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Dual Protoganist
Every episode covering Dual Protoganist.
KEY IDEAS
Dual Protagonist
"I genuinely believe this is one of those few dual protagonist films where almost like rom-com but most rom-coms lean towards one character or another. There's very few where both characters are driving, you know, their own swathes of the movie and have their own complete journeys."
— Chas Fisher (00:18:41) · DZ-1: Do Screenplay Gurus win you Oscars?
DZ-126: Secrets and Clues
How can Secrets and Clues motivate characters?
AI✦The hosts identify Wake Up Dead Man as deliberately complex because Blanc is pulled forward by solving the mystery while Judd is pushed forward against his will to prove innocence, requiring each protagonist to sustain different kinds of escalation.✦
Listen if you want to understand how hidden information drives character motivation and plot structure!
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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… →
Films:
Wake Up Dead Man (2025)
DZ-96: Ensembles 1 - What do we mean by an ensemble?
How can the same story feel different when you have more characters?
AI✦By comparing single protagonists and two-handers against true ensembles, Chas, Stu, and Mel establish the structural distinctions that matter when you have multiple leads.✦
Listen if you're working on a story with multiple protagonists and want to understand what makes an ensemble different from a single-protagonist narrative
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In the first part of our series on ensembles, Chas, Stu and Mel start by laying the groundwork for our future episodes. And we begin by asking the seemingly innocuous question: What do we mean by calling a story an ensemble?… →
Films:
Jurassic Park (1993)
, Alien (1979)
, Heat (1995)
, Top Gun: Maverick (2022)
, Ocean's Eleven (2001)
DZ-2: Do the Screenplay Gurus score big at the Box Office?
Do the biggest original films of 2013 follow more archetypal - or formulaic - structures?
AI✦Frozen presents a genuine dual-protagonist puzzle: Chas and Stu spend significant time debating whether Anna or Elsa is actually driving the story, given that Elsa has the largest character arc while Anna remains fearless throughout.✦
Listen if you need to know which guru frameworks actually deliver in Act Three.
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Part 2 of our Screenplay Gurus series takes the same lens from Part 1 — Vogler, Snyder and Hauge — and points it at the two highest-grossing original films of 2013: GRAVITY and FROZEN. No franchise, no sequel. Just the two films that audiences went to see in the biggest numbers that year, and the question of what their scripts actually look like when you run them against the guru formulas… →