Scriptnotes, Episode 662: 20 Questions (2024 Edition), Transcript

The original post for this episode can be found here.

John August: Hey, this is John. Today’s episode has even more swearing than usual. If you’re in a car with your kids, this is a standard warning about that.

John: Hello, and welcome. My name is John August.

Craig Mazin: Oh, my God. My name is Craig Mazin.

John: You’re listening to episode 662 of Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the show, we will strive to answer 20 different listener questions on everything from AI to page count, manager notes to emotional investment.

Craig: Get the cocaine out. We’re going to have to get some cocaine in us, John.

John: I don’t think cocaine will really solve the issues here. The issue is that we have far too many listener questions. Every week, Drew gets a whole bunch of questions from listeners, they pile up in his mailbox. Sometimes we get a chance to answer them on the show. A lot of times we don’t. Drew, how many listener emails do you get on a weekly basis?

Drew Marquardt: I probably get 5 to 10 questions a day.

Craig: Whoa. We got to get more. Do you not even know that we don’t do cocaine? I just said we have to get cocaine in us. That’s not what cocainers say. Also, they don’t call themselves cocainers.

John: No, you’re making it up new words.

Craig: I’m clearly not a cocainer.

John: Yes, not one.

Craig: We got to go crazy here.

John: We got to go crazy. We’ve done this before, but we’ve never, I think, actually done it together. There was an episode back in 2022 where I did one with Megana, where I went through 20 questions, then you did one with Megana and went through 20 questions. Yours went on for like three hours.

Craig: Because we love each other.

John: Aw. We’ll do this together. We’re going to crank through here. Then there are bonus segment for premium members. You and I are going to talk through the new D&D Player’s Handbook. That’s why I have a whole stack of the old Player’s Handbooks here-

Craig: Oh, my goodness. I’m looking at them. Glorious.

John: -to compare and contrast, go back to the origins and updates to this fundamental text.

Craig: Foundational, really.

John: Yes. D&D Player’s goes back all the way to 1978. We’ll look at what’s changed, what not changed.

Craig: Gygax.

John: Just the value of a Player’s Handbook. I think back to how crucial of a document it was.

Craig: Yes, and how complicated and not child-friendly it was. Hard to learn.

John: Oh, for sure.

Craig: It wasn’t really designed by a teacher.

John: Yes, but in some ways, it feels like religious text. They’re not designed to be easy to follow. It’s complicated. You can spend your whole life studying them.

Craig: What we have now, and we’ll talk about this in the bonus segment, is the Bibles that they rewrite in American English, which are really weird because all the magic is gone, all the heavy-laden ye and thou is gone.

John: The esoterica is reduced greatly. They’re much more approachable.

Craig: It says things like, Noah said, “Whoa.”

John: Noah did say, “Whoa.”

Craig: Which is almost all the letters of his name.
John: Let’s get into our questions because we have so many. Drew, start us off.

Drew: Undisclosed semi-finalist writes, I just found out that I’m a semi-finalist for the Austin Film Festival. If I were to attend, do you have any advice on how I can capitalize on this opportunity without annoying the professionals?

John: You say you’re a semi-finalist. You entered into the screenwriting competition for Austin Film Festival, and a bunch of readers read your script and you made up to semi-finalists. Semi-finalist will get you nothing in the real world, but it gives you an excuse to go to Austin Film Festival. Let’s talk about what you might do there. We’re going to be there next week, Craig.

Craig: We are going to be there. I think you’re probably on the right track here, without annoying the professionals. Yes, don’t annoy the professionals. They can’t do anything for you. Even finalists are at risk of annoying the professionals only because, again, we can’t do anything for you. What Austin is for is for you guys to do things for each other. You meet other people, you meet other writers, you have good conversations, you learn about how they’re approaching things, and who knows, you might even find somebody that’s interested in working on something with you.

You might also bump into– When we say professionals, we mean the writers. We can’t do anything for you. There are managers there, there are producers there, those are the people who, in theory, you might chat up at a bar and see if they’re vaguely interested in what you have to do.

John: You are there with a semifinalist script. Hopefully, you are going to be able to talk about that thing. Be ready for the two-sentence description of your script, the one-minute longer description of it. Be ready to talk about other things. Be ready to send your script to somebody who might be curious to read it, like a manager, or a producer, but mostly go to Austin to mingle with people, to go to a bunch of panels. Go to the panels that you’re interested in, and look at it as that opportunity because it’s not going to be the moment that changes everything in your life.

Craig: There’s no opportunity to walk in there, find somebody, go, “I’m a semifinalist,” and they go, “Great. Here’s $1 million.” That’s not what’s happening. By the way, just to be clear for people, because John and I are going to Austin, it’s next week, or if you’re listening to the podcast, this week. Approach us all the time. There’s no problem. We love saying hello. If you want pictures and all that stuff, we love doing that, but we just can’t help you with your career. Not directly. Only indirectly through our words.

John: That’s the goal. Question two.

Drew: An honor to be nominated, writes, I work as a coordinator on a show that recently won an Emmy. I’m very proud of the accomplishment for the showrunners, the team, and any small part my role may have contributed to this win. My wife has been telling people that I won an Emmy. I did not. I am quick to clarify that my show won, not that I personally earned the award.”

I’m sure to list on my résumé that the production was Emmy-winning, and I certainly hope to one day have my name on a statuette. I’m unsure how to navigate the conversations around this. Should I gracefully accept the well wishes and compliments, or should I continue to clarify with the, “Thank you, but not really dance?” I’d love to hear your thoughts on how to handle this, both personally and professionally.

John: Now, we are actually going to throw this to you, Drew, because you have this lived experience.

Craig: Oh, I thought you were going to say, “Because this is your question.” “Your wife keeps telling people.”

John: Unlike me or Craig, you we went through this.

Drew: I’ve gone through this. I worked on a show that won an Emmy. I’ve worked below the line for a long time. When your show you worked on wins an Emmy, you get an honorary certificate that recognizes your contribution to the show, it’s got your name on it, it’s got gold leaf, it’s really nice.

My family also likes to pretend that I won an Emmy, even though I didn’t. My strategy tends to be to just bore people with the details of exactly what I just said.

John: And then maybe they’ll stop saying that forward.

Drew: They just nod and they’re like, “Oh, okay,” and then it honors your loved one’s excitement for you without undermining it, but still.

Craig: In this case, I think it would be fair, Mr. or Mrs. to say to your wife, “Stop it.” That’s the short answer. Tell your wife, “Stop it. It’s embarrassing because I didn’t win.” Now I have to explain it every time I’m never going to be the person that just goes, “That’s right. I won an Emmy.” Anybody that starts probing with questions, if I don’t say any of this, is going to go, “Oh, you’re a tool.” You didn’t win an Emmy, so just tell your wife to cut it out. Tell your wife the show won it. You worked on a show that won an Emmy.

John: In the show notes, we’ll put a link to this photograph of Drew’s certificate here, which is fantastic. The 2015-2016 Primetime Emmy Awards, honor Drew Marquardt operation assistant for contribution to an Emmy-winning program, Outstanding Short Form Animated Program.

Craig: Wait. Everybody on Chernobyl got a certificate? No one even told me. Ah.

John: Ah

Craig: Ah.

John: Ah. I think what’s impressive, Drew, is that you keep this with you all the time. You carry this with you all the time.

Drew: Oh, yeah. It’s in my wallet.

John: Yes, it’s nice.

Craig: So you won an Emmy?

Drew: I won an Emmy.

John: Congratulations, Drew.

Drew: Thank you so much.

John: All right. Questions three and four are related. Let’s start with question three.

Drew: Andrew writes, suppose an artificially intelligent machine, like Data from Star Trek or some other AI emerged in the real world and decided to become a writer. Would it get into the WGA? Does the WGA have a policy regarding what happens if or when a non-human entity such as that becomes real, and should it? At what point should a policy about that exist?

John: Data from Star Trek is a fantastic character. In every way, Data is an independent, conscious-living being, and so therefore, would be, in a world in which data existed, Data could join the WGA. I feel that it’s entirely defensible.

Craig: You’d have to change things though, because currently, as I believe-

John: A writer is a human being.

Craig: -AI– writer is a human being, and any material generated by AI is not considered literary material under the NBA. We would have to say, “Unless you’re awesome.”

John: Indeed.

Craig: Currently, no, is the answer Andrew.

John: Currently, no. So at some point, is it conceivable and likely, probably in our lifetime that there will be beings that we would consider conscious who are not organic? I guess. At that time, we’ll have to adjust everything about society. The tiniest thing we’ll have to address is what we’re doing about the WGA.

Craig: Although I’m not sure that those beings will require things like money, but maybe they will.

John: Maybe they will.

Craig: Currently, Andrew, we do have a policy in place. It is a result of our last contract, which we earned through canny negotiation followed by long strike, followed by some more canny negotiation. At least for now, sorry, Data.

John: A related question from Alexander.

Drew: Alexander writes, there was recently this New Yorker article by Ted Chiang. It brings up this idea of a very intricate and elaborate AI setup, where the human can give it, let’s say, 1,000 inputs to prompt and fine-tune a story idea. At this point, isn’t the human still a writer?”

John: Ted Chiang’s article got a lot of traction. This was a month or two ago. It makes some really good points. It also falls into some traps that I think people need to be aware of.

When you say that generative AI is just auto complete, it’s reductionist in a way that is not helpful. Chiang does that a bit. But on the whole, I thought he mentioned some really good points in his essay about why, and we’ve talked about this recently, last episode we talked about the difficulty of doing what we do, and that it’s 1,000 choices per word, per sentence, per project. The art is the struggle. Without that effort, without that work, you’re not making art in the same way.

