277 | Scriptnotes Hosts John August & Craig Mazin: The Craft Lessons That Matter Most

John August and Craig Mazin - hosts of the legendary Scriptnotes podcast - join us for a wide-ranging conversation inspired by their new book, Scriptnotes: A Book About Screenwriting and Things That Are Interesting to Screenwriters. 

We talk about why rigid structure can miss the point, how theme emerges from character, what fear and denial really look like on the page, and how writers can survive rejection without letting it define them. 

A candid, funny, and deeply reassuring conversation for writers at every stage.

A special thanks to Scriptnotes producer Drew Marquardt and editor Matthew Chilelli for their support with this episode.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Meg: Hey everyone. Welcome back to The Screenwriting Life. I'm Meg LeFauve.

Lorien: And I'm Lorien McKenna.

Meg: Today we have a truly special show. We are talking to John August and Craig Mazin, the duo behind the much loved Scriptnotes podcast, which has been running for 14 years.

Lorien: John August is a screenwriter whose credits include Aladdin, Big Fish, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Corpse Bride, Frankenweenie, and the first two Charlie's Angels movies.

Lorien: In addition to his work in film, John wrote the Arlo Finch middle grade novel trilogy and earned a BAFTA nomination for his script of the Broadway musical Big Fish through his company, Quote Unquote Apps. John makes utilities for writers, including Highland and Weekend Read along with a writer emergency pack, which is used in 2000 classrooms nationwide.

Lorien: He was also a member of the 2023 WGA negotiating committee.

Meg: Craig Mazin is a multiple Emmy award-winning co-creator, executive producer, writer, and director of such shows as the smash hit HBO series, The Last of Us, record breaking and critically acclaimed. Season one became the most watched debut of any series for HBO.

Meg: Previously, Craig served as creator, writer, and executive producer of the HBO limited series Chernobyl for which he won two Emmys, a Golden Globe, a BAFTA, a Peabody, and Awards from the Writer's Guild, the Producer's Guild, the Television Critics Association, and the American Film Institute. Currently Craig is executive producing the upcoming HBO eSports drama Damage alongside writer/director and executive producer Celine Song.

Lorien: And together John and Craig have released a brand new book, Scriptnotes: A Book about Screenwriting and Things that are Interesting to Screenwriters, which distills more than 700 episodes of podcast conversations, craft principles, and no bullshit wisdom. John August and Craig Mazin, welcome to the show.

John: Oh, we're so excited to be here. Thank you.

Meg: All right, so the first thing that you guys have agreed to do with us today is Adventures in Screenwriting, or how was your week? We'll let Lorien kick it off. Go ahead, Lorien.

Lorien: So my week, this week was actually really good. It started out really shitty. Mm-hmm. Because I've been so busy, right?

Lorien: What is it, Meg? The busyness is the -

Meg: - the highest form of laziness.

Lorien: Highest form of laziness. So busy, so stressed and. I have a project due on Monday, and so all those like self-doubt, fear, all those icky things came crashing in and I had the sort of panic moment of I have to burn it all down. So instead of that, I talked to my therapist and we made a big list of all the things I'm doing and I have to say no to a lot of things, which is good, and prioritize my time and energy so that I'm focusing on the right things.

Lorien: And so I did that. And feels, I feel more in control and more powerful in the right ways. And so I have a good plan for the end of this year and into the first quarter of next year. So it's been a good week. It sounds horrible, but cathartically speaking, it's a good week. Craig, how was your week?

Craig: Well, it, it wasn't that different from yours.

Craig: I mean, my guess is if our weeks are defined by the anxiety that we experience and then the panic that we have, and then the burn it all down, and then the wait, I'm a genius and then, wait, I'm an idiot. That's pretty much my week every week. I'm up here in Vancouver and we're prepping the third season of The Last of Us, so I spend my week.

Craig: With forced busyness. I don't want the busyness, but they force it on me. I try and have them divide my day. So, okay. Mornings are meetings, scouts, all of that stuff. And then afternoons are writing. The problem of course is sometimes I just don't want to, and also sometimes it just doesn't happen. And this has been this, the script that I'm in right now is, is a tricky one.

Craig: 'cause it's. It's kind of middle-ish, which is always hard, but there were some nice breakthroughs. You know, I've just been sitting with a lot of discomfort, as my wife says, and but I also had like a lovely moment this week while I was peeing. It's not about the peeing itself, but I was peeing and I had an idea.

Craig: It's so amazing how often this happens where I just need to remove myself from civilization, go into a bathroom or a shower, and then suddenly I, I have, and so I had an interesting idea that made me, that scared me and it, and I wanted something scary and I went, oh my God, that's scary.

Meg: Congratulations on the Pee Breakthrough.

Craig: Right?

Meg: All right, John, how was your week?

John: My week was really good, largely because I turned in something last Friday. And it's weird how, like, you know, 30 years into this career, you'd think I would get over the, the joy of turning in a thing. But it just feels so nice to have a script off your desk and for not to be consuming all the brain cycles, because especially that last week where you're trying to make all the last little pieces fit.

John: It was a rewrite, so like I, it wasn't the first time through, but there were a lot of. Notes I was trying to incorporate. I wanted this to really reflect both what I intended, but also what the filmmakers needed to do. And, I had, I had made a plan for turning it on Friday and I just, I hit it. And like Friday morning it was just, it was just done.

