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Setups & Payoffs
Every episode covering Setups & Payoffs.
"Every harmless story is the shell of something that I’m then going to pack with gunpowder and give back to you. And you will accept it because you’ve held it before as a harmless shell. Either building up the strength of the audience, building up the trust of the audience, or building up these reference points for the audience to understand these stories retrospectively."
— Alice Fraser | DZ-83: A Very Thematic Stand-up Special!
KEY IDEAS
Costs and Checks of Revealing Information
"If it's hidden, it can only be retrieved at a cost, right? If it's secret, we need some kind of skill check, right? Either way, the purpose of either of those things is to turn it into kind of a landmark to reveal the information."
— Stu Willis (00:51:41) · DZ-126: Secrets and Clues
Setting Up Gags for the Reader
"They've taken the time up front in the scene to set up the geography and the layout of the room and two running gags so the baby voice running gag but that's a performance one, but they've set it up for the reader."
— Chas Fisher (00:50:22) · DZ-116: Writing Physical Comedy
The Unloaded Gun
"The whole structure of Savage is kind of your unloaded gun, loaded gun scenario. I repeatedly introduce ideas with low stakes only to bring them back with higher stakes."
— Alice Fraser (00:06:12) · DZ-83: A Very Thematic Stand-up Special!
Emotional Recontextualisation
"Every harmless story is the shell of something that I'm then going to pack with gunpowder and give back to you. And you will accept it because you've held it before as a harmless shell. Either building up the strength of the audience, building up the trust of the audience, or building up these reference points for the audience to understand these stories retrospectively."
— Alice Fraser (02:09:17) · DZ-83: A Very Thematic Stand-up Special!
DZ-117: Pulling Off Tonal Shifts
How can we teach our audience new storytelling rules in the middle of our story?
AI✦Mel and Chas repeatedly emphasize that pulling off a tonal shift takes a lot of setup--Sorry to Bother You takes nine pages to establish its satirical rules before the equisapien reveal hits with earned impact.✦
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✦The Happy Endings wedding sequence exemplifies how spending time in setup--establishing props like the beer float and Kleenex box--pays off later when those same items trigger gags, giving actors and designers material to play with.✦
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
DZ-94: Talismans (Part 2)
How can you use physical objects to track character change… wordlessly?
AI✦The beats used to turn objects into talismans operate as a setup-and-payoff system, where early associations with an object accumulate meaning and create resonance when that object reappears or transforms.✦
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… →
Films:
Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)
, Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)
, In the Mood for Love (2000)
DZ-90: Setups & Payoffs in EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE
How can you use setups and payoffs to stitch your film together?
AI✦Chas and Stu break down the difference between Pointers and Plants and Stitches as the core mechanism EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE uses to create narrative cohesion across its multiverse structure.✦
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… →
DZ-83: A Very Thematic Stand-up Special!
What can screenwriters learn from the storytelling techniques used by stand-up comedians?
AI✦Stu and Chas analyze how stand-ups like Hannah Gadsby and Ali Wong structure their material through set-ups and pay-offs, showing how comedians engineer laughs and emotional beats across an hour-long narrative.✦
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-75: Fury Road & Visual Storytelling
How can you do powerful storytelling... without dialogue?
AI✦Lia, Stu, and Chas break down how FURY ROAD uses setups and payoffs as the primary engine of visual storytelling, allowing narrative information and character development to land without dialogue.✦
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)
DZ-25: Coincidences, Contrivances & Giant Eagles
How do screenwriters get away with using coincidences in their stories?
AI✦The difference between a coincidence that lands and one that feels like cheating often comes down to whether the writer has planted earlier setups that make the payoff feel inevitable in retrospect.✦
Listen when you need to know which coincidences earn trust and which ones feel like cheating.
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Remember that time in THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS when Bruce suddenly - magically - returned to Gotham, and you were like “WTF?!” Well, it turns out that many of the best films have moments that are just as coincidental or contrived (or a flock of Giant Eagles) and yet get away with it. Does Pixar’s “rule” that it is ‘cheating to use coincidences to get your characters out of trouble’, always apply… →
DZ-21: Scene Transitions and the Hook
How can scene transitions do more than just move from one location to another?
AI✦Transitions function as invisible machinery for linking setup and payoff across a script, colliding different story threads to create coherence and resonance that readers feel even when they’re not consciously aware of it.✦
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… →
Films:
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)
, Highlander (1986)
, American Splendor (2003)
, Boyhood (2014)
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✦Chas notes that Shrinking’s pilot sets up future reversals and payoffs across multiple seasons, using the Landmark-Hidden-Secret framework to plant information the characters have but the audience doesn’t yet need to understand.✦
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… →
Shows:
Shrinking 1x1
DZ-126: Secrets and Clues
How can Secrets and Clues motivate characters?
AI✦The team uses William Dunn’s framework of pointers and plants to show how a setup makes the audience aware they’re being set up, creating a question that demands a payoff later in the film.✦
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-125: Oscars One-shot - BLUE MOON
What craft tools make a low-budget, contained, period drama riveting?