Craig: I think what he is describing is an artificially intelligent producer. That’s what producers do just at a much slower level. They’re not going to give a writer a thousand inputs. They’re going to give a writer 10 inputs, and then the writer will write something, and then they will give that writer more input. That’s what producers do or development executives. No, you could do that a billion times. No, the human is not a writer. The human now, well I guess in that case the human would qualify perhaps as a producer.

John: It’s entirely possible. You’re giving us a detailed prompt that it’s elaborating on so clearly on when things are that some story credit would actually be like if you were to divvy up, like had this lit of things, at a certain point, you’re writing enough stuff that it becomes clearly that there is literary material in it.

Craig: You would have to write it down and you would have to catalog all of it. At that point, you should just write the script.

John: You probably should. It’s worth people to read Ted Chang’s article because I think it makes some nice points. There was two of the things I pulled out of here is that, “any writing that deserves your attention as a reader is the result of an effort expended by the person who wrote it,” which feels very true to me, and that, “many novelists have had the experience of being approached by somebody, convinced they have a great idea for a novel in which they are willing to exchange for 50/50 split of the proceeds. Such a person inadvertently reveals that they think the formulating of sentences is a nuisance rather than a fundamental part of storytelling.”

Craig: You and I have gotten this. So many people are just like, “I have this amazing idea. I just need somebody to write it.” You have nothing. You don’t even have property. Go ahead tell me your idea. Now it’s my idea because it doesn’t matter because you can’t own an idea. F off.

John: Yeah. Stuff. The last thing I’ll say about this discussion that Chang brings up and just obviously people are thinking about when it comes to AI, is when AI is ingesting a bunch of material and being trained on that, is that more like a human being reading stuff or is that copying and plagiarizing? It can feel like both. Chang makes the argument that if you just took five pages out of a book and said, “This is what I think about something,” clearly you’re not doing any work.

You’re not actually processing that. When an AI generates stuff that is clearly drawn from things, to what degree is that plagiarism, and to what degree is that what human beings view in terms of processing things? That’s going to be an ongoing debate.

Craig: Yes. How we are influenced other things is the concept of homage, the plagiarism, is something that has been going on long before AI ever showed up.

John: Indeed. Most of Shakespeare’s plays were drawn from earlier material.

Craig: Most religions were drawn from earlier material.

John: Funny that. Question five. This is a bunch– we have a couple of questions about this.

Drew: We had a lot of people write in about the Stereophonic lawsuit. Let’s do Jeremy’s. Jeremy writes, I was interested to read this news story about the lawsuit filed by Fleetwood Mac engineer, Ken Callait, and his co-author, Steven Stiefel, claiming the Broadway play, Stereophonic, is plagiarized from their memoir on making of the Rumors album. Does the transformation between memoir and ripped from the headline style fiction push this into a different category than if the play had been explicitly about Fleetwood Mac rather than a fictional Fleetwoodian band?

John: Now, Craig, I haven’t seen this play yet. I’m excited to see it. People love it.

Craig: This is a very interesting question. It’ll be interesting to see what happens with this lawsuit. Jeremy puts his finger on the weird aspect of this. The closer you get to saying, “Oh, this is actually is a dramatization of these people,” the more protected you are. The problem is when you present something as fictional, there is that big paragraph at the end of the movie that says, “All characters within are fictional, and any resemblance to any real people is coincidental.” Unless it’s not.

Because what you can’t do is, say, take somebody’s memoir, change some names, and then just adapt it because you have essentially circumvented the rules of copyright. They wrote it down. They own that, at least in its expression in fixed form. They don’t own the facts, but they own the expression in fixed form. If you are borrowing enough things, then you’re infringing upon their copyright. That in and of itself is a difficult case to make.

I think all these things are always an uphill battle. But if you were to say, I’m going to make a show called Rumors, and it’s a dramatization of the Fleetwood Mac people, the only thing you got to do is not defame them. Defaming is a different deal. That would just be like, “I’m just going to go write a bit where Stevie Nicks bites the head of a baby.” Yes, you’re getting sued. Otherwise, you’re okay.

John: This is a play written by David Adjmi, who was sued earlier over his play 3C, which was a parody of Threes Company. I just revealed why he was able to do that because it was a parody. He was able to be a parody. This is not going to be protected by parody. The lawsuit, we’ll link to the lawsuit here, is interesting. It’s claiming plagiarism, basically that it’s an unauthorized adaptation of the copyrighted memoir by Ken Callait, entitled Making Rumors: The Inside Story of the Classic Fleetwood Mac Album.

Of course, this is complicated because the actual play is not about Fleetwood Mac. They’re not saying it’s about Fleetwood Mac. It’s very Fleetwood Mac-ian. The details are in the lawsuit saying, if this is information that could have only come from his memoir, to me, feel a little bit tenuous.

Craig: They are, because if they’re facts, you can’t own them. If the lawsuit here is by Ken Callait and Steven, we’re going to call him Stiefel, but I do like the idea of Stiefel [“Shtee-ful”], I’d say. If it’s resting on, “Hey, we put a bunch of facts down of things that actually happened that nobody else knew about, and then you made those facts happen in your show,” they’re facts… Then the question is, so you acknowledge that you’re using these facts, but you’re not using them under the names of these people.

I think that’s going to be tough. I honestly think it’s going to be tough unless there’s something defamatory towards them, or there are things in the book that are said in certain ways, like people’s lines of dialog, for instance. If they say Lindsey Buckingham turned to me and said, x, y, z. Then in the show, some character named Jimmy Blingingham says x, y, z. That’s a problem.

John: This week, I saw the movie Saturday Night, directed by Jason Reitman, screenplay by Reitman and Gil Keenan. I will be curious to learn where the boundaries were of what they could say and not say about people. Whose rights did they control or own or did anything?

Craig: You don’t need them. You just have to not defame people. The history of Saturday Night Live is so extraordinarily well-documented. The Tom Shale’s book is insanely– It’s just all his interviews. It’s first-person interviews. It’s a treasure chest if you’re interested in that stuff. My guess is they were drowning in material that they could just point to.

But I do know from having written something about real people and real events that there is a process you go through that is pretty rigorous to make sure that everything that you assert happened is documented somewhere, especially when you’re talking about the behavior of people. Is it either a reasonable inference or is it within the boundaries of what their behavior was? You want to show John Belushi being a drugged-out lunatic or show Bill Murray as a guy that punches people? Oh, yeah. Yeah, that happened. For sure. You want to show Gilda Radner punching someone? Now, we may have a problem.

John: Also, complicated and simplified by who’s alive and who’s not alive.

Craig: You know what? You’re exactly right because Gilda Radner is dead, and you cannot defame dead people in the United States. Everywhere else, you can. You got to watch out for that.

Drew: Can I ask a quick follow-up? Because I know we’ll get it. Is it the frame of the recording booth that would theoretically be the problem? Because there was also like, Daisy Jones in the Six was a show that was basically about Fleetwood Mac that didn’t seem to have these legal problems. Is it specifically because they’re taking–

John: The lawsuit claims that this is from the engineer’s point of view because we’re looking at the stage from the engineer’s point of view? I think that’s crazy. It’s on stage.

Craig: You don’t own that.

John: You don’t own geography.

Craig: A, you don’t own it. B, who knows? I don’t think it would have behooved Lindsey Buckingham or Stevie Nicks or Mick Fleetwood to sue over Daisy Jones in the Six. I think they would have looked like A-holes, and it only helps them sell records. Who doesn’t get helped when we sell a bunch of records? The engineer, because he doesn’t have royalties.

John: You can imagine a scenario. Like let’s say that you wrote a play that was about the engineer for a Fleetwood Mactite band that used all these unique insights of just that engineer. The engineer was the central character of the whole thing, I think that would be a stronger lawsuit, but that doesn’t seem to be what we’re facing here. Lawsuits. Lawsuits.

Craig: Lawsuits. As always, we beg, even though they won’t listen to us, Deadline, Hollywood Report, or Variety, don’t write about these lawsuits. Write about the results. And the results inevitably are settlement.

John: Settlement or a dismissal.

Craig: Or dismissal, exactly.

Drew: All right. Question number 6. Vance writes, I’ve always heard that script cover pages should have the basics and no drawings, graphics, maps, or cutesy stuff. On the three-page challenge, I’ve heard you not only accept but praise some illustrated artsy cover pages. Is this your personal leniency or is it now more accepted industry-wide?

Craig: “I’ve always heard/read.” I’m going to guess from Reddit, other people who aren’t professional writers, people in your writing group, school professors, websites from freaking script consultants. I don’t know what they’re talking about. Look, I’m not in favor of it. I’m not against it. If it’s cool, it’s cool. If it’s not, it’s not. Yes, the default is title, name, contact information, maybe date. But if there’s something cool that goes on the front, sure, nobody cares. Guess what? They’re going to turn the title page and if page one sucks, I don’t care what was on the title page. If page one is awesome, I don’t care what was on the title page, I really don’t.

John: My first produced script go has a logo for go rather than the word go. Because go is such an incredibly small word. The page just disappears. It was a larger thing.

Craig: John, how did you possibly get a career? You violated what?

John: A fundamental tenant.

Craig: What all the gurus say. Gurus. We’re going to Austin, you know what Austin has a lot of?

Drew: Gurus.

Craig: You got it. Tons of them. You know what? They’re there for?

Drew: Money.

Craig: Yes. Tons of it. Taking it from people who don’t have it.

John: I don’t think they’re there for money. I think they’re there for some cred, for some ego gratification.

Craig: They’re looking for clients. They talk about just a big Savannah full of gazelles and these cheetahs are out there. I don’t know about cheetahs and gazelles. Just slinking around saying, “Hey, you’re this close, you’re this close, you know what you just need to do? Give me $10,000.” That’s why I’m going to walk around Austin, just be like no gurus.