John: It was ready to go. Drew had proofed it, sent it through, and I still had that relief of having a thing off my, my, my plate. And so this week was really fun 'cause I could just do the other stuff that kept getting delayed and deferred because I was so busy working on that script. So the main thing I was writing this week is I have to prepare for a speech for, next month. And it was really a chance to think through like, what do I actually think about this thing? Like what, what am I trying to communicate? How am I writing for my own voice? So that was a fun thing to be be working on. And, you know, we'd, Craig and I had finished all the sort of the first round of promotion for the script notes book.

John: So it was just a chance to revel in people reading the book and enjoying the book. So it was, it was just a dream week. It was also nice to get all this stuff done. Before the holidays and have a sense of like, yeah, it's just not moving over me. I'm not expecting any notes until January. It was, it was a very good week for me.

Meg: Perfect. It's perfect. It's the perfect timing. And we can't wait to talk about the book. We both really but me.

John: Tell us about your week.

Meg: I will tell you about my week because it actually has a question for you guys. My week is a question, so we're just gonna dive in.

John: I love a question.

Meg: My week was I'm writing a script for a studio with my partner and I am doing the, my, you know, I'm in there doing the draft and I'm ready to send it back to my partner 'cause I think we're done.

Meg: I realized, well, wait, I should go check those notes they sent us. Meaning we had done verbal notes.

John: Yeah.

Meg: And then I, we had taken off on the verbal notes. We were, they were great notes. We were so inspired, we're cutting out characters, we're cutting out subplots. It was so fun and challenging. And then I read the notes and I was like, oh shit.

Meg: There's more stuff in here. And there's like. Some, there's like a big thing in here. That I did, not they, and by the way, they might have said it on the phone and I just didn't catch it, or in writing the notes it came out, or who knows. So no, no, nothing bad to the studio. I should have read the notes before taking off.

Meg: Right, because, and in the notes it says that the main relationship, they're just not really connecting to them as a couple.

Craig: That's a big note. 

Meg: And it's, it's, it's a big note. Yeah, it's a really big note, and I think a lot of the other notes are actually symptoms of this, right? Because now, well, that's a problem.

Meg: That's both, well, maybe they are problems because you're not emotionally connecting to the characters. And I, because I came from the Pixar School of thought, I'm like, I have to blow it all up. I have to blow up the whole thing. Because at Pixar, if you get a note like that, we're starting over just like, breathe outline, which, so I got very overwhelmed.

Meg: Called my writing partner overwhelmed him which was not the smartest thing to do because, you know, poor guy driving in the car. And I'm like, oh my God. So my question to you is. Short of blowing it up, let's, I'm not gonna blow it up because that's in a way easier to just go, well, fuck everything, let's just start over.

Meg: I dunno. Somehow to me that's easier because I can start blue skying again, and if I'm going, 

Lorien: It's the burndown philosophy. 

Meg: If I'm not gonna do well, and sometimes, a lot of times you do have to start over. So I'm, I'm totally in for it and up for it. If you guys get a note like that, that they're not connecting emotionally to a character, where do you guys go?

John: I go to the first from where we first meet them. I think so often that is a symptom of they did not meet the character in a way that they were ready to. Engage with them and to click with them and, and they were not, something was not setting their hooks of curiosity correctly as we were first meeting this character.

John: And that's why they're not seeing themselves in their situation. So I, I fully hear the, like, burn it down, start all over again. But that's definitely not my, my go-to reaction is that something in those first few scenes where we get to know this character are not inviting them into the story.

Craig: Well, I will sympathize with you.

Craig: I mean, the overwhelmed feeling is, is the worst. And it, and it doesn't help, but it's so natural. It just comes and you feel like you're drowning. It feels like, well, the work that I would need to do to make this good is impossible to do in the time I have. What do I do? Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.

Craig: But of course, it. You could come back from the future and hand you the script that is finished, that does fix everything. It would only take you a day or two to write it after you read it. Right. Like, I love that. If you know what to do, you have the time. Mm-hmm. So, in a situation like this, the first question I have is, this is about a central relationship.

Craig: Which of those characters is the quote unquote protagonist. One of them is I assume the protagonist. Why does that person need to meet the other person? So it just goes to the question, what is this movie about? What's the point of all this? And if I know what the movie's about and I know what the point is, and I know what the problem is with this main guy, and I know what this main character needs to be at the end, which presumably is different, why is this other person the perfect lead best person to send in. Why does God send this person?

Craig: And, and, and so it's, it's a reflection. In, in a way, it's what they needed to get. And if you think about it like that, then suddenly you don't have to wonder like, how do I make people care about this? You're just gonna care because you understand inherently this is, this person's poking right at the thing that this, our hero didn't want poked.

Meg: That's really interesting because I think what's happening is normally in the past I've written transformative characters that are like, have to meet the person that's going to poke them, help them change, help them change their view of life in themselves. These are characters who are more claiming their power, meaning think about Titanic, right?

Meg: They're not wrong, but they need each other in order to move. Right to the next place. In the next, their transformation is more a claiming of who they are, and Moana's a claiming character to me, right? That she's singing her song. She's right, her song is right. She needs to go. She's just full of doubt.

Meg: And her how is wrong, right?

Craig: So who does she need to meet?

Meg: Okay. You're right. Darn.

Craig: But this is my point, like, you know, Kate Winslet knows that she should be an independent woman who doesn't have to marry this guy except she's on a boat and she's gonna marry that guy. Who does she need to meet? And, and, and what's so delicious is that when she does meet Leonardo DiCaprio, she's starting, she's just giving him the arguments that her mother gave her.

