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The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2019/professional-realism).

**John August:** Hello and welcome. My name is John August. And this is Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Craig is over in Europe and forgot his microphone. Luckily we have screenwriter, novelist, and TV showrunner Derek Haas here with us to fill in.

**Derek Haas:** This is my fourth time on the show.

**John:** Yeah. And we can see why, because your credits include film and television and books.

**Derek:** Yes.

**John:** You’ve written Wanted, 3:10 to Yuma, the Chicago Fire television universe.

**Derek:** Yes.

**John:** Welcome back Derek Haas.

**Derek:** Thank you, John. Thanks for having me.

**John:** And Happy New Year.

**Derek:** I’m so excited to be here. Happy New Year to you.

**John:** The reasons why I wanted you on the show is partly because I think because it’s been a New Year people have this goal, this perhaps resolution to do more writing this year. And you do more writing than almost anybody I know. You accomplish more.

**Derek:** I love to write. I love to write so I’m always saying yes when somebody gives me a challenge. And so I’m excited that people are making those resolutions because I think you can do more. You can have it all.

**John:** You can have it all.

**Derek:** You can have a job that you work all day in, and I know it because I’ve done it, and then you can get up early, or you can stay up late and you can write. And you can write for you until you’re writing for somebody else.

**John:** Very nice. The second thing I want to talk with you about is professional realism, so basically how we portray people’s jobs on screen. And we talked about this in the medical profession but I want to talk about it in other professions as well.

**Derek:** Great.

**John:** Cool. Tiny bit of news and housekeeping. Craig and I are doing a screening of The Princess Bride to celebrate William Goldman’s momentous achievement. So it’s a screening at the WGA Theater on January 27th at 5pm followed by a discussion with me and Craig talking about the movie that everyone has just watched. It is free and open to everybody, not just WGA members. So, I think this is how I understand the door situation is going to work. I think doors open at 4:30pm. WGA members get first seats. Then at 4:45 it’s open to everybody. So, come see us at the WGA Theater where we talk about The Princess Bride.

**Derek:** Great movie.

**John:** I like the movie, too. Craig loves the movie.

**Derek:** Yeah.

**John:** But I think we’ll have some good discussions.

**Derek:** I remember seeing it for the first time in the movie theater and being blown away because I didn’t know what it was. And then it was so much funnier than I thought it was going to be. And all those characters have stuck around for a long time now.

**John:** I think I first saw the movie in an after-prom party junior year.

**Derek:** Perfect.

**John:** Yeah. It’s good. That’s how wholesome my prom situation was.

**Derek:** I was going to say.

**John:** Because the after-party is we’re going to watch The Princess Bride.

**Derek:** Mine was just like that.

**John:** Just like that. No kegs involved. All right, Derek, you have Chicago Fire and I just have a basic question. How much writing are you doing on an annual basis or weekly basis for Chicago Fire? Like what are your responsibilities writing-wise?

**Derek:** So I’m the showrunner of Chicago Fire, by myself, and I have two great head writers, Michael Gilvary and Andrea Newman who have been on the show since episode one, or 102 I should say since they didn’t do the pilot. And they are fantastic. So the three of us pretty much manage the day to day of the show, including all of the writing staff. And I write – well, last year I wrote nine of the 23 episodes that we did last year, either wrote or co-wrote. And then this year I’m probably going to write, I think when the time is all said and done I’ll have written five or six.

But generally speaking the scripts will go through my computer at some point. Gilvary and Andrea, when they write scripts I really don’t do a lot on theirs. They know the characters very well and we’re just kind of kismet together, the three of us. And then we also have a writer, Michael O’Shea, who has been on four years. And rarely do we end up having to polish up his scripts. Now, some of the newer writers we might end up doing a polish or helping out on. But I do a lot of writing.

**John:** So total number of words is still a huge number of words.

**Derek:** Yeah, I mean, when you think each script is probably 50 pages, 51, right in there, that I do. And then we also have outlines that we write that are 12-page, you know, single-spaced outlines. And then on top of that I write books that are – every two years I come out with a book that’s around 65,000 words. And then there’s the occasional, you know, write a – you know, help somebody out on a movie or one of those kind of things.