John: We were wearing you cheetah skin jacket.

Craig: Awesome. I got to get one of those.

John: I saw a cheetah take down a gazelle.

Craig: Like in person?

John: In person, yeah on safari.

Craig: Ew.

John: When you’re on safari that’s what you’re there for.

Craig: I just wish the honey badger guy were there to narrate all of it. Cheetah, ew. Look at him. He’s taking down that gazelle. He don’t care.

John: Question seven.

Drew: Kevin writes, “As I work on my next project, I’m debating whether to closely involve the original creator of the source material or maintain some creative distance. In your experience, is it better to collaborate with the creator, or can distance actually benefit the adaptation?”

Craig: I’m living this life right now.

John: I think it really depends on the project and the person. It’s what’s going to make for the best scenario for you as the person who actually has to do the adaptation. Big Fish, I kept Daniel Wallace involved in a loop all the time. I wasn’t asking his opinion on things, but I was making sure that he was up to speed on things.

There was another project, another big book adaptation where shortly after we got it set up, it was clear like, “Oh no, this is going to be a bad situation.” I bailed on it because the creator was going to be way too involved in this is just not going to make happy for anybody.

Craig: I make The Last of Us with Neil Druckmann who created the game and he, I think is probably exceptional in this regard. If you’re going to bet, you’re going to bet that the creator’s going to be a problem. They’re going to be a problem because either they work in a different medium and don’t quite understand the purpose of an adaptation or how adaptation should function sometimes, which requires turning away from the material, changing the material.

Doing things that some people would say like, Oh, you made this part “better.” Never, it’s just about different media. Some creators don’t understand that. They just were like, “Here, just take book, make movie, don’t change nothing.” Some creators want to do your job, they just haven’t been allowed to. That’s the worst one. Where like, “I wanted to write this movie, but they wouldn’t let me because I’ve never written anything or because everyone thinks I’m nuts,” and that’s never going to work.

But there are creators who understand, who are smart and flexible, and who are interested in making something that is a proper adaptation that feels different. One of the things about The Last of Us is because you’re going from a video game to a show, the immediate need for adaptation is just there. It’s not like a book where you read it passively and then you can watch the movie. You are moving people around.

We actually had a discussion yesterday about this image in our show of a building and a sign and how the sign wasn’t really entirely in view. What I remember is in the game, it wasn’t entirely in view either unless you moved your stick on your controller, and then you could see it. I’m like, “I think this is fine to not see the whole thing.”

We don’t need to move it so we can see it. These are the kinds of things that just come up all the time, but in passive to passive, creator could be a problem. Kevin, I would be very careful if you’re debating, if you’re debating, maybe just go with no, do it on your own.

John: Thinking back to my conversation with Daniel Wallace and with this other author, I basically had the same conversation with the two of them saying like, “Listen, I love your book and I’m so excited about it. I’m so excited to get into this, but I want you to understand and to know that a lot of things are necessarily going to change just because they changed the medium and I can’t even know all the things that are going to change so far. Trust me that I’m going to protect your characters, protect the spirit of what you’re trying to do, but it’s going to be a different thing just because it’s different medium.” And their response to that was what told me like, oh one is going to be a good scenario and one is going to be a really bad scenario.

Drew: Question eight. Ian writes, I know your feelings about competitions, but what are your thoughts on writer’s retreats? Is it just vacation under the guise of nurturing creativity or is there value to the process of being with others, devoting time to the process, and focusing on craft? How might your opinions differ for an emerging writer outside of industry context versus someone with ties to the industry?

John: I’ve never been on a writer’s retreat. Craig, have you?

Craig: Of course not.

John: No. I’ve been on Sundance Labs, which is like that, but you’re not actually doing the work at the time there.

Craig: That’s super focused too and selective. No, I’ve never done it. I actually don’t know any of my writer friends who work the way we do who have done it.

John: I have novelist friends who’ve done it.

Craig: Yeah maybe they need to just go somewhere to get away from the noise and stuff to write their novel because there’s so much writing for a novel. No, I feel like there’s another way to take money from people.

John: I would tell Ian that if you are curious about it, the opportunity cost isn’t so much. As long as the actual cost is not going to be–

Craig: The money cost–

John: The money cost could be, but if it’s a–

Craig: What do you think these things cost?

John: I don’t know. If it’s a one week, a two-week scenario and you want to do it and you have the resources to do it, and you think it might work for you, it’s worth experimenting because every writer’s different and maybe this is a thing that will be truly helpful for you.

Craig: Here’s one on the Tuscan countryside. That’s just a, can we curse on this one?

John: Sure if you want to.

Craig: That’s a fucking vacation. I’m sorry. That’s just a vacation that costs money. They won’t tell you how much it costs. Oh, they do. Here they do. This one costs $3,500 to $4,500 just for the workshops.

John: That’s a difference too.

Craig: Some people know John and I will occasionally get invitations from these places where they would fly us out and even pay us some stipend or something to be the person that does the work. We go to Austin. Austin doesn’t pay us a goddamn thing. We fly ourselves there and we talk for free and then we go home and just like we do this podcast for free.

We’re not saints or anything, it’s just these things are businesses. Writers’ retreats to me are unless the– I don’t know, the nunnery is doing it. It just feels like another way for you to feel like you’re making progress or getting closer to the dream, you just have to pay some money to do it. Nobody that I know who has succeeded in this came out of a writer’s retreat or talks about a writer’s retreat. Screenwriting is free.

John: There’s a version of a retreat, which is more like what novelist friends have done where they recruit you and to do it. Then it’s not like there’s a classes or anything like that. Basically, you are free all day to write and to work and then you have your dinner together and then a conversation with the other writers who are up there. That feels like that could be really productive for certain people. I don’t see that happening a lot with screenwriters, but it doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen.

Craig: Also, you don’t have to go anywhere to do that. Do you mean there are screenwriting groups that are free, all around LA and they’re being spitting, you’ll hit one and you want to go out to dinner with those people and chitchat. Great. If you want to write all day, get on your laptop. As John Gatins says, start clicking. Start those keys clicking.

Drew: Question nine. Anna writes, in your episode with Francesca Sloane, she said that she wrote short scripts to send in as samples for both Atlanta and Fargo. Atlanta itself has shorter episodes, but Fargo episodes run 45 to 60 minutes. Is it a good idea to send shorter samples to demonstrate tone and skill in a more digestible way for the people reading loads of other scripts? Or do people typically prefer reading a script the same length as their actual show so they can be sure you’re capable of properly structuring a 45 to 60-minute script?

John: Francesca Sloane came on to talk about Mr. and Mrs. Smith, a show that had a great very specific tone. I think it’s good to have a shorter sample you could also send, but I think a lot of showrunners will want to see something that is about the length of what their show is, just so they get a sense that you can structure that larger thing.

A lot of times when I talk to folks who are staffing on shows that showrunner is really going for do they have a voice? Do they have a personality on the page? That’s more interesting. They’re not reading the whole thing. They’re basically reading the first 20 pages, like, this person feels like I want to meet them.

Craig: I don’t think there would be any benefit to writing half of an hour-long episode.

John: Oh, no.

Craig: Yes, I do think you want to deliver something that is the length to show that you have the ability to run the full length of the race. If you are reading something that’s really well structured and has great payoff at the ending and somebody understands how to pace and create rhythm and meter across those pages and make the dramatic circle and make the end feel like it was surprising, but yet inevitable, all those wonderful things we’re looking for, that’s also incredibly valuable to see.

If you have somebody that’s just writing some glittering dialogue but can’t seem to make a plot or land the ship, you go, “I might want this person for some glittering dialogue if you’re running that kind of room, but now I know who they are.” I got to be honest, there are a lot of glittering dialogue people out there. There are very few people that you can reliably get a well-structured episode from. So few that it’s upsetting.

John: What might be a choice here is like, let’s say you have the full-length episode that shows what, how good you are at structuring and telling a story over the course of 60 minutes, 60 pages, but then you have a one act play that just like can show a versatility in a different voice and a very specific thing that you can do that no one else can do, that may be a good backup thing for you to have as well.

Craig: Yeah. The more breath you can show, the more versatility the better. You, at least, want to be able to show the fundamental thing that would be required there. Don’t worry about people having some ADD and seeing a 60-page script and going, “Oh, my God.” They write 60 pages all the time.

John: As we’ve established on the show when we talk to showrunners, it’s like they will throw your script across the room after three pages if they don’t like it.

Craig: Correct. If they do like it, they’ll keep going and they may even just flip to the end. Then they might read the first 10 and the last 10. If those are great, who cares? The middle is the middle, we’ll figure it.

John: Ultimately, they’re going to want to meet with you.

Craig: Exactly. Believe me, if you read something good, then yes, you gasp.

John: Question 10.

Drew: Andy writes, I’m pulling into the final stretch of completing a screenplay, which has taken me years to write. It’s an adaptation of some private journals that were written in the mid-1700s. The author died in 1795. Naturally, I assume that the material was in the public domain. Right? Wrong. I just discovered that the owner of the manuscripts, a major university, who published them in the mid-20th century holds the copyright to them until 2045 due to a quirk in the 1976 copyright law. I’m a beginning screenwriter and I would like to submit it to a few quality contests and some managers, but I don’t want to act in bad faith. What can I do in this situation?”

John: There are two very different questions I see embedded in here. First is that like, this is a crazy scenario where something written in 1700s is somehow still under copyright. I don’t believe it, but that’s a whole separate legal question. The second is, do I need to worry about this as a person who’s showing the script around to managers and other people who can get me representation? The second one is much easier to say, show it. Listen, if there are problems down the road in actually producing it, fine. You can show anything to a manager. You can get hired off of anything so that’s not a concern.

