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Rewriting

Every episode covering Rewriting.

"ultimately the most important part of the development process is getting you to the end."

— Stu Willis  |  DZ-106: How do you know if you have enough story?

Start here

DZ-7: On Rewriting - How much Bull is left in the Hustle?

What can be gleamed from the substantial rewrite of a famed spec?
AI✦Stu and Chas use the transformation from AMERICAN BULLSHIT to AMERICAN HUSTLE as a case study in how substantial rewrites reshape a spec into a studio film.✦
⏱ 55m
25 MAY 2014
Listen to learn how impactful rewriting can be.
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Stu and Chas look at AMERICAN BULLSHIT (the 2010 Black List spec script by Eric Warren Singer) and the film it became… AMERICAN HUSTLE (co-written and directed by David O’Russell), which garnered 10 Oscar nominations in 2014… →

KEY IDEAS

Sequence Questions Persist Across Drafts

"I'm talking about the questions being posed in an act or a sequence and how those questions get resolved those to me sure stay very much the same throughout the process."

— Chas Fisher (01:05:30) · DZ-106: How do you know if you have enough story?

Development Tools Replace Multiple Drafts

"I'm not someone who's at the moment interested in writing 10 drafts, vastly different drafts of a script, right? Which certainly writers do and have done early in their career because they don't have the tool sets or the processes or the structures to kind of understand how to develop the story."

— Stu Willis (00:34:38) · DZ-106: How do you know if you have enough story?

Rewriting for Character Consistency

"I think the two main things that I find really need fixing when I hit the end of my first drafts is that I've updated the character sheet, but now I realize the whole first half, everything they're doing makes no sense. The other thing is that if you have an ensemble piece, all of the characters sound quite the same."

— Mel Killingsworth (00:27:25) · DZ-106: How do you know if you have enough story?

Completion as the Primary Goal

"ultimately the most important part of the development process is getting you to the end."

— Stu Willis (00:30:11) · DZ-106: How do you know if you have enough story?

Sequences as Rewriting Tool

"This is not a recipe to write, it's a recipe to rewrite. You look at your scene and you say, okay, there is no plot question to this scene. The question that scene is really, what does the character have to understand? It's always about the audience. It's not about the writer, it's not about the characters -- it's about what do the audience understand now."

— Stephen Cleary (02:56:47) · DZ-43: Driving Sequences - Character and Plot Intensity

Even More

DZ-63: Tools for Better Dialogue 2 - Hook and Eye

How can you create flow and contrast in your dialogue?
AI✦Stu and Chas frame these tools as rewriting instruments: ways to diagnose and fix dialogue in a draft by adjusting rhythm, status play, and contrast to deepen character connection.✦
⏱ 1h 58m
31 DEC 2019
Listen when you're rewriting dialogue and want to create connection between characters.
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A full three years after the first instalment (and one of our most popular), Stu and Chas have kidnapped Stephen Cleary to once again develop some craft tools around dialogue. It would be fair to say that - in that time - all three have learnt a lot more about dialogue than they knew in 2016. It would be also fair to say that Stephen perhaps learnt a little more through his research into “genderlect”… →

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✦Chas and Stu take scenes from their own projects and demonstrate how to rewrite them using the frameworks they’ve developed across the series, treating unfilmables as a rewriting problem rather than a drafting solution.✦
⏱ 2h 17m
2 DEC 2019
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-0: Welcome to Draft Zero

What, exactly, is Draft Zero?
AI✦Chas and Stu are explicit that their toolkit functions mainly as a rewriting instrument rather than a generative one, helping you achieve the effect you want on an audience once you have a draft.✦
⏱ 9m
1 FEB 2014
Listen if you're new to the podcast and want to understand our philosophy on screenwriting craft!
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Welcome to Draft Zero. A message from 2019 to those starting with our first episodes dating from 2014. We’ve learned a lot in five years. So where do you begin… →

DZ-106: How do you know if you have enough story?

How do you know if you have enough narrative fuel to write a script?
AI✦Both Mel and Stu describe their processes as iterative ways to avoid writing ten wildly different drafts by solving story problems upfront, though Mel notes her main fixes in first drafts tend to be character consistency and ensuring earlier scenes align with late-draft character changes.✦
⏱ 1h 36m
31 DEC 2023
Listen you're not sure whether your idea has enough fuel for 90 pages.
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In this episode, Chas, Stu and Mel attempt to answer a listener question: “In your own pre-writing process, how do you know you have enough for a feature? And do you have a specific pre-writing method you’re going to?”… →

DZ-57: Backmatter - Aesthetics and Forgiveness in Writing

How can you best articulate your ideas?
AI✦A five-year review of the podcast necessarily examines how Stu and Chas have refined their process through iteration and the lessons that shaped their thinking.✦
⏱ 1h 29m
1 MAY 2019
Listen if you need to forgive yourself (for not writing)
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It is time (in fact, well past time) for our semi-annual #Backmatter episode. For the uninitiated, this is an episode where Stu and Chas discuss career and craft-related topics beyond what makes great screenplays work. To that end, Stu and Chas dive into: a five year review of Draft Zero and how it has changed their writing craft and process; a discussion on the aesthetics of writing; learnings for emerging writers in having their work produced; and finally forgiving yourself for not writing… →

DZ-21: Scene Transitions and the Hook

How can scene transitions do more than just move from one location to another?
AI✦The focus on how transitions work in finished scripts positions this as a rewriting consideration--a way to strengthen an existing draft by reconsidering how your scenes connect and what work those connections can do.✦
⏱ 1h 40m
7 MAY 2015
Listen to understand how transitions compress time, enhance thematic connections, unify story threads, and orient your reader
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Stu and Chas look at one of the basic building blocks of a script: scene transitions. Transitions don’t just move you from one scene to another in a slick way, they can help you compress time, enhance thematic connections, unify different story threads, orient (or disorient) your reader... and just make your script feel more like a movie… →