This year Dick Wolf asked me to help out on his other new show, FBI, so for episodes eight on I’ve been helping do that one. I’ve written a couple of those.

**John:** Just as spare time, as your hobby.

**Derek:** Spare time.

**John:** All right. So I think there’s a perception though that showrunners tend to be people who say yes or no, or people sort of see the big picture stuff, but you’re actually really getting in there, rolling up your sleeves and typing stuff.

**Derek:** Yeah. I don’t think that’s true at least amongst the showrunners I know. It’s less of that and more of you are the final arbiter of what’s going to be shot, which means the script, and the casting, and it’s a less of yes and no and more of let me get in there and do the nitty-gritty.

The actors, they like it when the showrunner is writing the show. They’ll look at the script and say, “Oh, this is a Derek script.” So, yeah.

**John:** Let’s try to offer some practical advice for writers who are getting started on their year’s work. And so we can talk about some macro ideas for getting stuff written and some micro ideas.

So, on the macro level, really like how are you planning your year ahead of writing and your months and then your weeks? But on a yearly level you guys have a sense that there’s going to be 22 episodes of the show.

**Derek:** Right.

**John:** And so you know that there’s probably eight, nine months of solid writing to be done there. And so you know you cannot be planning on – you’re not going to be able to do a feature during that time.

**Derek:** Right.

**John:** 100% of your time is spent doing that.

**Derek:** Right. So, because of that – I have a rigid structure that I have to do. I mean, the great thing about television and the hard thing about television is that you’re in prep on one episode, you’re shooting one episode, and you’re in post on another. And the train doesn’t stop from June 1st is when we start in the writers’ room ’til the end of April. We have about two months that we don’t work. Well, a month and a half.

And so we’ve written, we’re on episode 14 starts shooting tomorrow of 22. We know we’re going to have 22 this year. So we have eight to go. And I’m already thinking like in my head, oh my god, get one more done. One closer to the end.

We’re confident but not counting our chickens that we’re going to get another season. So I can usually put that – I know that six weeks I’m going to be free and then June 1st it’s going to start over again and we’re going to have a new season to go.

But, I’m also going to write a book this year. So–

**John:** When will you find time to write the book? Is it before you start your day?

**Derek:** Yeah. I’ve always done it that way. I get up early in the morning, super early, 5 o’clock a lot of times, and I’ll have an hour and a half that I know before my kids get up that I’m going to have to myself. So if I can get up at five and I’m at my desk at 5:15, which is generally what I do, I’m a pretty good wake up and go kind of thing. I don’t need my coffee or any of that stuff. I’m already thinking the night before what I’m going to do. And then I try to write a thousand words in an hour and a half. Which for me is, I write freehand in a Moleskine book. And if I do four pages writing pretty small – I’ve just got the system down. I know four pages is about a thousand words. It’s about 250 words a page. And I generally try not to complete an idea and even sometimes not complete a sentence so that that next morning when I wake up I can start fresh again.

And then if I write 15 days in a month that’s 15,000 words. So I don’t have to write every single day and the weekends you can take off from doing the book and get my head together. But I already know what I’m going to write, so I’ve started planning that out in October. OK, here’s the beginning, here’s the middle, and here’s the end. I don’t write a full outline for a book. I’d rather just kind of let the writing flow. And that’s how I do it.

**John:** So you segued from macro to very micro, sort of like the big picture down to the micro. But I want to stop and think about the macro a little bit more because you are on a set schedule that’s being dictated by other folks, and being dictated by production that you have to be in this time. Back when you were just a feature writer how long were you blocking out for writing a feature and how did you deal with problems of being stacked up on work or having like there’s a slot free but then there’s other stuff you need to do? How did you balance that out?

**Derek:** Yeah, because I always liked writing more than – I know there are screenwriters who get super in their own heads about it and they talk about it as being painful. But I was never that way. I like being behind my desk and writing. So if I could – if we had more than one thing going on it was priority of, OK, they’re expecting this outline in three weeks so I need to work on that. Whereas the other one is expecting a first draft in two months. OK, then I will take my day and I will look at it like a work day. And maybe if I can just say that I’m going to have four solid hours of writing as opposed to just thinking or going out on, you know, walking.