Craig: I’m also suspicious of this. Unless this was a translation and they have the copyright to the translation or they just have the copyright to their published thing with the forward, what happens is sometimes they’ll stick a forward on. That makes it something now you can copyright that. But if there are private journals and you’re literally going back to the private journals from the mid-1700s, I’m sorry, it doesn’t matter who owns published, whatever. There is no quirk in copyright that covers that. That said, fine, talk to a lawyer, but you don’t have to worry about that. Like John said, just submit.

Do you think the university’s going to start going, “No”? They can’t because you haven’t even exploited it yet. You’re just showing people something. It doesn’t matter. Then if a company wants to buy it, believe me, they’re going to tell their lawyers, “Go over to that university and either slap them around or give them 10 grand,” and that’s that.

John: If you as a writer want to write a romcom starring Superman and Spiderman, you can do that. Absolutely fine. You don’t control any of that stuff. You can never make that movie. If it’s great and funny and people love it, it can get you hired for other things.

Craig: You’re just not allowed to make a dime off of it until you get permission from the copyright holders.

John: When we say make a dime off, it doesn’t mean that you can’t get hired to do other stuff, that material cannot be produced.

Craig: Correct. Without their permission.

John: Question 11.

Drew: Jason writes, I’m introducing a character we initially only see from the waist down, but they have a brief dialogue with another character. Since the character’s face is off-screen, is OS still appropriate or should I clarify in an action line we only see the character from the waist down? Currently, I’m using both OS and the action clarification. Overkill?”

Craig: Overkill. It’s OS, really means not there. Not VoiceOver somewhere in the space.

John: You also see off-camera.

Craig: Off camera, OC, OS, same thing. Now in this case you would say we only see them from the waist down. That’s fine. If you feel like people are going to forget, you could write their name. If their name is Henry, Henry, waist down in parentheses next to their name. I think just OS or OC would not–

John: I would actually do the OS.

Craig: Really?

John: I would have this description that we only see them for the waist down and just because as people are reading through things quickly, sometimes they’re not reading all the action lines. That OS or OC just tells something like, “Oh, there’s something going on here. Maybe I should look back to see what’s happening.”

Craig: The problem is it gets really annoying. That’s why I’m thinking just, make a custom waist down, maybe just over and over and over. Even that is going to get annoying.

John: That’s going to get annoying too.

Craig: I think you just bold it. Put it on its own line, bold it, make it a bigger font if you want, underline it. You could even do something like halfway through the scene, just write “I just want to remind you, we’re only seeing him from the waist down.”

John: Really what Craig and I are describing here is that you’re going to feel that something that’s right in the context of the page and the context of the scene. If it’s one line of dialogue versus if it’s a whole exchange, it’s going to feel different.

Craig: Just don’t worry so much Jason about like, “Oh, is there like something that’s correct?” That’s a very not in our business way of thinking. We get it all the time. It’s not your fault. It’s this pedantic thing that comes out of Reddit forms and schools and writers’ groups. You really can, just every four lines of dialogue, remember waist down only. He’s still waist down. Can’t see his face.

John: In all these cases, it’s not that there’s right or there’s wrong. It’s what’s going to feel good in this moment?

Craig: What’s effective? What do you want people to feel and if you’re nervous that they’re going to forget something, remind them. You don’t have to remind them with this special way that people are going to go, “Technically, blah blah.” That’s not how it works.

John: No. Question 12.

Drew: Leo writes, I’ve always been able to write a screenplay, go through drafts, editing, feedback, and amends without a second thought, moving on to the next project and never looking back. However, I’ve heard and seen so many people unable to relinquish control and I’m starting to feel like maybe I’m not as attached or emotionally involved as I should be. I treat every script like a rep, like you would at the gym. But I’m starting to think that maybe I should be challenging myself to be more emotionally invested with the scripts. Any advice?”

Craig: Leo, let’s start with one possibility. You might be neurodiverse. Be somebody that just doesn’t feel things the way other people feel. That doesn’t mean you aren’t feeling things. It’s tempting sometimes to look around and go, “Uh-oh, everyone is crying. I’m not crying. Something’s wrong with me.” No. Maybe just you don’t find this as sad.

I do know quite a few people that are very successful who have nowhere near the level of angst that I do, who write with a freedom and less concern. Even the way you and I write, you’ll do the vomit draft, which feels like it would be less emotionally disturbing.

John: I’ll correct that because I think I’m misunderstanding. You think I do a vomit draft and I don’t.

Craig: Oh.

John: I write out of sequence, but no, I don’t vomit.

Craig: Oh, you don’t do a vomit draft?

John: No. I know folks who do the vomit drafts.

Craig: Then somebody does a vomit draft. The whole point of that is they just write. No worries. Let’s just go get something down on the page, and then I’m going to rewrite. That’s where all the– I’m an angst writer, every line, every day when I start, I go back over the day before stuff and I redo that. Everybody has their own– Scott Frank makes me look like I have no emotions.

Everybody writes per them. This is part of what makes you you, Leo. I wouldn’t worry so much about the way other people are experiencing this, but I would listen if you say, “Hey, I should be challenging myself more emotionally.” Also, maybe your scripts aren’t emotional. Maybe they’re just what they are. Maybe they could be a little emotional or maybe this or that, but they don’t have to be super sentimental. There are a lot of people that write that sort of thing. I think you should just be you.

John: I read this as– I don’t think he’s so concerned about what is the emotional content within the scene. It’s basically what does he feel about the work that he has done and how much of himself is wrapped up into these things. How much is his self-identity is wrapped up into this individual project?

There have been projects where I have felt that a lot. I would say going over the course of my career, one of the things I’m happy about is that when a project is just dead, it’s like, “Oh, okay, I’m done.” I am able to just divorce myself and I don’t think about that anymore. That’s a useful skill.

Craig: It is. I think the big lesson here, Leo, is you are as emotionally invested as you are. If you had to choose between getting super overwrought and caught up, or being the way you are describing yourself, I’d go with the way you were describing yourself. You have a better chance of writing more, learning more. As they say, the first few scripts probably are going to be that good anyway. This keeps you writing. Nothing wrong with that.

John: Agreed. Question 13.

Drew: Zach writes, I’m 28 and I’ve been a creative producer for five years on short films in Wisconsin and Minnesota. We want to move into features. However, my BA in theater means that I don’t have much experience with the other fields an industry producer deals with, raising money at the feature level, knowing how to schmooze and making creative producing a job that pays so I can focus on my craft.

To learn those skills and still keep making films with my midwest based team, would it be best for me to move to a larger creative market to try to get a job and learn from the ground up? Should I go to undergrad or grad school for producing or creative producing? Or do I just keep flying by the seat of my pants with my team and try to do it like Mike Cheslik and Ryland Tews who made two indie features in six years with Lake Michigan Monster and Hundreds of Beavers?

John: I did not know either of those movies, so I looked them up and they do look–

Craig: Hundreds of Beavers, I didn’t see it, but the trailer was awesome.

John: It’s great that you have a model for something what you want to do. It sounds like that’s what you want to do, is you want to be making their kind of stuff. For that, maybe you don’t need to get a lot more experience. You just need to grow up your ability to make a short film into bigger things and bigger things because those are very specific niche kind of things.

If you do want to really learn how producing producing works, it wouldn’t be the worst thing for you to apply to a program that does that and get you some experience with folks who are producing bigger stuff. Something like the Stark program would be great, but it could also be overkill if your real goal is to move back to the Midwest and just make midwestern films.

Craig: I think, Zach, this feels like you might want to come on out here. In looking what they’ve done, create a producer for five years on short films in Wisconsin, Minnesota. First of all, half the writers I know in Los Angeles are from Wisconsin and Minnesota. I don’t know what it is about that place, that part of the world, but very creative, very good writers come from there.

The thing is short films, as we’ve said many times already, a little bit of a dead-end street. Short films in the Midwest, a shorter dead-end street. It’s a bit cul-de-sac. I think you might want to come to Los Angeles. You’re 28, which is still young, but not young. It’s a little late to start taking on massive debt to go to a graduate school. That may or may not be the way to go. If you had a choice between spending the– what does Stark cost, $100,000 a year or something? You can spend $100,000 a year plus living expenses and all the rest of it, or get a job that pays you $40,000 a year if you can. That’s a low-rung thing where you’re going to get demoted for a while from what you were doing to what you’d be out here, but you start working somewhere where things are getting made and things are happening and you start climbing a ladder. That is not a dead-end street.

John: I think what we’re talking about is either you go to film school to learn creative producing in a structured program, or you find a place that you work for a producer who’s doing the job that you want to do.

Craig: You get paid to learn.

John: Yes, you get paid to learn.

Craig: You pay to learn or you get paid to learn. I pick the latter.

John: Actually, a good first step for you might be go to some of these film festivals that are showing the kind of movies that you like to do and see if you can get an internship or a job working for one of those producers and really learn from them about the nuts and bolts of it. Because honestly, making the things like Lake Michigan Monster or Hundreds of Beavers is a very specific skill set. Figuring out how they do it is going to be the way to do it.

Craig: What the future holds for that is tricky. They’re great indie bands, but it’s a tough future. You get down the road and you start to go, “Oh my God, I love that band. What’s going on?” They’re still out there touring and it’s– Honestly, Zach, if you could be an assistant to somebody doing the job that you’re doing, it sounds crazy. Like, “I’m going to be the assistant to the person who does the thing I do?” Except that out here on this level, at this scale, the people who do what you do are not doing what you do. They’re doing something else and you do need to learn and you do need to be exposed to it. The whole point of being an assistant out here is not to be a typist in the steno pool. It’s a ladder.