Craig: “I don't like you, you don't live right. I shouldn't be with you. You're gross. Fuck off”. And. We know that she's just okay. You're literally afraid to do the thing. You're so afraid you'd rather die than actually stand on your own two feet, and here comes this rakish fellow, you know? Perfect. All handsome.

John: I, I don't want, I, I love this story class and, and discussion that we're having here, but I wanna get back to Meg, your initial comment, which is basically that you went back to these notes and realized like, oh, they have this thing here, which we didn't address in, in this.

John: But at the same time, you had a call with them where they, they, they're highlighting their main note wasn't about this relationship. Going back through those notes, you started, that moment of doubt was-

Meg: -Yes! Literally in the middle of a paragraph.

John: In the middle of the Paragraph! So here, so here's what I'm saying is that like, I, I just, I am skeptical that you beg, I, with all your experience, have actually done something so.

John: Disastrously bad in this relationship. And while it may be useful for you to think about, like, how do I do this thing better? I doubt that you've done a bad job. I doubt that it's actually a crisis. And because if there was a crisis, these people, their notes would've been about that, that would've been the, the giant red flashing lights there, right?

John: And it was not. And so I, I just, I want to both honor and acknowledge that yes, it's so great to be thinking about how are we maximizing this relationship and do we have the right people, but also you can. Rip apart things that are working beautifully in the, with the false goal of improving something.

John: Yeah…

Meg: All right, so you guys have to come on the show every week and talk to me about my writing. And number two, my poor writing partner basically said the same thing, and I yelled at him,

Craig: oh, I see

Meg: That's because in the overwhelm I was like, “you're not listening!” Like, like that kind of thing.

Craig: So, well, I get that because you, you, you have to balance what John is saying, which is a general healthy self regard. With the other concern, which is that you're just going, la la, la I don't want to hear this note, but you wouldn't be overwhelmed and have this feeling if you didn't think maybe they were onto something.

Craig: Like when they're, if, if I know that these characters are compelling in the way that I've created them for me, and someone's like, I'm just not compelled by them. Then I don't know what else to do because I know I did this right. But if someone says, these aren't compelling, and it's really, oh my God.

Craig: Oh my God. Oh my God, it's 'cause I think deep down, probably,

Meg: I think you're right.

Craig: Yep. So now overwhelm. You're gonna be, you're our Kate Winslow today. Meg LeFauve.

Meg: Oh my God,

Craig: You're overwhelmed. 

Lorien: So beautiful. 

Craig: Yes. And when you're yelling at your writing partner, that's you. Flinging yourself into the ocean.

Craig: And you're just gonna turn back to your writing partner and say, take my hand and carry me off, and let's do whatever the writing equivalent is of having sex in a car, in storage in the Titanic.

Lorien: And you could, and you can get on the, on the door.

Craig: Yes. And then you know what? We both fit on the door.

Lorien: We both fit on the door. There's plenty of room.

Craig: CLEARLY.

Lorien: We'll be right back. Welcome back to the show. 

Lorien: So, we've been doing this podcast for a while. Clearly not as long as you two have been doing script notes, but I have this experience. I think Meg does too. We learn something every time we talk to somebody, whether it's an epiphany about our writing or a process or just, oh, I hadn't thought of that, or, oh, I didn't know that.

Lorien: So when you sat down to write this book, what did it force you to face, like, to articulate that you never got the chance to do in the podcast specifically around like, what did you learn? Putting this book together, what surprised you?

John: So it was my idea, my team's idea to do it because our, our listeners had often said like, oh, we would love to have a book.

John: And so the theory was like, oh, we could just take the transcripts and print the transcripts and it would've been like larger than an entire library. There's just too much there. And so we had to distill it down. And so then it became an issue of like, okay, what are the topics? And then how do we go through the transcripts and pull everything we've talked about, you know?

John: Character introductions over the course of 700 episodes to see what kind of stuff was there. I think the one happy surprise is that we've been very consistent, like, you know, from episode 20 to episode No. 900 or 720. Oh God. We are very much the same. Our messages are the same. But distilling it down was so, so, so much harder than I thought I was going to be.

John: I was naive. And so we had Drew, Mark White, our producer Chris, who's one of our editors, Megan Rao. Lots of folks who've worked with us all throughout this process. Trying to pull and distill and to get it down to one consistent voice was just really hard to do. I'm really happy how we were able to get, get there, but it was just a long slog to do it.

John: Like any writing project, you sort of think like, oh, I know exactly what this is gonna like. You can sort of envision the final product. But getting there is just a much more of a journey and adventure than I was anticipating.

Craig: I learned nothing because I didn't do it. So here's what I did. I showed up.

Craig: I showed up and talked for 700 and some odd hours. Yeah. And then John and the script notes team did all the work to turn it into a book. What I really, you know, I've said this many times, like I spend most of my life being in charge. So I'm in charge of my show and I. I like it. I like being in charge.

Craig: I mean, it's hard. There are a lot of challenges. It's exhausting, but it's what I do. And then script notes. I am not. I love it. It's so awesome to not be in charge. Like, I don't know if you guys are like, is one of you in charge or both? Like do you both like share?

Meg: No, no. Share.

Craig: You share. I love that. And really the, the podcast was John's idea in the first place.

Craig: I've always been a guest on my own show. Like it's how, like John comes up with what we talk about. John figures out everything I, my job is to show up and be as spontaneously entertaining and as informative as I can possibly be. It's like John gets to summon me, like mm-hmm. Yeah. Like a wizard summons a familiar, I just pop into the world completely.