You’re always – as a writer – you’re always thinking. I know you’re like that. You’re at night, at 10:30 at night, and you’re thinking about what you’re going to write the next day. But I can have four hours where I’m just sitting behind my desk and the phone is not going to ring and I put a stop sign outside my door so my kids know don’t come in and bother me, then I can concentrate on that job.

**John:** So you are looking at – if I can do that four hours a day, if I can guarantee it myself I can get a script done in how many weeks?

**Derek:** Oh, for a full script would be two or three months. I mean, look, if push comes to shove and you’re up against a production deadline then you can do anything in any amount of time. I mean, you’ve done it and I’ve done it where it’s–

**John:** I do find that that’s true for features. And so if I need to write a feature in two weeks, you know what, I can get that feature done in two weeks. You cannot do that with a book.

**Derek:** That’s true.

**John:** That’s one of the things I’ve really noticed about Arlo Finch is that even though it seems like a book and a movie are similar things, the number of words is just so vast.

**Derek:** It’s daunting. Right. Yeah, no, you couldn’t write a book in two weeks. Maybe if you were just, you know, going around the clock. I know that Stephen King has his lost years of the ‘80s where he was cranking them out. I couldn’t do that. But for a movie or a TV show I’ve found that writers generally, it’s like putting water in a bowl and it expands to the size of the bowl. So if you tell a writer you’ve got four weeks you’ll get that script in four weeks. If you tell him, man, I need a first draft in four days, wow, suddenly the water expands to the bowl and you get the draft in four days.

It’s never – it’s not going to be your best, but I think also writers freeze up and they get lazy and they say, “Oh, OK, they’re not expecting this first draft for six months,” and then they put it all off. And it’s the same two months that they would have spent on it, but they put it off. And so I don’t think there’s a quality equivalent to how quickly or how slowly you do something.

**John:** I agree. I think people can – obviously if you’re rushing through stuff you can kind of read rushed writing. And there have been times where I’ve read scripts where it’s like you can kind of feel the whiteboard marker there. You can say like this is the broad strokes of this and you get what that is. It’s harder to say that this is a 30-week draft versus a 12-week draft.

**Derek:** I couldn’t agree more.

**John:** So generally in town, you know, for a first draft of a feature eight weeks, 10 weeks, 12 weeks are standard terms. When we were building the Start Button for the WGA those were the kinds of things we put in there for first drafts because that was a common–

**Derek:** It makes sense.

**John:** Common default. A thing I’ve had to do more recently is just look at my calendar and print out 12 months and say I’m blocking off these weeks to write this thing because if I don’t do that I can’t.

**Derek:** Great. That’s smart.

**John:** The challenge is sometimes I’ll say like, OK, well I should be able to start on this project at that point, but then the rights didn’t come through for that thing. So I’m waiting – I don’t want to start a thing that I don’t know if I can really write.

**Derek:** Yeah. You’re calendar, it’s tough to match actual dates as opposed to blocks of time. And so once they say go, then you’ve got 10 weeks, but the go might move two weeks or, you know, you try to plan your spring break and all of a sudden that’s when everybody wants to meet, you know, and it’s hard as a writer. Everybody thinks you’re flexible at all times and you’re not.

**John:** You’re not. There was a project this last year that I did genuinely want to do and it became clear that, I’ll say it, this was a Fox project and Fox couldn’t wait for me because they weren’t sure that they would be around in April when I’d be free.

**Derek:** Right. Well, that’s, I mean, once you’re as advanced as John is you actually have slots and your agent will say, “He’s got a slot coming up in October,” and studios will move their stuff around for a writer like you. But when you’re just starting out your slot becomes whatever they say it is.

**John:** But increasingly I think it’s not just writers at a certain level because so many of us are going back between features and television, like if that show does 10 or 12 episodes that person needs to go back on that show. So Megan Amram is going to go back on The Good Place, and so she’s available to do something until The Good Place starts and then she’s not available again. So that’s the challenge.