John: The point about raising money, I think it’s crucial because it’s a very specific skill and it really depends on the kinds of movies you’re trying to make. If your goal is to make indie horror films, that’s a very specific pile of cash that is used to do those. It’s a very specific business model. If it is these more esoteric straight Indies, then something more like a Sundance or a Slamdance kind of vibe maybe where you need to focus your attention. Be honest about what appeals to you. I think you are, looking through your description there, it feels like they know what they want to do. Question 14.

Craig: 14.

Drew: Rachel writes, I’ve spent the past year and a half writing and developing my first feature, which I also plan to direct. When my manager walked me through her latest round of notes, I had a gut feeling that she hadn’t actually read the script. Her notes were vague and abstract and it felt like I was the English teacher and she was the student who only read the spark notes and tried to BS her way through.

Craig: ChatGPT. She ChatGPTed the notes.

I’m starting to question why she isn’t more invested in a project she wanted me to write in the first place.

What do I do now? Do I make the changes just to keep her happy so she’ll finally send it out or do I hold my ground and risk stalling everything? This is the third feature we’ve developed together. I’ve put my soul into these projects and I don’t think I can handle another one falling apart. I’m honestly at the point where I might quit if this one doesn’t work out.

I’m too old to keep doing the same song and dance expecting a different result. I feel trapped in this endless feedback loop waiting for months for each round of notes and even got the suggestion to shoot something on an iPhone in the meantime while she catches up. How do I move forward without compromising my vision for someone who isn’t fully engaged? Is it too late to reconsider my rep situation?”

John: Craig, you have the advice here. What’s the advice?

Craig: Fire your manager.

John: Sometimes it’s just that easy.

Craig: It’s just that simple. That was a whole lot of reasons to fire your manager. Followed by the question, “Should I fire my manager?” Yes. It seems like, Rachel, your manager has ticked all the boxes of being fire-worthy. Probably not actually writing the notes, I honestly do. The way she described does feel like she just said, “Hey, ChatGPT, read the script and do some bad notes.” She takes months to respond. What is she doing in between there? She won’t send things out. Send it out. Just do it. If she doesn’t want to send things out, it’s because she has nobody to send them to.

Shoot something on an iPhone while she catches up? What is she catching up with? Legitimately, this just feels like a damaged fraud. Is it too late to reconsider my rep situation? Rachel, it is too late to reconsider your rep situation if you have stage four cancer. Otherwise, no. It’s not too late. In fact, it’s still not too late if you have stage four cancer. Fire them in the last breath that you have.

John: Honestly, I think if you have stage four cancer, your odds of recovering from the cancer are higher than that this manager is suddenly stepping up and doing a great job.

Craig: That’s right. It’s a miracle. She’s sent my script? No. Your bone cancer is retreated. You’re going to live another year. Rachel, for the love of God, I don’t care, I believe you mentioned that, “I’m too old for this. I’m too old to keep doing the same song and dance.” Correct. I don’t know how old you are, Rachel. If you’re 22, you’re too old for this. If you’re 82, you’re too old for this. Fire your manager.

Drew: Question 15. Enrico writes, First of all, I’m Italian, and second of all, I’m poor. I’ve also wrote a screenplay. I really like it.

Craig: Third of all.

Drew: One small company bought the option for my screenplay, so someone else likes it. The Italian market is a huge mess so I want to try different options. Is there a path for a foreign screenplay in the American market?”

John: I don’t know. This is where I think we need to throw to our listeners who might actually have some better insight here because we have a lot of international listeners. If you are an international listener or someone who works with international writers and can offer some advice to Enrico about, if you were an Italian screenwriter who’s written something, presumably in English, we don’t know, and how you get that script read by English-speaking audiences or British producers or American producers, because I just don’t really know.

Craig: Did Enrico write this question in Italian and we translated it?

Drew: No, it came in English.

Craig: All right. Enrico, first of all, just based on this, either your English is good or your translation program is good.

John: Craig, I cleaned it up.

Craig: You cleaned it?

John: Yes.

Craig: Oh, okay. Look, that’s actually good to know. We can leave that in. Enrico’s English is not superb. With that in mind, is there a market? Kind of I’ve seen it. I have gotten things that are from somewhat established filmmakers overseas who are trying to break into American television. You can tell from the script that English is not their first language, but you’re doing the math of, I can look past that actually, to, “What’s the story? What are the characters? Is this fascinating?”

Obviously, they’re going to need a partner who does speak English, who can help that aspect of it. Yes, there is. There’s that beautiful show about the young Italian girls growing up on HBO. There are absolutely avenues for foreign work. Netflix is incredibly global. The Italian market is a huge mess. There’s no question about that, Enrico. The Italian entertainment industry is a bit like Italian politics. Mamma mia. It’s a mess. It really is.

John: I was just in Italy for their film and TV conference.

Craig: Did you note that it was a mess?

John: I noticed it was a challenging time for the industry.

Craig: It’s chaos, but it’s not impossible, Enrico. I think part of it may be finding representation who understands, “Hey, I’m not here just for the Italian market. How do we expand?” You may want to start a little closer to home, for instance, the UK, and work your way to do this. It’s easier to work from UK to US than from say, Italy to the US.

John: There’s this conference over this summer was all about international collaborations between the Italian market and other European markets which makes a lot of sense.

Craig: Now the UK has unfortunately withdrawn from Europe, but.

John: But they still do a lot of things with–

Craig: Of course.

John: They are there.

Craig: Like I said, it’s closer and they’re more likely to look to that market than the US is.

John: For sure. Question 16.

Drew: Tim writes, “I signed with a reputable management company in Los Angeles. We’ve been working closely together.”

Craig: Fire them.

Drew: I completed a screenplay that, after quite a lot of time refining it, we’re now at a stage where a director is attached, as well as producers, who have financial backing for offers to talent. It feels like a lot of cool stuff is happening and I’m very thankful for that. It just feels like this is trotting along forever. I’m afraid of years passing by because of the slow-moving pace of it all with no meaningful progress being made.

My question is, what else should I be doing? Is there more I could ask for my management to expedite the process or ensure my new script gets attention? Should I be asking for meetings with people around town, to show both scripts to studios in an attempt to get writing assignments? I’ve already started on my next script and have a slate of another 10 I want to develop further to see if they have legs, so the actual writing is being done on my part. I just want to rally the troops and make sure I’m not missing anything, but also not come across ignorant or too pressing.

John: Great. It sounds like your management company is doing something well, which is basically they’ve got this thing out, they’re sort of trying to get stuff in, but your concern that this is going to take forever is justified because everything just takes forever here, because it does. During the summer, they’ll say, “Oh, we’ll come back to this in the fall,” and the minute Labor Day happens, like, “Let’s get back to it after the New Year.” That’s just sort of how this town tends to work.

Craig: Until suddenly, within 24 hours, everything must get done. It is so slow and then so fast. Head whipping, really. I think the key word here is feel.

John: Feels.

Craig: He said it feels like this.

John: Your management company, in this meantime, should absolutely be sending you out on a zillion meetings. It’s good that you’re starting your next project. it’s good to have 10 things. Be ready to talk about those 10 things. Describe to your management company, “These are the projects I’m most excited about going out and pitching with people. Let’s find who these people are.” You need to manage your managers and by managing your manager, let’s say ask them, “What’s happening here? What can we be doing right now for me this week, next week? Let’s make a plan for this.”

Craig: It’s okay to say, hey, can we go get drinks to just do a little planning for 2025? In that meeting, say, “This is how I am. Here’s just me as a person. I need this and this and this. It doesn’t matter if it reflects reality or not. I just need to feel busy and to feel like stuff’s going on. You may want to over-schedule me. You may want to send me to more places.” Or, “Hey guys, tell me honestly, am I bad in the room? If I’m bad in the room and that’s why you’re not sending me out there, would be great to know. Then there are other things that maybe I can do.” Sometimes we just don’t know why things aren’t happening and we presume it’s because of other problems and maybe people are saving us from ourselves. I don’t know.

So Tim, I love your antsy-ness and I also appreciate that you understand it might just be annoying antsy-ness. Sometimes rather than saying, “Why aren’t we doing things? Shouldn’t we be doing this? Shouldn’t we be doing this?” Just say, “Here’s how my brain works. Here’s how I am, so therefore, what can we do?”

John: Something I did with my reps this year is whenever I’m sitting down with them, I have a one-pager that talks through like, “Here are all the projects. Here are where things are at and here are what my priorities are.” I can just be really clear like, “This is my number one priority. If this thing happens, everything else goes away. Here are the other open loops here.” So we can all sort of be on the same page about what it is we are trying to do, which is useful.

Craig: It would be nice if they did that.

John: I make the one-pager, which is fine.

Craig: It’s fine.

John: It’s fine.

Craig: They are who they are. They all are.

John: Question 17.

Drew: Jenny writes, “I’m a mid-level TV writer who sometimes hangs out and tries to answer questions for aspiring writers in a giant Facebook group. Whenever I post some well-known film or TV writer script, aspiring writers are convinced that the formatting is wrong. There are a thousand things that they’ve been told are verboten by so-called screenwriting gurus.”

John: Screenwriting what now?

Drew: Gurus.

John: What?

Drew: Gurus. When I point out that, no, it’s not at all against the rules or even unusual for a screenwriter to say, all caps, “A SOUND CUE” in a script, the pushback is always along two lines. A, “Well, he’s a well-known writer so he can get away with it,” or B, “Well, that’s a shooting script, not a spec script. You can’t do that in a spec script.” It creates this perfectly shitty feedback loop where they convince themselves not to learn from some of the best writing in Hollywood. I’ve given up trying to help them. Maybe you can set them straight.

Craig: John, should we–

John: I think we’ve done this for 650 episodes.