Craig: Like, what? Huh? What? What did we talk? Great. Boop boop. And then an hour later I go, poof.

Meg: That's amazing. Yeah. I love that. You know, it's funny, Lauren and I had this conversation after reading your book. We were like, you know, pretty much. We can just tell people, go read this book. You cover everything and it's all so good and also insightful.

Meg: But we all just gotta talk about a couple of the things in the book just to let everybody know, just get a taste of it. Mm-hmm. And all the great stuff inside. Obviously we're not even able to get in depth and even one topic because the book is so, in depth and great. You guys talk about, and I believe this was mainly Craig's chapter, but in terms of structure and that there are these people who are analysis people, and they create these things where this is what structure is.

Meg: You have to hit this, this, and this. Then how that is kind of bullshit. 'cause it's about creation and it's more of a spine or a skeleton inherent within the character.

John: Yeah.

Meg: And it's interesting because at first in listening to it, I was hoping it would be your voices and it's not. But the guy's very great.

John: Yeah.

John: His name is Graham. He's fantastic.

Meg: Graham is fantastic. He's now part of your ethos to me. You were talking about Craig, how at first you were kind of like structure's bullshit basically. And I, I, I love structure, so I was like, we're gonna have a fight on the podcast because I love structure.

Meg: Structure is everything to me. But then I realized we have a different way of saying the same thing. I say it as structure is the character's movement.

Craig: Exactly.

Meg: And you're watching a human being come to consciousness about something.

Craig: Exactly.

Meg: And you are saying, and I loved your word 'cause it helps me think of my own script in a different way.

Meg: It's a, it's a you, I wanna make sure I get the right words right. That to you, It's a central dramatic argument, a thesis that you're putting forward. And you use examples ”like men and women, can't be just friends. Better be dead than a slave. If you love someone, set them free.” That's so great to take to my work and be like, I think about words.

Meg: I think about redemption. I think about forgiveness. But that isn't fully a thesis yet. What do you have to say about forgiveness? Right? Correct. So my question to you, and I love this chapter, you break down Nemo. I've used Nemo too, which was fun. I was a little jealous. I was like, “wait a minute!” But it was, I thought, okay, mine melt.

Meg: How do you, and I'm asking both of you now. Yeah. How do you get to that argument? When you're writing drafts, how do you find and distill it down? Do you always not start before you have it? Do you find it as you go? So, you know, how do you, if even if you have a word, let's say forgiveness, or, you know, how do you distill it into that argument or that theme that will become the structure and the character movement?

Craig: I, I do caution people, I think even inside that. That bit to, to not necessarily feel like they have to start by writing down a bunch of fortune cookie things, and then what story should go on. We often start with an idea. So really the thing that gets you excited is the thing you should start with. You have an idea for a plot, you have an idea for a cool character in a place or time.

Craig: The next question I usually ask then is like, okay, if I have an idea for a movie, like just plot, then the next question is, who would be an interesting person to see inside of that? And then the next question would be, why did I think that that person would be an interesting person? And what is wrong with this person?

Craig: Something's wrong with them, otherwise they're fine and I don't wanna watch it. It's not drama. So what's wrong with them? And by asking what's wrong? You start to, you will get to a place of, okay, I understand. Like it's a cool idea. Like Shrek was a cool idea. The man who wrote the book, William Steig? Is that right?

Craig: He had a cool idea, but I think, you know, somebody like Ted Elliot comes along and he goes, all right, but the character like is someone who is so angry about losing his swamp. Why would anybody want the swamp in the first place? What is an ironic thing for an ogre to want? love! Right? And you very quickly will get to it is better to have loved and lost than not to have loved at all.

Craig: It just like, boom, right there. Right? But that's fine. But you'll get there through examination of what, what the fertile soil is around the plot that you're, you're playing with or around the characters that are emerging.

John: Going back to Craig's Finding Nemo chapter and sort of its overall framing of the question.

John: We talk about structure, but central dramatic argument is also a theme. There are all these words that we throw around a lot about in, in screenwriting, and I feel like the jargon of it all is some, a barrier for people to understand what's really at this, the heart of this, which is that, are you, do you have.

John: Interesting characters who are trying to do interesting things and are creating obstacles in their way that are compelling for the audience. I think a thing that Craig and I often feel frustration about with sort of dogmatic structure is that like, you're hitting these beats, but like what is the experience of the audience?

John: What is the audience feeling through this? How are, how is our relationship with that character changing? How are we putting ourselves in their shoes, seeing the choices they make and, and make and have it feel like they are really driving the story. So many, Quote unquote “well structured scripts” are terrible because they're just not compelling, they're not interesting, and scene by scene they're not working.

John: So many of these books talk about these sort of templates for things and neglect like, oh no, you actually have to have interesting scenes that do compelling things where there's, there's a structure within the scene where you have conflict within the scene. 

John: So we're in the book, we're just trying to tease out those things and make it clear that. As a writer, you're thinking about all this at the same time. You're both in the scene with the characters and sitting in a theater watching it on the big screen, and that's really the challenge of the, the craft that we've chosen is that you're kind of trying to do all this at once and not, and forget that you actually know what's going to happen next.

Lorien: Along those same lines in the book, you talk about abandoning want versus need, which I am a hundred percent for. I think it's so distracting for people 'cause they write characters who articulate their need in the like first 10 pages. They're super aware. We as the audience are aware and we're like, great, I know what's gonna happen.