**Derek:** Right. That is a challenge. Good for Megan though.

**John:** Yeah. So let’s try to make advice that’s applicable to most listeners. I would say it’s going to take eight, 10, 12 weeks, but put some edges on that and say like within these three months I’m going to write this script. And to write this script I’m going to have to block off a certain amount of time every day or every other day to get there.

**Derek:** Yep.

**John:** A number of pages per day is useful. So three pages, four pages, five pages. You’ll get there. If you’re writing prose, a thousand words I think is a really good benchmark. And I aim for a thousand words a day and if I do that I finish a book. If I don’t do that–

**Derek:** And a thousand words, that’s not crazy.

**John:** It’s not as much as you think.

**Derek:** That’s not crazy. It’s not asking too much. Like I said, I can do it in an hour and a half generally speaking.

**John:** A thousand words is a short chapter.

**Derek:** Right. Oh, for me it’s not even a chapter, you know, because I only write 10 chapters.

**John:** Middle grade versus–

**Derek:** Yeah. Exactly. But the other thing I think as a writer you can say to yourself is give yourself a time limit for the actual outline or germination of the idea before you start writing, but with a time limit. And then set your dates from there so that part of your say two months you have to write your draft does not include all of the thinking that goes on. Otherwise you’re just going to be floundering. You always use that analogy that I liked about painting the lines over again. You can’t do that and expect to get a draft done in two months. Which is when you write five pages and then instead of picking up page six the next day you go back and you’re writing page one again, and rewriting, rewriting, rewriting, and then starting, you only get to page six instead of to page 10, which is a bad way to do it.

**John:** And it’s actually much more of a problem in books than in features because it takes an hour to read the book up to that point.

**Derek:** Exactly.

**John:** In a feature if you have to you can reread it, but you sort of can’t in a book.

**Derek:** But I’d rather get a draft done and then start the revision process. And even if that means that I’m not correcting things as I go than to keep working on the same 30 pages for a month.

**John:** Yep. I would say that the first script I ever finished was back when I was interning at Universal. And it seemed like I was working a fulltime job, so how did I have time to do it, but the thing is I had a completely mindless job. I was like filing papers. And it required no brain usage at all over the course of the day. And so I could come home and still have a tremendous amount of creative energy. So I would spend those nights handwriting pages and I would type them up during my lunch break the next day. And I got a lot of done during that time.

**Derek:** That’s great.

**John:** And so if you have a kind of BS job, that’s an advantage to that. Because people always ask like, oh, do I need to get a job in the industry, something with connections and all that stuff? Those are great, but it’s very hard to find time to do the stuff you need to do if that’s the kind of job you have.

**Derek:** You need some thinking time.

**John:** One last thing I will say is that a thing I’ve done a lot more of over the last couple of years is what I call sprints. And so you have basically a sprint, because you’re trying to get four of your Moleskine pages done in an hour and a half. I have 60-minute sprints. And so I will set 60 minutes, hit the clock, start the timer, and for 60 minutes I will do nothing but write. And what’s nice about the 60-minute rule is it creates boundaries for myself, but also creates boundaries for other people. So if I get a text saying like, hey, can you do this – I can get back to you in 37 minutes. And it clears that off. It’s like putting up little stop signs saying like I’m not gone forever, I’m just gone for the next little bit here.

**Derek:** I’ve seen you do that on Twitter and there’s no run up to it. You say I’m going to do a 60-minute sprint in two minutes. And I’m like well I would have done it if you give me some notice.

**John:** I’m trying to be better about that. So I usually do it at the start of the hour and I’m trying to give at least 20 minutes warning.

**Derek:** Yeah. I’ve seen it. I’ll do it at some point with you.

**John:** Cool. Let’s move on to topic two, professional realism. So this came up this morning because Sloane Crosley had a piece in the New York Times. She’s the author of I Was Told There’d Be Cake. But she points out that when she was working as a book publicist she would see her job portrayed in films and it was really crazily inaccurate that didn’t resemble reality much at all. And she points to things like The Proposal and the TV show Younger as being good examples of this.