Craig: I think we’re in our second decade of saying this and you know what, Jenny? I’m going to give you some advice. Get out of the Facebook group. They’re beyond help. That’s the deal. If that group is convinced that they can’t do something, get out. If they are going to give– By the way, I just want you to know, Jenny, it’s not just you. I get this.

John: All the time.

Craig: All the time. I did an ask me anything on Reddit years ago. People do this and then I’m like, “No, just do whatever you want.” They’re like, “Well, you can get away with it.” Apparently always, from the beginning, somehow weirdly, I got away with it. “Oh, that’s a shooting script, not a spec script.” Nobody knows the difference and nobody cares. This is the problem. It’s just a barrel of crabs all pulling each other down.

A lot of people are in these groups to experience faux authority, like they know. Makes them feel better, because what they don’t have is actual authority backed up by, you know, having a career at this like you do, Jenny. So you know what? Get out. Get out and just let them sit there convincing each other that “we see” is toxic poison for a script.

John: I think your advice for her to get out is 100% accurate. I would also say that there’s this blurry line between what is common practice versus what are the rules. Understanding what common practice is like what most people are doing on the page is really useful. You get that by reading a bunch of scripts. No one wrote the rules. There are no rules.

Craig: There are no rules. There are no rules. We have said this so many, so many, so many, so many times.

John: It’s the third chapter of the Scriptnotes book, the rules.

Craig: There you go. There are no rules. It doesn’t matter how many times you say, “Hey, guess what? If something’s really good, no one cares.” They don’t believe you. They do not believe you. They think it’s either a trap or it triggers their sense of insufficiency to such an extent that they need to defend. I can’t explain to somebody why they should or shouldn’t feel sufficient. I don’t know. I do know statistically, whoever it is, they’re insufficient. That’s just facts. Same way it is for professional sports or acting or anything. Just going by the statistics. If you make it, you are an anomaly. Jenny, God bless you. Don’t go there.

John: No. Question 18.

Drew: Joe writes, “I’m writing this in one of the short windows of time that our newborn daughter allows in between feedings, diapers, and sleeping. Do you know of any reliable dictation to transcription apps for the iPhone to help a new dad get some creative thoughts down? Using the iPhone Notes app, I tried dictation but find that transcription stops after a few sentences. Outside of using the voice memo app and then transcribing later on, do you know of a reliable app that can do transcription to a better degree than the iPhone’s internal features? I’ve read about a couple that lean heavily on AI, which only brings me ethical concerns, but might be the only current solutions?”

John: I use dictation software on the iPhone for journaling, so in day one, so rather than typing stuff in day one about what’s happening, I’ll just dictate to it, because I don’t really care if it’s not exactly right. I’m getting it out and getting it down. It’s been my most of my experience with dictation software. A couple of things to think about. Any transcription software is AI, so just get over your worry about it. That’s just going to happen. I think voice memos on the iPhone now actually does transcriptions a lot better and runs longer. I think it automatically transcribes stuff.

Craig: With the new Apple intelligence?

John: Yes, I don’t think it’s– I think even pre the Apple intelligence can do that. Use whatever works for you. Just go for it.

Craig: This isn’t an area where AI actually feels great because it’s not trying to invent anything, pretending it’s doing something new. It’s just using all of its bits and bobs to move your voice into words. It’s just giving you what you do, not adding or subtracting. It’s not editing you as it goes along. Google it?

John: Google it. Open AI makes a product called Whisper that’s actually very good at transcriptions for stuff.

Craig: There’s an answer.

John: There’s a way. I’ve seen elaborate things where people will sort of take a voice memo and then they’ll create a shortcut that then sends it through to Whisper and sends back a really good transcript.

That’s directly possible. Every week there’s going to be new stuff that does this. I would say just look for the simple solution that gets the stuff done that you need to get done. Joe, if you’re trying to dictate a whole script, that’s going to be challenging. That’s going to be tough. If you’re just dictating notes to yourself, great. Go for it.

Craig: I will say also, like Joe says, creative thoughts. I have found if I’m on a walk or I’m somewhere and I don’t have my keyboard with me and I have– an exchange emerges in my head, I’ll just record it as a voice note. Then listening back is quite simple and often jogs your memory better than seeing it in a format in which it did not exist, nor did you type. Maybe just a voice note.

John: Question 19.

Drew: Gary writes, “I’ve just rewritten a script from scratch on a project that was not very good and wasn’t working in its last incarnation. None of the previous material was WGA. At the end of it all, I’m getting written-by credit, but the producer wants the story-by credit for themselves, for Byzantine reasons. I told them that I wrote the treatment for this version, so I’d share the credit. They insist that they’ve written a treatment in the past. I haven’t seen it. That the previous draft was based on, and all of the basic broad strokes in my script were their idea, and this isn’t WGA anyway. I didn’t put up a big fight as my hope is this won’t wend through the indie route and it will become a WGA script and I can let the guild drop the hammer then, but is this at all common?

I couldn’t recall seeing a story-by credit that didn’t include the written-by author in it. I figured it would have to be a super specific scenario where a lot more detail than just the broad strokes were included in the treatment, like a scene-by-scene breakdown.”

John: A lot of misassumptions there.

Craig: So much confusion. First of all, Gary, it’s extraordinarily common. In the WGA you will see screenplays where it says “story by A, screenplay by B”. It happens all the time.

John: Specifically, you wouldn’t see that- you’re not going to ever see “story by A, screenplay by A” because–

Craig: That would be written by– unless we screenplay by A and B. In the case of original screenplays, the story-by credit is irreducible. If somebody sells a spec and then somebody else comes in and rewrites it and does a lot of screenplay work, but doesn’t really change the basic essence of the plot, basic characters, et cetera-

John: They’re going to get story credit.

Craig: -then it’ll be story by A and screenplay by B. Now, in this situation, none of this is WGA. Here’s the bad news. You’re asking all these questions and the answer is, anything can happen.

John: Totally.

Craig: Obviously this producer’s a jerk. That’s clear. Like, “Oh, did you write a treatment? Where is it? No, you didn’t.” Now you’re hoping that this might end up WGA. I have bad news for you. If it does, you’re not getting WGA credit because you didn’t write this under a WGA deal. WGA credit is going to go to whoever else rewrites it under the WGA deal. Now if that’s you, good news, everything that came before would be source material credit along the lines of– based on a screenplay-by, but the real then residual-able WGA credit would be to you. At that point, the producer’s completely screwed because he didn’t write anything under a WGA contract. But currently? Wild West, buddy.

John: We’ll say that independent of where this ultimately goes, what names appear on the screenplay do kind of matter. If it says story by producer, screenplay by you, it’s going to be assumed that that is an accurate reflection of what really happened here. Maybe just don’t worry about it.

Craig: It’s not WGA. At this point, Gary, they could just say written by anyone. You have no protection whatsoever. It’s almost like maybe you shouldn’t be writing stuff for non-union companies, because guess what? This is what they do.

John: This is happens all the time.

Craig: Now I understand you need money, someone’s paying you something, but you got to know when you walk into a lawless saloon, you’re going to get shot. Like, sorry. You took the money from an entity that has every ability. If they wanted to be union, put up the money, show that they have the ability to do it. Follow the rules. They said no and now you’re like, “What’s happening?” You’re in the wrong saloon.

John: For sure. We’ve done it. Question 20.

Craig: Woo.

Drew: Casey writes, “For the past two years I’ve been writing a screenplay for a TV series. I have a pretty unique situation in that I’m quite enjoying the writing, but I don’t really want to be a full-time writer. I have no writing experience. I’m a middle-aged guy, married with two young kids and a career that I’m proud of. The only reason I’m able to write what I’m writing is because the story is about an area in which I have immediate knowledge, I’m living it, and I’m passionate about the subject.

My goal is to write this one story, pass it off to someone who can get the show made, and then return to my current job. It’s not about the money for me. My dream is just that the show would get made, although I do recognize that any show getting made is a long shot. If it takes 25 years, so be it. I was wondering if you had any advice for initial steps. I’m aware that agents and managers may not be excited about representing a one trick pony.”

John: All right. Let’s think about Casey’s goals here and why he’s approaching this project. He wants a series about the thing he does to exist in the world, and so he’s chosen to go off and write a thing, which is great. You are free as a writer to write anything you want to do. God bless. You’re hopefully enjoying the screenplay format, but you say you don’t ever want to write anything else. Then you’re not really a screenwriter. You’re a person who created this one thing, which is, hopefully a template for a series.

I think the best case scenario for what you’re able to do here is, you get something that’s really pretty good, and then you’re able to find a writer showrunner and show them this, and be honest and say, “I want someone else to make this series. I don’t want to make this series at all.” Will a reputable showrunner actually really want to do that? Unlikely, but it’s not impossible. In a weird way, the screenplay you’re writing, the script you’re writing is less important than if you’d written this as a book about what it’s really like to be a forensic pathologist. It’s almost a source material rather than a real script. Craig, what’s your feeling on this?

Craig: You’re not a writer, Casey. You’re telling us you’re writing. When you say, “I don’t really want to be a full-time writer,” what that means is, I don’t want to write. I don’t want to be a writer. Unfortunately, what you are doing is providing other people with a kit, a model kit, and saying, “Here, build something out of this. Once it’s a thing, then I get to see it.” You say, “If it takes 25 years, so be it.” It may take a million years, meaning just the thought that, “Oh, obviously, it’ll happen sometime between now and 25 years from now.” It’s not going to happen. It’s not anything that anybody will be interested in because it’s just a script from somebody that now is a burden upon the person who actually does have to write the show, that now they have to share created-by credit with somebody who literally wrote 60 pages once.