Lorien: So it's not engaging. So again, it's that conversation of the different words we use for things. So I try to articulate that as what does the character learn? You know, What do they realize?l Meg talks about that belief system. How is their belief system shattered? So what are ways that you talk about it that is more clear to you when you're writing specifically?

Craig: Those all sound good. I mean, I just think about myself and you mentioned therapy earlier, so we don't go to therapy to announce the insights. Also insights themselves.

Lorien: Wouldn't that be great though, if we did? Here are all the things I know about myself.

Craig: Right? And so-

Lorien: -You pay me. You're welcome.

Craig:  Just say them back to me. And, and as my therapist and script notes associate therapist Dennis Lumbo says, insight is the booby prize of therapy anyway, because just because you realize something doesn't mean you're okay. In fact, that's usually the worst moment. The worst moment is when you realize. You've been wrong.

Craig: You realize the way it should be, and you have no idea how to get there. You can't go home. And you can't go forward and you're just lost in the phantom zone. And that is in fact what the low point is. It's just that in these structure books, they go and now a low point happens. Your character is sad. WHY?

Craig: So I do think quite a bit about just a simple, the simplest things. What is this character afraid of most? And how profound is their denial. And I want their denial to be profound enough that they are not aware of it. 'Cause that's how denial works. But I don't want it to be so profound that they cannot then be shown.

Craig: Mm-hmm. So it's this like, it's right under, but it's gotta be under. And that's as simple as that. What are they afraid of? What's their denial and. Why would I be invested as a third party in them? Having the insight and then finding the courage to move forward and become the new person.

John: And if you're making those choices, you know, honestly they should resonate with the audience.

John: The audience should be able to see themselves in this protagonist and like see, like even if they wouldn't make necessarily the same choices, they understand why the character's making those choices. They want that character to succeed. They’re right there with them. And so, that's, you know, classically what you're going for with those, the sort of the protagonist going through on a journey and, and having that transformation.

John: I think, I think we also really try to focus on it on the book is that it's not never about one character, it's always about a relationship. It's always about the relationship between two or more characters and really thinking about that relationship as its own entity and sort of where are we at with its relationship.

John: We probably have a POV perspective on that. You know, there's one character who's driving a little bit more, but we have to really be able to understand things from both character points of view. And again, that's a thing we didn't see in the books that we read growing up as we were starting off in this, this business.

Lorien: I love it. I like the, what are you afraid of? That's something Meg talks about Jodi Foster asking all the time, what is the main character afraid of? I think it's such a great, and then how much, how deep in denial are they? Because we have to be in denial with them.

Craig: Mm-hmm. Yes. Yes. And we have to make their denial understandable and even attractive.

Craig: I wanna know, like I'm rooting for Shrek in the beginning. I'm like, yeah, beat it. No one likes me. The world is designed to kill me. My parents sent me away when I was eight to be alone. And I like being alone. He's so happy in the beginning of the movie, but it's not really happy. It's just content.

Meg: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I talk about this. You guys have a great whole chapter on point of view.

Craig: Mm-hmm.

Meg: And my take, which is great and enlightening, and my take on it is also, emotional point of view, which you're talking about like. Emotionally, I have to agree with the denial.

Craig: Yes!

Meg: Whose emotional point of view am I in the scene?

Meg: And sometimes when I help proof their scripts, I'm like, just go through your script and see whose emotional point of view are we in, in each scene. 'Cause it's flopping all over the place. I'm so, and I'm never landing.

Craig: It's what you just said should be chiseled onto some wall at the DGA.

Craig: Because where I find non-writing directors struggle sometimes is very specifically with that. Whose scene is the, Who has the emotional perspective in the scene? It's such an important concept. And the emotional perspective is typically defined to me as the person with whom at the end of the scene, I go, you, you, you ran this.

Craig: You were in charge of this. You saw it, you get it, you learned, you changed, you influenced, you did something, but it's gotta be someone's. Yeah, I, I'm, I love that. Thank you for saying that.

John: It's always a challenge when you have parallel plot lines. You may have, you know, a battalion square may have a secondary character who can drive their own scenes.

John: They clearly have storytelling power in the movie or in, in the series. But then you put those two characters together in a scene, and it's not. Obvious to the, to the audience who is driving the scene, who's in charge here? Who's, who are we supposed to follow? But you, as the writer, you have to make that choice because they can't both be driving the car.

John: And that's a, a fundamental thing to do, I'll go back to Harry Met Sally. And so like the movie is largely Billy Crystal's movie and he is driving those scenes when he, he's in them together, but they're wrestling for control of the wheel. And that's some of the fun.

Lorien: So we get asked a lot. Which project do you focus on?

Lorien: How do you know? And it's, you know, well, who's paying me? What are the deadlines? 

Craig: Yeah. Who's paying me? That's a good one. Right?

Lorien: But other than that, let's say you're, you know, an emerging writer or you have multiple things going on, what do you say no to, I guess is the bigger question? So you talk about this in your chapter on endings.

Lorien: You know, which you say what, which one has the best ending?

John: Yeah. That's my default go-to answer is like, which is write the thing with the best ending.

Lorien: This is great. You know, in a feature, your ending has to be right, inevitable, surprising, satisfying. In a TV show. You need to have an ending for each episode.

Craig: You get to have an ending for each episode.

Lorien: You get to have an episode, where it’s ending. 

Craig: It's a gift.

John: It's so nice. 

Craig: It's a gift. 

John: You also get a, you also get to have a, a new start, so, which is so great. Ah, and back when they had commercials, you had act breaks, which is also exciting. So yeah,

Lorien: you get to have an ending at the end of the season and the series.

