John and Craig look at the nature of fluke hits, everything from #alexfromtarget to huge spec sales. Is luck just luck, or is it about how often you play the game? Where does talent fit in?
We walk through a great breakdown of twist endings by Alec Worley, looking at how expectation both inside and outside of the story shapes the experience.
Then we answer a bunch of listener questions, on topics including using real-life locations, breaking up dialogue, and passing gracefully when you don’t like a project.
The Scriptnotes Holiday show is December 11th in Hollywood, featuring guests Aline Brosh McKenna, B.J. Novak, Jane Espenson and Derek Haas. Check the link below for tickets.
Links:
- Tickets to the Scriptnotes Holiday show are on sale tomorrow at the Writers Guild Foundation website
- Big Fish: The Musical is now playing at Musical Theatre West in Long Beach
- Writer Emergency Pack is going strong on Kickstarter
- The Five Types of Twist Endings by Alec Worley
- Alex from Target
- Darius Kazemi’s XOXO talk
- Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter
- Screenwriting.io on intermediary slugs
- Tim and Susan Have Matching Handguns by Joe Callander
- Too Many Cooks by Casper Kelly, and his interview in Entertainment Weekly
- Get premium Scriptnotes access at scriptnotes.net and hear our 1,000th subscriber special
- Outro by Scriptnotes editor Matthew Chilelli (send us yours!)
You can download the episode here: AAC | mp3.
UPDATE 11-17-14: The transcript of this episode can be found here.