I would strongly recommend, Casey, that instead of putting this in a screenplay format for a TV show– I guess, it sounds like you’re writing a pilot. If you’ve been writing it for two years, I’m also concerned. Write the novel. Write the novel, because that is its own thing, separate and apart. Then people love adapting novels to TV shows, and then it’s fine. Michael Crichton and all that. Writing a script when you’re not a writer and you’re not going to be a writer, it’s like, “You know what? I really like blowing babies up in people. I got a great idea for a baby. I don’t want to be a dad, but I got a great idea for a baby.” Seeing as how you have two young kids, you know what I mean, Casey. It ain’t about conceiving a child, it’s about raising it. That’s what we do as writers, it’s the raising babies.

John: Raising babies. Craig, we did it. We made it through 20 questions.

Craig: Let’s do 20 more.

John: Instead let’s do one cool things.

Craig: Fair.

John: My one cool thing is Rachel Bloom’s Death, Let Me Do My Special. It’s her new special on Netflix. This has been a long time coming, so if you watch it, I don’t want to give too many spoilers for it. Essentially in 2019, she started to come together with a comedy special and had a plan for what this was going to be. The pandemic happened. She had a baby, her longtime collaborator died of COVID. The whole idea of how do I do a comedy special became fraught. She spent years developing this thing. I’ve seen many incarnations of it.

I saw it at Dynasty Typewriter where we do our live shows, I saw it at Largo, and now I got to see the filmed version. It’s terrific. She’s so smart. Her songs are, of course, phenomenal. It does some really interesting things with a form of what a comedy special should be.

Craig: I got to get on this. I’m a bad friend. I got to get on this. Now, a question for you since you’ve seen so many versions of it. Is it Death, let Me Do My Special or is it Death Let Me Do My Special? Is it let, allowed, or I’m asking permission from death?

John: You’re asking permission from death.

Craig: Got it.

John: Death is a character in the show.

Craig: Death, Let Me Do My Special.

John: Yes.

Craig: Got it. Excellent.

John: It’s on Netflix and everywhere worldwide right now.

Craig: Love Rachel. Congrats Rachel. My one cool thing is the Warner Brothers lot.

John: I love the Warner Brothers lot.

Craig: These days lots are getting less and less lotty. Paramount is an amazing lot, then no one’s there. Maybe that’ll change now that it’s being sold. Paramount was the first lot I ever stepped foot on.

John: Same.

Craig: I was like, “Oh, my God.” It was packed with cars and people and-

John: Star Trek.

Craig: -Star Trek aliens in the commissary, and bungalows full of geniuses. It’s a ghost town now. The Fox lot was the second lot I ever stepped onto, which also fascinating beehive, which I suspect is less beehivey.

John: Oh yes, it’s dead there.

Craig: It’s dead. The Warner Brothers lot is still alive. We’re doing our post-production in a building on the Warner Brothers lot. You walk around and you see production happening on the back lot, and you see all these people coming out by where the commissary is and sitting outside of the tables and there’s this togetherness. There are the trams coming through, but they’re not like the Universal, like Universal is clearly turning themselves into-

John: A theme park.

Craig: -a theme park with an office building built on top of a parking structure. Warner Brothers doesn’t have that. It’s no theme park and it just feels like, okay, there’s still some old fashioned Hollywood going on here. Disney is still a lot, but Disney is Disney.

John: Yes, Disney lot is actually fantastic but Warner–

Craig: It is, but it’s very Disney-ish.

John: At Warner you get the animaniacs acts running around all the time, coming down for the little water tower.

Craig: Because they have cocaine in them?

John: Indeed. They’re cocaine-ers.

Craig: They’re cocaine-ers. I miss it and I wish we could get back to it and it’s not — The Paramount is my great hope. The Sony lot is also a lot, but it’s weird.

John: The Sony is weird. It’s divided. It’s on two different sides.

Craig: Exactly.

John: I said that Paramount was my first lot, but I think I actually had a class with Laura Ziskin on the Sony lot first. The Sony lot is really confusing to find your way around in.

Craig: It’s isolating and it’s maze-like, and they really have just like one “street”. Warner Brothers is just beautiful.

John: It’s gorgeous.

Craig: It’s sun baked and it’s so beautiful that their logo reflects all the — It’s got all those wonderful sound stages.

John: Elon Musk can debut products there.

Craig: Anyway. My one cool thing is a good old-fashioned old-school Hollywood lot that is still functioning and I’ll bump into people I know, and we’ll have lunch and who knows? The ideas might occur. It’s a nice place. I’m hoping that David Ellison can revitalize the Paramount lot. It’s truly extraordinary.

John: It really is fantastic. We have a request from a listener. They’re one cool thing. Drew, help us out with this.
Drew: Yes, this is from our listener, Victoria. She writes, “This is a personal one that’s dear to my heart. Scarecrow Video in Seattle is so important as an institution for the preservation of film, and it would be a tragedy to lose something like this. They’re trying to raise 1.8 million before the end of the year to prevent closure. It’s an incredibly tiny sum of money given the amount of billionaire-owned corporations and arts endowments in Seattle. It seems like no one wants to step up. Paul Allen probably would have if he was still alive, but there it is. I know you all care about the disappearance of film titles, something Scarecrow actively works against. It would be a loss to Seattle and the world if this collection was shut down.” She links to the fundraising and an article from UW magazine.

John: Fantastic. Great. Yes, video stores are this interesting place right now because while we don’t need to go there to rent DVDs and videotapes, they are sometimes the last place to get these things. They’ve also become basically social places where you can throw events. Finding that balance feels crucial.

Craig: Yes. Listen, rooting for them. Always difficult to rely on a fundraiser to keep your business going.

John: Yes, because it then implies the model itself is not sustainable.

Craig: It does feel like an end stage, kind of, we can extend your life by six months. I’m hopeful and who knows, maybe this would–

John: Yes, maybe the fundraiser is to get them to a new thing–

Craig: A new thing where they can. Sure, it would be great if — It’s Seattle so, hey, Bill Gates. Why not? Right? Rooting for you.

John: Yes. That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Nick Moore. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com.

That’s also the place where you can send questions. You will find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you find transcripts and sign up for our weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing.

We have T-shirts and hoodies and glassware. They’re all great. You’ll find them at Cotton Bureau. You can sign up to become a premium member at scriptnotes.net where you get all the back episodes and bonus segments like the one we’re about to record on the Dungeons & Dragons player’s handbook. Craig and Drew, thank you for getting through these 20 questions.

Craig: Thank you, guys.

Drew: Thank you.

[Bonus Segment]

John: All right, bonus segment. Thank you to all our premium members. We now get to go through one of our favorite things in the world, which is the Player’s Handbook. Craig, what do you hold in your hands right now?

Craig: I’m holding the Advanced D&D Player’s Handbook. This is 1978.

John: So you had this book.

Craig: AD&D. I did and I did not understand it.

John: Yes, and that’s what’s so crucial about these books is that they’re difficult to get into. They’re full of tables, so many tables.

Craig: So many tables.

John: Then lists of spells that are duplicated for each of the different classes that could cast identical spells, which is nuts.

Craig: Looking at this, I can understand why I was fascinated as a kid and it starts with the cover. Art has always been a huge part of these books. This is something that Wizards of the Coast is getting pretty savvy with. There’s so much art in the new one. This old one, what you had was this big, demonic, devilish creature with gems for eyes.

John: Yes, a statue of it.

Craig: Yes, a statue of some rogues trying to pull it out. You had some cool guys in the foreground and a dead snake man. All these wonderful things that made me go, “Yes.” Then you open it and the text is so tiny.

John: It’s tiny. It is like a Helvetica font.

Craig: It is dense and it is for adults. That’s the thing that really I didn’t I’d understand as a kid was, and especially AD&D, how this was not for — I was seven. Look at the tables and charts index. That’s like six-point font. Even that, and we could read it back then.

John: Yes, because we were young.

Craig: We were like, “Oh, no.” I could not crack into this.

John: Hand that to Drew because I don’t think he’s seen that. Also on the table here, we have all the different editions between them. That was the first edition. The 1989 second edition Players Handbook, 2E.

Craig: That was a very popular one for a long time.

John: It was a very popular one. 2E stayed around for a long time, and it got closer just to what we’re expecting now.

Craig: Ish.

John: Ish, but there were still fundamental changes to the rules with each new generation of this thing.

Craig: Oh, yes.

John: Going back to the original AD&D Player’s Handbook, the systems that it established were really taken from tabletop role-playing, tabletop combat simulation games.

Craig: Yes, it was chain mail, I think was what it was. Gygax had his initial thing.

John: There were a lot of tables. Your armor class, you wanted a negative number for your armor class, which is crazy.

Craig: Negative armor class was very confusing.

John: You would roll your twenty-sided die to see if you hit somebody, but then you had to consult a chart to see what it was. Over the years, they made some simplifications to things to make things a little more streamlined.

Craig: No more [unintelligible 01:16:36] You hit armor class zero.

John: Zero, yes, was the goal. Second edition still felt like it was a cleaned-up version of probably first edition. There were some changes but it still had the same core classes.

Craig: Yes, but you can start to see, if you look at the cover of AD&D Player’s Handbook, and the font, Advanced D&D, right? Then you look at the font for 2E, you can start to see that they’ve actually discovered, they’re starting to get closer to what becomes like the standard — It’s readable and the cover art is exciting.

John: There’s color inside.

Craig: There’s color inside. Look, it’s not as tiny-tiny and they have explanations of things. Original D&D was not meant to be as big as it was. It was really part of this mail-order, catalogy world of people who are into combat simulation. Now it catches on and you can start to see it getting closer. Fourth Edition, maybe it was a step backwards, I think, in terms of complexity. By the time you get to Fifth Edition, which is now 10 years ago, that’s when everything changed.