Lorien: So what advice would you have for someone who's writing a spec pilot?

John: Mm-hmm.

Lorien: And they need to have that ending of it that like, makes the person desperately want to read the next episode. Yeah,

Craig: yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, for starters for television, you have to ask an important question. It's not the, the movie question is, who would I like to sleep with for a month or two?

Craig: The television question is, who would I like to move in with? Yeah. I want to live here for a long time. I want, I want to be in this world and tell these stories with these people for a long time. This will be good. I, in fact, I have too many ideas about what happens next. My problem is how do I break these down into a manageable amount of episodes and.

Craig: Definitely your, there's a big idea at the heart of it that makes you go, okay, yeah, I need to see this now. I get at the end of this first episode, I understand the audience understands why I want to be here. I've transmitted to them the moment that made me go, Ooh, ooh, this, I gotta do this as a TV show.

Craig: So transmitting that passion theoretically should work.

John: Yeah, I, I, my next project is probably gonna be a streaming series, and so I've written the pilot and we had, we took it out, we had all the meetings, and what was so great about the meetings when I. When they'd actually already read the pilot is they could ask me questions and I could pitch them like detailed things about like, okay, and this happens next and this happens next, and this is a typical thing, but this in episode six, this is how, how we're flipping it.

John: And I was, I wasn't faking any of that. I was, I'm genuinely passionate about doing it. And so if you're looking at writing your own spec pilot for something, you should have that sense of enthusiasm and excitement and that will carry through back into the pilot you're writing. 'Cause they'll, you'll see like you, you're setting up these things where like that's gonna be so exciting to pay off.

John: I've read a lot of spec pilots, which is like, oh, I can see that. Like you delivered the premise of that. But I just don't feel like there's another episode there. And so while the writing on this on the page was good, I'm not that necessarily excited about that writer 'cause I don't feel like they have that.

John: That hunger, that zeal for continuing, actually making this as a show.

Meg: Yeah. So many times, tv, the spec TV pilots, they don't have an engine to the show.

John: Mm-hmm. No.

Meg: Do you guys have any insight into TV engines? I'm a feature writer, so I can talk about feature engines till the cows come home, but when people ask me about tv, I'm like, I, what is a TV engine for you guys?

Craig: I don't know, because I don't write that kinda show. I've, I've only written shows that had endings planned. So the last one is just, it's just a very long single story cycle that has cyclets inside of it.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Each episode is a cyclet. The season is a cyclet. The series is a cyclets, but what I don't, I actually don't know how to write.

Craig: A show that like a procedural that is meant to go on forever or even an adventure show that's meant to go on forever. I mean, I understand it. Like if you put a gun in my head, I could do it. I just, I'm not sure that that's where my smarts are particularly leveled up.

John: I would go for making sure that each of the characters that you're establishing as your, your-

John: -Series returning regular characters that there's interesting things that we want to see paid off that can't be possibly paid off in the course of an episode, so that over the course of a season or the course of multiple seasons, we're gonna get a chance to see them grow and change and, and get somewhere closer to where they're going to be going.

John: The challenge, of course, is then that the reason why. Have to have big brains and or writing staff to help you do it is finding ways that what each of those characters is going for, what they're trying to pay off, what their sort of the stuff that's driving them, can resonate with multiple characters in the course of an episode and like that, that there's really, that they're in conversation with each other.

John: That each of these plot lines really do have a reason to be intertwined in ways that are meaningful. So it could be thematically, it could be the conflict that's gonna come between them, but that's the, the hard work. And if you go back and look at your favorite TV shows, the ones that sort of keep coming back.

John: They have that in their DNA, they, they, you know, from the pilot forward, you could see that, oh, they set up characters who could just generate a lot of story, and that's crucial.

Lorien: So, Craig, when you said movies are, who do I wanna sleep with for the next two months, you said, and then a TV show is who do I wanna live with?

Lorien: And I thought, how dare you? That's not true. And then I quickly flipped through everything I've recently watched to check to see if that was real, and I was like, oh no, it's mostly true. So-

Craig: I'm mostly true. That's kind of my thing. 

Lorien: You're mostly, mostly true. 

Craig: Yeah, I'm trueish?

Lorien: It's a, it's a great generalization though, to check. ‘Cause we also get asked, how do I know if my idea is a feature or a TV show?

Craig: Well, yeah.

Lorien: And so it's a little bit of, do I wanna hang out with this person for a really long time? Yeah. And be all up in their business or do I wanna like watch, or do I wanna be with them for this hot moment intense experience and then say goodbye.

Craig: And we have met people that we can think to ourselves. This would be a great hot moment, but oh my God, I would not wanna live with you. And that you have to ask when you think, like, is it a movie or a show? Like how much is really here? Is this an explosion or is this dominoes that keep going? And that's what you kind of just have to have a sense for.

Craig: I mean, God's honest truth. The reason that so many screenwriting books are bad is because they're, they just don't acknowledge. Something brutally fundamental to what we do, and that is talent. Just like taste, talent, instinct. There are things that you learn over time that John and I have learned over time that you guys have learned over time and you share with people and we share with people, but we don't get to that if there isn't the stuff that you cannot teach.

Craig: There's a lot you can't teach like the screenwriting education, our book. It's ultimately for people who we will find out later had what they needed to have at the start. Maybe this helps them get where they were gonna go a little faster, I think is nice. But these questions, movie? television show? I mean, we've all sat in rooms and watched executives debate with each other about what, because they don't know!