And Derek, I was thinking of you because you have a show that’s all about firefighting. You also have shows about doctors and lawyers and other Chicagoans. So how much are you thinking about the realism of that job versus what your dramatic necessity is?

**Derek:** Yeah, I read the article after you sent it to me and shout out to Sutton Foster who is a good friend of mine who is the star of Younger and her picture was in the article. And I was laughing to myself because somebody in the industry of publishing was complaining about the portrayal of the way publishers are portrayed. And all I think about is the show successful, is the drama good. And for firefighters we have a big firefighting following. Firehouses around the country watch our show live and then we hear about it on Twitter.

We have a consultant in both paramedic and a fire chief, Steve Chikerotis, and Michelle Martinez who do their best to give us as accurate as they can a portrayal of what it’s like working in a firehouse with the parameters knowing that I’m going to overrule them if the story merits overruling. For instance, a firehouse, if you were typically in it for 24 hours, twenty two of those hours might be boring. We don’t have that luxury to be boring on the show. And so we might fudge how many calls, especially death-defying calls, that one firehouse would show up in a particular day.

Now, when we get to the actual art of firefighting we try to again be as accurate as possible. Here’s a problem John that you may not know. If a firefighter is in an actual fire, you wouldn’t be able to see anything. You couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. Smoke is zero percent visibility. Obviously you can’t do that in a television show. So we cheat that. We make it smoky. We make the fires fierce. But we have to have our firefighters being able to move around, talk.

We actually redesigned the helmets that the firefighters wear so you can see their faces, otherwise it would just be their eyes. It would be like the storm troopers or the pilots in Star Wars, you know. So we designed clear masks resembling more like diving masks and put the breathing apparatus at the bottom so we could see the actors act inside the fire.

But I do think realism helps, you know.

**John:** So with your experts are you going to them early on in the process saying like what would the reality of this be, or are they vetting scripts later down the road?

**Derek:** Both. And in fact we talk to them prior to the season about any interesting – they’re still working, well the fire chief is retired now, but had a 35-year career and is one of the most decorated firefighters in Chicago. And then our paramedic still goes out two times a week. So they have 72-hour off and then 24 on. And so in a week she can give us 10 calls that we could use in an episode. But so they tell us anything interesting that they can think of before we start the season. Then as we do an outline they respond to the outline. Oh, actually we’d have three firefighters respond in that area of the fire. Somebody would be on the roof, venting the roof. These kind of things. And then we’ll put them in the script if it works for what we’re doing.

Then they read the script and they’ll comment on dialogue. Just little things you wouldn’t think about that a firefighter might say or a paramedic might say, or something you didn’t know wasn’t available in a firehouse, you know. That kind of thing. And so then they vet the script and then they’re on set. And so if the actors have any questions as they’re performing the duties–

**John:** Or how to put on this piece of equipment.

**Derek:** Exactly.

**John:** That kind of stuff. Great.

**Derek:** Now we’ve been doing it so long, we’re in our seventh season, that most of our actors can tell other firefighters how to fight a fire at this point. Yeah, there’s a learning curve but the consultants are key when you’re writing this kind of a show.

**John:** So that’s Chicago Fire and there have been other sort of emergency shows like that before. You’ve also down like 3:10 to Yuma. So in a situation like that how are you doing the research to figure out what exactly the mechanics of the town were like, sort of like how stuff would work. And to what degree did you stick to that versus like this is a story and we’re in this universe?

**Derek:** That was more book reading where obviously we didn’t have as many people that we could talk to. But at the time that we were writing that script the book came out right before, by Stephen Ambrose, that was about the transcontinental railroad and where the two points came together of the railroads. And in reading that book we were doing the research of what a town would look like that had sprung up to satisfy the workers of the railroad, which was where the ultimate third act was going to be in that script. And what we discovered was that these places were pits of people trying to pry railroad workers from their money, so it was gamblers, and whores, and conmen, and those kind of things. And that’s what we ended up using as the spine of the book.

