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Catharsis

Every episode covering Catharsis.

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DZ-4: Catharsis and the Post-Coital Cigarette

How does the end of certain films make your soul shudder?
AI✦Stu and Chas examine how Aristotle’s theory of catharsis--that soul-shuddering emotional release--can be engineered through a fixed sequence of beats in your final pages.✦
⏱ 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… →

KEY IDEAS

Catharsis

"That is the process of catharsis, which is more often associated with tragedy than with comedy. It's that in its very most basic form, you attach the audience to the characters. You invest the audience in the process of the character. So the crisis of the character becomes a proxy for the crises of the audience. And then the resolution of that crisis is cathartic for the audience because they have attached to the character. And so in that way, I think of the structure of Nanette as being this process of she couldn't tell that story at the front of the show. She has to give you all of this context and build-up so that when she reveals the second half of this story, you know who she is."

— Alice Fraser (01:01:11) · DZ-83: A Very Thematic Stand-up Special!

Even More

DZ-30: Oscars revisited - Spotlight and Carol

What makes a script so compelling that it ends up with an Oscar nod?
AI✦Stu and Chas examine how Oscar-nominated screenplays like Spotlight and Carol engineer catharsis as a cornerstone of their emotional power and audience impact.✦
⏱ 1h 43m
28 FEB 2016
Listen to learn how catharsis, world-building, mid-points, and status transactions elevate great writing
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In this episode Stu and Chas return to their first ever episode by tackling two Oscar-nominated screenplays. But this time - instead of exploring the rigid structures laid down by gurus - they use it as an opportunity to explore what they’ve learned in the last three years and apply them to the phenomenal writing in SPOTLIGHT and CAROL (with slight digression towards THE EXPANSE and GAME OF THRONES (which has possibly replaced Star Wars as the de facto reference point for anything.)… →

DZ-0: Welcome to Draft Zero

What, exactly, is Draft Zero?
AI✦Chas names ‘how to induce catharsis’ as a signature example of the micro topics--not larger structural elements--that the podcast focuses on.✦
⏱ 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… →