Craig: And it comes down to us, gulp.

Lorien: We will be right back. Welcome back to the show.

Meg: So I also love the chapters in the book where you're taking quotes from your guests. Mm-hmm. And it's really fun to see them. So, kind of distilled down and great insights from all the guests. One insight that I wanted to ask you guys, David Kepp and Eric Roth both talk about getting fired.

Craig: Yeah. Yeah.

Meg: You know, these, these two like penultimate writers.

John:  Yeah, icons. 

Meg: And you couldn't, the icons of screenwriters talk about yeah, getting fired sucks. And how, you know, Eric Roth talks about how much it hurt. So, to me, that's also talking about our, as writers and artists, our cons, you know, failure, which, you know, we want our characters to fail so they can transform, and yet when we fail we're like, (Dramatic Gasp) what's happening?

Craig: Exactly. 

Meg: What is your kind of, your experience take on it can not, it doesn't have to be being fired 'cause maybe you've never been fired.

John: Oh good lord, we both have fired a lot.

Meg: Or maybe failure. Or-

Craig:  -I dunno about a lot, a lot's a strong phrase, but we've certainly, we've experienced, you can't work in this business and not.

Craig: There's like the hard firing and the soft firing. Yeah. You know,

John: mostly they've been soft firing.

Craig: mostly the soft firing.

John: So most, mostly it's like we're, we're not proceeding with the thing.

Craig: Yeah.

Meg: Or they just never respond to notes. They just, like literally, you, you hear from someone else, oh, we've moved

Craig: up, you do the drafts that you were hired to do, and then they don't really need more, and you go do something else and then you hear that somebody else is running-

Meg: -So how do you process that? What is your process? Do you immediately start something else? Do you rage? Because again, it's approach to failure and kind of what our characters do too. Yeah. So how do you guys approach it?

John: Maybe before I, I sort of talk about. Healthy approaches, we should describe sort of like unhealthy approaches, the things we've seen other writers do, which is just sure not serving them or serving anyone well.

John: We’ve seen writers who fixate too much on one project to the exclusion of all others. And like their entire identity becomes about this thing, that it's the next thing they're gonna make and it's gonna happen. Or they got screwed over by this producer on this thing and, and that's all they could talk about for years.

John: And they don't write other things. And that is. So frustrating and debilitating when you see talented people who are getting in their own way by fixating too much on one thing. I think you have to passionately love the thing you're writing, believe in it so deeply, and then also acknowledge at some point it could just vanish and go away, and it doesn't diminish your experience and your love of it, but that you have so little control over it.

John: Ultimately, you know, when I've written books books exist out in the world and they're on a shelf and I'm done, and they're, they're there. As screenwriters, we're just writing this plan, this vision for a movie or a series that could be, and sometimes it's not, and it sucks, and you can grieve that, but you, if you fixate on it, if you let that be your defining quality, you're gonna be one of those.

John: You're gonna be at the start of your, you know, tragic, beginning of your, you're gonna be, you're gonna protagonate on that. And that's not a, a good place to be, be beginning.

Craig: It's harder when you start your career because you have fewer experiences. Yeah, if you, you know, get up to bat and it's your first at bat as a major league baseball player and you strike out currently, you are on course to strike out every single time and be the worst player in history.

Craig: And you have to have a short memory, feel your feelings. But the most important thing is to not let it define you. And to also remember, thank you Dennis Palumbo, that feelings are real, but they don't mean anything. They have no logical significance, and they are terrible predictors of the future.

Craig: 'cause what we tend to do is say, I got fired. I will be fired. I am the fired person. Now everybody looks at me as no good. I'm no good. The End! And that's in fact not what's happening. There's this wonderful study that I'm like obsessed with that these guys, we've talked about this before on the show, Kahneman and Tversky were these two psychologists who studied human irrationality and they were hired to look at the performance of people in the military, like in the Air Force and-

Craig: -They were hard to basically help evaluate and, and teach the people teaching these people how to teach them better. And so they asked, well, what's something that you guys know? And they said, well, we know that when somebody goes out on a, on a run, like a practice run, and they do really well, they come back, we praise them the next time they don't do so well.

Craig: And when they go out and they fail and they come back and we yell at them the next time, they do much better. So it seems to us. Praising people is, makes them worse and punishing them, makes them better, which is a perfectly human conclusion to draw, except the reality is it's just regression to the mean.

John: totally.

Craig: Generally speaking, when you do really well, you're doing better than you normally do, and when you don't do very well, you're doing worse than you normally do. So what happens when you get fired is, I, they could be wrong. Right, which has happened to me before where I've watched it and I'm like, ah,

John: ah, yeah.

Craig: Alright. But let's say you just, you didn't, you didn't do as well as you normally do. That means. You'll do better, because normally you do normal, and that's the kind of perspective the time gives you because you can't see it unless you get fired a bunch and you succeed a bunch. There are wins that I've had that I didn't really deserve.

Craig: Mm-hmm. There are failures I had that I didn't really deserve. There's all sorts of weird things, you know, that occur, but eventually you can get to a place where at least you go. Okay. If you don't wanna continue with me, that's for the best.

John: Yeah,

Craig: it's good. It means you, you hired the wrong guy for what you want.

Craig: It's, you know.

John: Yeah.

Meg: I love that it's not a definition of you and your worth and your value or who you're forever. So I, I, I think that's great and, and a great example of belief systems and your characters and how we see things that are just not really, you might have to wake up through experience to that.