Elmore Leonard had written the original short story, so that was already – he had crafted who the posse was and the sheriff. And then Jim Mangold who directed the movie, who probably could be a historian himself, did a lot of the research once the movie was going.

**John:** And for Silver Bear, so Silver Bear is an imagined assassin. How much are you limiting yourself to things that would be possible in the real world versus like these are things that happen in books with assassins? What’s the balance there?

**Derek:** Right. Well, when I first had the idea for the book Michael Brandt and I who – Michael Brandt was my partner for a long time – we went to visit Quantico and the FBI headquarters to do research for a project for Universal. And when we were there one of the FBI, one of our consultants, was talking about how he had been on a contract killer case. And I just remember that contract killer idea. It seemed fake and it’s not. There are people who are hired to kill people.

And so I was just grilling him with questions and that sort of fed my original sensibility of what it would take to be a contract killer. And then I just let imagination take over. And now most of those books when I write them feature cities that I’ve visited and spent a lot of time in and so I can draw real descriptions. I’m trying not to be fake about – in fact, I try not to set anything in a location I haven’t been to, because I don’t want it to be inauthentic.

**John:** I get that. So let’s talk about why sometimes a person’s job in the real world isn’t portrayed that same way on screen. You talked about the boredom problem. That most people’s real lives are kind of boring and what they’re doing at work is kind of boring. So you can’t just sort of sit in that space because that would be boring. It’s like showing up at a boring party. Nobody wants to be there.

But I think the more important thing to remember is that we are showing a character who has a job. The job is not the character.

**Derek:** Right.

**John:** And so while the job is an important aspect of the character, certainly with challenge it’s a very important aspect of the character, it’s not ultimately what we’re there to watch. And so if it’s a matter of what’s the most interesting for the character versus what is most realistic for the job, as writers we’re always going to pick what’s most interesting for the character.

**Derek:** And it would be the death of drama if you – in fact, I can feel the complaint from that article because whenever you see screenwriters portrayed in Hollywood on the screen it’s nothing like what our jobs typically are. In fact, Hollywood is nothing like typically–

**John:** Isn’t it really crazy how unlike it it is?

**Derek:** Yeah. So I think you’d have that complaint if there were a show about plumbing and you were a plumber. There would be a million plumbers going, “Ugh, we never use a three-quarter wrench when we undo the pipe.” But there’s a reason why we chose that in the…

I don’t know about you, I generally don’t like movies about Hollywood.

**John:** I like some movies about how. But I take it in general. I enjoyed the, I think it was the Showtime series Episodes, the one with Matt LeBlanc.

**Derek:** I watched the first season. It was funny. It’s heightened.

**John:** It’s heightened. It’s realistic and then just pushed into a place where it’s like that’s nuts where you got to, but I get it. And what I think they did is that they recognized what the natural conflicts were and just turned them up to 15. And what the natural absurdities were and just turned them up a lot.

**Derek:** Exactly.

**John:** Which is fine. The same way that Frasier Crane is not a very good psychiatrist probably. But is an enjoyable character to watch.

**Derek:** But all you’ve got to do is get 10 screenwriters in a room and realize their Hollywood is totally different from your Hollywood anyway. And I think that’s probably true of somebody else in publishing might watch Younger and be like, “They nailed that. They nailed that.”

**John:** So, a couple of years ago for Legendary I did a pilot. Did you ever read that pilot? I did a pilot about Hollywood.

**Derek:** No.

**John:** It was about a fictitious studio. And so it was going to be one of Legendary’s first TV shows and so I wrote it. And we never actually got it set up. And Billy Ray’s show, which was about another studio, a historical studio, got made. But mine was a present day show. And it was really interesting writing about real life because I knew sort of exactly what those conversations were. I knew sort of like what the things around this would be.

But I remember Kelly Marcel had read it. She’s like, “I can’t believe you included that anecdote.” And I’m like what? “Well that’s about those two actors.” I had no idea what that story was. Those same things happen again and it always feels like, oh, that’s an absurd thing that can only happen in a story.