John: First edition, 1974. Second Edition, we played a bit, no one would talk about that. Third Edition, really 3.5, became the default standard D&D that people are thinking about. In 2014, there was this fourth edition, no one cares.

Craig: Fourth Edition.

John: Fourth Edition, they tried to systematize things in a way that felt very much like it was taken from video role-playing games. Everything was in these neat silos and it was tidy in some ways, but not interesting.

Craig: D&D just started withering. A lot of people were like, “I’m not playing that version.” What you ended up having were loads of people playing like, “No, we play 2. We play AD&D, like old-school AD&D, or we play version 2 or we play version 3, 5. We’re not doing 4.” Now you have everybody all over the place. Then 5 comes along and sweeps everybody up. It was like they fixed so much and made it so much more fun. I have to say, so far, based on the 2024. So 2024 is not version 6. We’re going to end up calling it 5.5. 2024 is too, damn– It’s 5.5 and I love it so far.

John: I think they made some really [unintelligible 01:19:08].

Craig: Really good changes.

John: Before we get into it though, Drew, this is your first time seeing any of these books. What is your reaction to them?

Drew: My reaction to the original AD&D book is: that is my hell.

Craig: Yes, terrifying, right?

Drew: Terrifying.

Craig: It’s intimidating.

Drew: The character classes, too, just the words get overwhelming. When you look at the table of contents, this is obviously, this is a manual. I can understand if you’re going to find a specific thing, it’s very helpful for that. Looking at the difference between the chapters, like chapter 8 into chapter 9, you can’t even tell where–

Craig: No, there’s zero layout. By the way, the 5th edition had no real index, no real good chaptering.

John: If you look at my copy here, I’ve added little tabs to the edge so you can find stuff.

Craig: We all added tabs, which is insane. Thankfully now they have a good index, although everything is also digital now, so it’s a little easier. Look at the difference in thickness.

We’re looking at the second edition and the original, versus 2024. ’24 has so many more pages. Why? Less information in this handbook. Bigger font. More artwork.

John: So much more artwork, all in color.

Craig: So much more fun and things are laid out carefully, so when you get into spells, like here, I’m into the spell section. Look.

Drew: Oh, that’s beautiful.

Craig: There’s five spells per page. How many spells per page in the in the D&D?

John: Oh God. 10?

Craig: More? Look at this. It’s insane. It’s a tiny, tiny, tiny. Look at how long the descriptions are. Based on how long the descriptions are here, they really also just got good at–

John: Yes, summarizing or basically standardizing on how to talk about things. How to talk about the diameter of an [unintelligible 01:20:48] something like that. Let’s talk about the function, though, of a player’s handbook because it’s a manual meant to provide instructions, but it’s also a reference material. You’re constantly referring back to things in it. That’s the source of truth for everyone playing. Everyone agrees to be the same thing. Even though it’s called the player’s handbook, it’s really the handbook for everyone because all of it’s the Dungeon Master’s Guide.

Craig: Dungeon Master’s Guide is optional. It just gives you optional extra stuff to learn and consider.

John: It gives you descriptions of magical items and things like that.

Craig: Some rules about cover in combat and little stuff like that, which is great. I mean, I have it. If you’re a DM, you should have it, but the handbook is all you need.

John: Yes. Then, of course, the third book in the Trinity would be a Monster manual. That was from the very start.

Craig: That’s just downloadable content. It’s extra stuff.

John: What is so different about– because you and I both started playing again with the 2014 rules. As we started playing, we were bemoaning the fact that this player’s handbook is so hard to find some stuff in. But then over the years, everything was just online. Now, as we were playing last night, we just Google a thing. If we needed to know what is the damage of a thrown trident, we’re googling that. We’re not looking up on a book.

Craig: Right. If you’re inside your VTT, like roll 20, go to the companion. You’re on D&D Beyond, just look it up. It’s all integrated in there. Yes, there are also third-party websites that have compiled everything. Finding stuff now, no problem. What I really appreciate about the– We don’t need to get to the esoteric of the rules changes. I think people will fall asleep.

But what I do love about the 5.5, the new manual, is that it spends time up front doing the one thing I wish they had done in 1978 for seven-year-old me, which is to go, “What is this actually? What is this game?” Because I was like, what I know about games is there’s a board and you move around and you get to the end, how do you win, all these things. That’s not how D&D works but they never freaking told you that. In the original book, they’re just like [unintelligible 01:22:54] Not that good.

John: Basically, it’s like, here are your attributes, like strength and intelligence.

Craig: What am I doing?

John: What are you doing? This book does a very smart job is it really talks through the little transcript of like, these are players playing the game, and this is what they’re saying and doing around the table.

Craig: This is how the game works.

John: Yes, exactly. You’re talking about the players independently of the characters that they’re playing, which is a crucial distinction there.

Craig: Yes, and teaching you how the DM interacts to provide boundaries, tests, challenges, information. All of that stuff is so important. Just having that at the beginning to say, if you have no idea how this works, it’s not like a game.

John: If you were to pick up the original player’s handbook, or really any player’s handbook up to now, and just like, “How does this work?” You would have a very hard time doing it unless someone could show you. This, I think you could actually pick up. If you actually started reading from page one, you would get something. These books were never designed to be read from page one, but this one you actually could.

Craig: Yes, this is an excellent evolution just from the point of view of clarity and then all the rules changes. Basically, the player base of D&D is expanded dramatically but at its core, there will always be a lot of people who are on the spectrum. When I talk to my daughter who loves Elden Ring, I’m like– and she’s autistic. I’m like, “This is a game made by autistic people for autistic people.” And D&D at its core, it really does appeal to people on the spectrum.

People on the spectrum are remarkably good at parsing rules, finding loopholes, exploits, what we call cheese in D&D, like ways to just easily do something that’s supposed to be hard, working various synergies. Over time, the rules-keepers, Jeremy Crawford, et cetera, start to shape things to cut off some of those loopholes, or if things seemed like they were too powerful, nerf them, as we say. Things seem too weak, buff them. They’ve done a really good job with that without breaking stuff.

John: Absolutely. The other thing I think this new version does, and it finds a good happy medium in there, is responding to how we think about things in 2024, which are different than 2014 and earlier years. Instead of races, we talk about species. There’s much less emphasis on what your species is, in terms of what special things it gives you. Classically, going back to the first one, like dwarves get plus one on strength or something.

Craig: They still have it. They’re walking a line clearly, so there is something a little weird about constantly going on– the word racial comes up a lot in D&D, like why do you have dark vision? Oh, it’s racial. There’s class attributes, racial attributes. Everybody gets a little squirmy about that now. They still have it, but they have deemphasized a lot of that, and they put way more of it into your background, which used to be a completely useless thing. It gave you two proficiencies and your skills, who cares?

John: Or loot.

Craig: Now the ability scores are connected to your background, not your race. What you end up with– your species, sorry. What you end up with your species are things like dark vision, can’t be put to sleep if you’re an elf. Look, there are no elves, there are no dwarves, there are no [unintelligible 01:26:20] or any of these things. Fantasy is fantasy and we can all– but we recognize, like when you look at the archetypes of these things going back to Tolkien, there are some tropes that work their way in. I think they handle the sensitivities here well without wandering into performative. I thought it was well managed.

John: Absolutely. It’s also a fairly public process, which is a challenging thing to do. As they were developing this new player’s handbook, they went through all these–

Craig: Testing cycles.

John: Testing cycles, basically. They would show you current state of it. You could download it and play it and see what that was like. That’s scary, but I think it was useful because there were big things they were going to try to do that they took out.

Craig: Absolutely.

John: Things like they were going to combine the spell list in this different way that nobody liked.

Craig: That’s what’s great about playtesting, especially with the core D&D audience. They’ll tell you like, “I hate this,” or you’ll watch them abuse something. It’s all about balance. I think on the whole, this 5.5 version tilts things more towards the player.

John: It tilts things more towards fun, which I think is crucial.

Craig: That’s what does make fun, right? Now, you do need to challenge players and make it — There’s a little bit of a–

John: Creep. Yes.

Craig: Mission creep, where you get more stuff, so then the monsters get more stuff, or else you’re just walking over everybody and you don’t care. That’s always interesting to keep an eye on. But I also love the way that they basically give everybody a feat to start with, because feats are things that a lot of players just sort of skipped past. They’re also really smart about how they’re handling multi-classing because they have two wings. They have the casual players who really don’t dig in too deep. Then they have the real D&D nerds who will go crazy and figure out that if you become a Paladin and a Sorcerer, now you’re a Sorcadin and you can do all this cool like, “Oh,” and then it gets crazy.

John: Absolutely. I think they have to both reward the person who wants to do that kind of thing and also not make it so that it breaks the game for anybody who doesn’t want to do it.

Craig: They are aware as anyone that a game is only as good as its DM. Have they put the new DM?

John: No.

Craig: That I’m hoping does the similar thing in the beginning that this handbook does, which is to teach DMs a little bit, because the bottom line is they’ve made this amazing system. If you have a bad DM, it’s a bad game.

John: Yes, totally.

Craig: Just as simple as that. If you have a good one, it’s a good one.

John: Yes. The DM is the DJ, it’s the host of the party, it’s the person who’s–

Craig: Storyteller. That’s also the person that needs to figure out how to balance things so that you are scared, and then when you succeed, you feel something as opposed to just, “Meh, next.” It’s tricky. You’ve been doing a great job. John has been our DM now for quite some time in this campaign, and Michael’s a good DM. We have great DMs.

John: We do and we have a great new player’s handbook.

Craig: We do.

John: Thank you much.

Craig: Thank you, guys.

Links:

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• Why AI Isn’t Going to Make Art by Ted Chiang for The New Yorker
• The Stereophonic Lawsuit
• Rachel Bloom’s “Death, Let Me Do My Special” on Netflix
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