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Emotional Impact

The emotion that an audience feels in the moment when watching a film.

"one of the main reasons to use a oner, and I think all these examples are, right, is one to create that sense of unity, but also kind of really bond us with character experience, right?"

— Stu Willis  |  DZ-101: Oners - Creating Immediacy & Anchoring Action on the Page

KEY IDEAS

The Power of Discovery and Revelation

"My key takeaway from both of these episodes, but particularly this one, is that there are moments of real dramatic and emotional power in either a character's discovery of a secret or in their revealing of a secret."

— Chas Fisher (00:04:52) · DZ-127: Secrets and Clues 2 - The Cost of Revelation

The Two Costs: Retrieving and Sharing

"Often hidden information is only revealed because you've paid a higher cost. [...] There is a cost sharing information, which is, I think, more relevant to drama."

— Stu Willis (00:07:29) · DZ-127: Secrets and Clues 2 - The Cost of Revelation

The Power of Honest Acknowledgement

"There are story paradigms where all the characters are aware of all the information, and the power in that situation -- where it's the audience being behind all the characters -- is that the power comes from those moments where the audience catches up because the characters are being honest. [...] The whole show, the stakes are all mental health stakes. And it's those moments of insight and truth where everyone else around them knows what they're saying -- it's not a secret to them. But the power comes from the characters being able to acknowledge their own weaknesses or their own shortcomings or their own moments of insight, and letting their dishonesty go, letting their safety nets go, becoming vulnerable."

— Chas Fisher (01:22:08) · DZ-127: Secrets and Clues 2 - The Cost of Revelation

DZ-101: Oners - Creating Immediacy & Anchoring Action on the Page

What can we learn by analysing how 'oners' are written on the page?
AI✦Stu argues that the core objective of a oner is to create that sense of unity while bonding us with character experience, and Mel shows how this rhythmic structure--whether breathless like Goodfellas or claustrophobic like Children of Men--shapes what the audience feels in the moment.✦
⏱ 1h 23m
3 JUL 2023
Listen to understand how screenwriters direct the camera without calling shots.
▶ More Info
Chas, Stu and Mel reunite to talk about writing the feel of camerawork in screenplays. We use “oners” — a long-playing continuous take — as a lens to talk about how some writers have “directed” from the page. We talk immediacy, camera positions, handovers, and anchoring action and more… →

DZ-91: Raising (different kinds of) Stakes

How can you keep your audience hooked when they know the end of the story?
AI✦The episode proposes that emotional stakes--not plot stakes--are what land with an audience when they’re watching a story whose outcome is predetermined.✦
⏱ 2h 19m
31 AUG 2022
Listen listen if you're writing a biopic or any story where the audience already knows how it ends.
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Chas, Stu and Mel take a deep dive into stakes, using then lens of biopics to help us think about them. If an audience already knows the “plot” outcome of a story, then how do you create stakes to make a story tense for the audience… →

DZ-85: Choices & Decisions 2 - The Farewell & Wrath of Man

What is difference between choice and decision when it comes to audience experience?
AI✦The episode tracks how the sequencing of choice, decision, and consequence in non-linear narrative affects how audiences feel about characters, using WRATH OF MAN as the primary case study.✦
⏱ 1h 49m
17 NOV 2021
Listen when you want to show a character refusing to change despite every opportunity to do so.
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In our second part of our “series” on Choices & Decisions, we take a deep dive into THE FAREWELL and WRATH OF MAN, with a sidebar on NOMADLAND… →

DZ-84: Choices & Decisions 1 - Booksmart

What is the difference between choice and decision when it comes to characters?
AI✦The episode argues that how you separate choice, decision, and consequence fundamentally changes what the audience feels about a character, making this a tool for managing emotional response.✦
⏱ 1h 12m
30 OCT 2021
Listen how the separation of choice, decision, and consequence (for a character) creates emotional impact.
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In order to better understand dramatising of character, Chas and Stu take a very draft zero look at very specific tool: choices and decisions. We analyse three films through the decisions made by their characters. In particular, how the audience understanding of: the choice available, the considered decision itself, and the consequence changes how we feel about these characters. And how separating those three things can create different emotional effects on your audience… →
Shows: Fleabag

DZ-127: Secrets and Clues 2 - The Cost of Revelation

What does it cost a character to find something out, or to say it?
AI✦Mel emphasizes that the power in Shrinking comes not when the audience learns information, but when characters reveal truth--a distinction that separates where emotional force actually lands in this kind of storytelling.✦
⏱ 1h 51m
27 MAY 2026
Listen to learn the emotional impact of revealing secrets vs discovering them.
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In this episode Stu, Chas and Mel apply the Landmark–Hidden–Secret framework (from DZ-126) across two very different genres: the thriller SIDE EFFECTS (2013) and the tragicomic pilot of SHRINKING… →

DZ-94: Talismans (Part 2)

How can you use physical objects to track character change… wordlessly?
AI✦Chas and Stu examine how the emotional weight of a talisman--whether Mjolnir’s symbolic burden or the charged spaces in In the Mood for Love--creates powerful moments that land without exposition.✦
⏱ 2h 7m
30 NOV 2022
Listen to write objects that accumulate powerful meanings across your story and create unspoken emotional payoffs.
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In part two of our two-part series on TALISMANS, we break down the beats used to turn objects (in a broad sense) into talismans; how talismans can track character journeys and transitions; and how they can be used to create powerful moments without words… →

DZ-92: Insightful Recognition in Powerful Endings

How can endings prompt an audience to reflect on your story?
AI✦The episode centers on endings that make audiences pause and reflect, examining how recognition moments--whether in characters, the world, or the audience--create lasting emotional resonance.✦
⏱ 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)… →

DZ-90: Setups & Payoffs in EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE

How can you use setups and payoffs to stitch your film together?
AI✦Chas traces where the film lands emotionally--the moment Waymond explains his kindness as strength, the final jump off the cliff--showing how payoffs to planted relationship beats generate cathartic release despite the genre chaos.✦
⏱ 1h 30m
27 JUL 2022
Listen to understand how setups, payoffs, and reversals create narrative cohesion even when your story is fkn bonkers.
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In this one-shot, Chas and Stu jump into the utter chaos of EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE. Y’know, nultiverses, butt-plug action sequences, hot-dog fingers, a raccoon chef, a nihilist bagel. All the good stuff. And yet it lands emotionally in a way that feels inevitable… →