AI✦The script demonstrates obsessive craftsmanship with repetition: the ‘cigarette heart’ line, the Blue Moon references, the rule of threes applied to dialogue beats--these aren’t scattered but built to accumulate and circle back in ways that reward careful listening.✦
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)
DZ-115: A Christmas Special - Rewatching & Rituals
What magic do Christmas movies use to make them so rewatchable?
AI✦Stu highlights how Gay Perry’s apparent death and later reveal that he’s alive exemplifies the kind of setup and payoff structure that rewards re-watching, since viewers forget exactly how things get solved.✦
Listen if you want to understand what makes holiday films enduring parts of our seasonal rituals!
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In this “backmatter” episode of Draft Zero, Stu, Chas, and Mel Killingsworth embark on a festive exploration of what makes holiday films so engaging and so re-watchable that they can become part of our rituals. To that end, we breakdown the charm of of Christmas films like KISS KISS BANG BANG, RIDERS OF JUSTICE, and IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE… →
DZ-93: Talismans (Part 1)
How can you use physical objects to reveal inner character?
AI✦Talismans operate on the principle of setup and payoff--introducing an object early that carries accumulated meaning, then deploying that weight at moments where it crystallizes everything about who a character is.✦
Listen to so you can write talismans that are powerful tools for accessing character!
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In this series, Chas and Stu discuss TALISMANS. Physical objects that are imbued with meaning by a character or characters. They’re a powerful tool to access inner character… →
Films:
Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)
, In the Mood for Love (2000)
, Cast Away (2000)
, The Dark Knight (2008)
, Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
DZ-88: Drama in Genre clothing
How can dramas use genre elements to hook their audiences?
AI✦The discussion of chapter breaks and structural pivots reveals how early genre setups (heist planning, grievance, power dynamics) function as long-form payoffs to character revelations later.✦
Listen if you're writing a genre film but sense your story wants to become something else entirely.
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Stu and Chas reunite with TV writer & director Kodie Bedford to look at how some films start out as genre but gradually become character dramas. Or, as Stu never said on the episode “Genre in the streets, Drama in the sheets”.… →
DZ-38: Excelling at Exposition (Part 2)
How can exposition twist your story in new directions?
AI✦Great exposition often works as a payoff to setup--facts planted earlier that suddenly click into place and reshape what the audience thought the story was about.✦
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-22: Romantic Comedy, Actually
How can studying RomCom clichés teach us to subvert them?
AI✦Romcom structure relies on establishing promises early and delivering on them later, a mechanism Chas and Alli trace through successful examples to show how timing and patience build satisfaction.✦
Listen if you're writing a romcom and want to understand what makes this gentre tick.
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With Stu busy working on Hollywood blockbusters, Chas is joined by Alli Parker (script department on Aussie TV series and former co-ordinator of European #scriptchat) to unpick successful romcoms to see if they can illuminate a path for writers working in this struggling genre. Cheap to produce and potentially highly lucrative, Chas and Alli look at RomCom’s conventions to see what it may take to reinvigorate this genre… →
Films:
When Harry Met Sally... (1989)
, (500) Days of Summer (2009)
, The Proposal (2009)
, Notting Hill (1999)
DZ-13: True That - Tips from Tarantino
What is it about Tarantino's *writing* that elevates his work?
AI✦The episode analyzes how Tarantino plants and executes payoffs across his scripts, using them as a structural device that rewards attentive viewing and rereading.✦
Listen to steal Tarantino's technique for planting details that detonate as payoffs three scenes later.
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Chapter 1: Of Milk and Men… →
Films:
True Romance (1993)
, Inglourious Basterds (2009)
, Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair (2011)
, Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)
, Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004)
DZ-11: Adventure for the MacGuffin!
Is the MacGuffin truly interchangable, and how does it impact on your character writing?
AI✦Comparing the originals to their sequels reveals how establishing the MacGuffin’s importance early--its setup--determines whether audiences care enough to sustain the adventure.✦
Listen to discover why the MacGuffin's emotional weight--not its function--determines whether your audience cares enough to follow the entire adventure.
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Stu and Chas are joined by a special guest - Scriptmag contributor Brad Johnson - to discuss how the choice of the MacGuffin can impact on the quality of an action/adventure film. To test this thesis, our heroes compare the auspicious originals of two iconic franchise with their, um, less-than-auspicious 4th instalments (in other words we compare RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK with KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL and THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL with ON STRANGER TIDES) as well as look at two recent & original entries into the genre, namely NATIONAL TREASURE and PRINCE OF PERSIA… →
Films:
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011)
, National Treasure (2004)
, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010)
DZ-6: Key Scenes and Unlocking the Story
Can one scene be the key to unlocking the whole story?
AI✦Key scenes function as massive setups that the rest of the story pays off, establishing the conflict, stakes, and character positions that everything else hinges on.✦
Listen if you want to understand how a single key scene between protagonist and antagonist can unlock the entire structure of your story!
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DZ-59: Avengers Endgame - Ending Character Journeys
Do you want your audience feeling with or for your characters?
AI✦The episode implicitly grapples with what setup demands payoff: if you establish a character’s wound or flaw early, what does the audience expect to see resolved by the end?✦
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… →
Films:
Avengers: Endgame (2019)