difference between empathy and sympathy in screenwriting
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One day, Chas saw Avengers: Endgame for the second time and wrote a review on Letterboxd. In particular, he had issues with how little he perceived the characters of Cap and Tony changed within the film, their big finale (spoiler). Then friend and patron of the podcast Julio Olivera vehemently disagreed in the comments. He was egged on by Stu. And there in the comments began a debate that looked a lot like an episode of Draft Zero. So we decided to make it one… →