Meg: All right. So we could talk for hours and hours with you guys. It's such a privilege. But. Craig and John, you have shows to go and features to write. So, we're gonna go to our, we always ask our guests the, the same three questions at the end of the show, so, go ahead Lauren.

Lorien: So Craig, what brings you the most joy when it comes to your writing?

Craig: When something just sings, I don't know how else to describe it. When there's just a beautiful harmony and I know it's right when things you just, you just know when it clicks. You're like, that is correct. It doesn't matter if anybody in the world told me this isn't correct, they would be wrong. This is correct.

Craig: It's not. I'm not, I, there's no defense or argument here. It's just humming in my bones. It's humming the right tune. It is in harmony. That's the, that's the most joy.

Lorien: I look forward to that happening quite soon for myself.

Meg: Craig, what pisses you off about writing?

Craig: How disconnected effort is to result.

Craig: It's, it is remarkable. There are times where it just, boop, there it is done. Ha ha. And there are, there's, I've gone two weeks grinding myself over one scene. Because it's just wrong and it's, and makes me crazy. And then eventually there's a moment where I go, oh, it's 'cause it's 'cause that's not the right scene or because of whatever.

Craig: But there is it. It is so frustrating to not be able to say, well, if I just work harder, if I'm building a house and I just sleep less and work more, I theoretically the house will get built faster. It just doesn't work that way in writing. It's frustrating. Pisses me off.

Lorien: What's your proudest career moment to date?

Craig: Probably. Somewhere around the second or third week of Chernobyl airing where it became clear that people were watching it. I didn't think anybody was gonna watch it. And when that happened and the response was what it was, I just felt great because it was legitimately after. I mean, I don't, I'd been working at that point for like 25 years.

Craig: It was legitimately the first thing I had ever done. I just, I wasn't fulfilling anyone else's request. I thought of a thing, I did a thing, I did it entirely on my own terms and I was in charge of it. That was my proudest moment. Gonna be hard to top that one. I don't think I'm gonna top that one. That's a pretty good one.

Meg: Yes you are.

Craig: Yeah. I'm still sad and anxious all the time. Don't you worry.

Meg: All right, John, what brings you the most joy

John: related to Craig's, You know, there's, he's talking about how, you know, everything in the scene kind of clicks. For me. It's when a character surprises me. When the character does something that I wasn't anticipating doing.

John: They say a line like it, it suddenly, they just are able to do a thing that I. While I was not conscious that they could do that, that they were at a certain point, they just become alive and they're just doing their own things. And those moments where you feel like you are just a documentarian, filming them doing their life, those are the moments that bring me real joy.

John: That's, and those are generally moments where I've, I've passed into flow where it just becomes easy. That's, that's the joy and that's the high you're often chasing. And one of the things I just try to remind writers is that just because you're not in flow doesn't mean you're in a, that you're doomed, that you're, you're bad. Flow often won't happen, and yet no one will know that you wrote that scene while you were in this magical, mystical state versus you were just grinding through it.

Lorien: Alright, so what pisses you off about writing?

John: Probably what pisses me off about writing is that there is fundamentally this impossible task we're given that we are trying to create the experience of watching a movie just with the words on the page. And that all the artistry we can do, all the craft, all the little tricks we can do to sort of create the visuals and the sound experience, just the, the feeling of being in that world.

John: It is fundamentally limited and that it's gonna have to be interpreted through actors and directors and everybody else. And it's never gonna be quite the movie that I see in my head. And you have to learn to live with that and accept that, like it's never gonna be quite, it's, there's no direct brain connection where people can quite see the movie that's in my head.

John: And what's helpful is when you remember that you are the only person who's ever seen the movie. You, you can have a little bit more patience with people who are still getting up to speed on the process, the directors who are asking 20,000 questions because they just cannot see the same movie that you're seeing.

Meg: Okay. Last question is, what is your proudest moment in your writing?

John: Weirdly, it wasn't a public moment, but I would say when we did the Big Fish musical, so I wrote the movie Big Fish and did the Broadway musical of Big Fish. And along the way you do these readings and workshops where you're sort of getting it up to speed.

John: And what's so great about them is like, they're so private, there's maybe 20 people in the audience for some of these things. Just sitting in chairs and there's, you don't have props in costumes. People are at music stands and yet I can see like, oh my God, Andrew Lippa and I made this thing that was just beautiful.

John: And like everyone's crying in this room. And it was just great to see that you can create these really amazing emotional experiences. With kind of nothing, with just words and songs and and that's been sort of my, there've been many moments along the, the way in the Big Fish musical. But like those small, intimate moments were some of my favorite and proudest moments.

Meg: John and Craig, thank you so much for coming on our show.

John: An absolute pleasure.

Craig: It was great. It was great to be here. Thank you guys.

Meg: Thanks so much to John and Craig for joining us today. Their new book Scriptnotes: A Book about Screenwriting and Things that are Interesting to Screenwriters is out now, and we'll link it to the episode description.

Lorien: For more support, find us on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, and head over to thescreenwritinglife.com to learn more about our workshop program, TSL Workshops. We have a growing library of prerecorded workshops that cover craft related topics from character want to outlining a feature. We also host two live Zooms a month where you could chat with me and Meg about projects you're working on right now. 

Meg: We're running a special holiday promo. Just head to the tslworkshops.circle.so, and use the code HOLIDAY25 to get 50% off your first month. The link and promo code are also in the episode description. If you have any questions, you can always reach out to thescreenwritinglife@gmail.com.

Lorien: Thank you for listening and remember, you are not alone and keep writing.