**Derek:** We’ll get that a lot where I’ll get an email from somebody in the Denver fire department and say, “Oh, did you read about our fund drive?” No, they were doing that also in Chicago, or Miami, or wherever. Yeah, we have to tell people we’re not stealing stories.

**John:** I can understand why being in the Dick Wolf universe like they’re used to Law & Order where like clearly you can see–

**Derek:** Ripped from the headlines.

**John:** Ripped from the headlines, yes. But you’re not ripping from the headlines.

**Derek:** No, I mean, I will – in the summer when we’re gearing up for the first part of the season I’ll look through the Internet really for interesting calls, what we call calls, or when the bells go off. And I saw in Japan or somewhere there was a woman whose foot had been run over in a revolving door. And I had childhood fear of revolving doors.

**John:** Oh totally.

**Derek:** And anytime we can do something that’s suspenseful or – so I saw this picture and I just took the picture, put it in my story folder, and then when we got out and in the middle of the season it was like we need an interesting call. I remembered that picture and we put that in. So, yes, it’s ripped from the headlines, kind of. It definitely jogged my memories of fears I had as a kid.

**John:** I would say that the last reason why I think our onscreen jobs and real screen jobs don’t match up so nicely is that our conflicts in the real world aren’t as clean. They aren’t as interesting. And so we suppress things a lot. We don’t vent the way that we want characters to able to vent. People don’t express themselves in ways that we need characters to express themselves. And by necessity onscreen we’re winnowing down the number of people who are actually speaking parts. And so you can’t sort of have relationships with 20 people over the course of your job.

**Derek:** And they don’t resolve as easily as we need in an hour and 45 minutes.

**John:** Or even over the span of 10 episodes. Most of your conflicts don’t really resolve.

**Derek:** No. Like I saw somebody out on Larchmont which is close to John and my house who I hadn’t seen in, I don’t know, nine or 10 years. And I didn’t have a problem with that person. Just they faded. When we had kids it kind of went in different directions. And that wouldn’t work very well in a TV show.

**John:** Yeah. Like who was this person? You didn’t set him up? What is this?

All right, let’s get to some questions. We have listener questions and some of them were from the TV bucket and I figured you’d be the perfect person to answer them.

I’ll start with Paige. Paige writes in, “This is a topic that never seems to be addressed no matter what combinations of words I Google, so I’m hoping to encourage a discussion. When someone gets their first job on a show that ends up getting canceled, how do they make money if they don’t get staffed again right away? I’m truly at a loss about this. I got my first staff writer job last October with about $300 in bank account, having quit my day job. And after 10 episodes of WGA minimums, paying out three reps, and the $2,500 WGA entrance fee, I’m down to almost nothing.

“Obviously this is a very specific situation, but again, is this natural? My reps get very uncomfortable when I mention my financial situation which I find weird. Does everyone in Hollywood have a trust fund? My parents suggest I go back to working in retail, but is that normal? What is normal?”

**Derek:** That’s a tough one. There is no normal, as John and I were just talking about. Your situation has probably been shared a bunch but then there’s each individual is going to be different. I think, look, if you get a staff job you want to get to the next step. If a show gets canceled nobody is guaranteed anything. That’s the problem.

And TV business is rough. I mean, most shows do not go past season one. That’s just the numbers. And certainly don’t go longer than that. This business is not a long term business. It’s more like a circus. And so you have to put money away. You have to work the other job. My first two years here my wife was working. I thought I was going to have to get a job at Starbucks and ended up squeaking out, getting that one little rewrite that could keep me going until we got a movie going.

But I worked in advertising for four years and saved my money before that. There’s no shame. There is zero shame in working another job while you’re trying to get staffed.

**John:** Yeah, but to Paige’s question, is it weird that I was on a show that ran 10 episodes and now I’m broke again. And I was staff writing. And I would say that’s not weird. But I’d say what has changed is because there are so many short seasons. Ten years ago she would be on a show that would go 13 or 22 episodes if it didn’t get canceled right away, but hopefully. But scale, while fantastic, scale is the minimum wage that writers can be paid in the guild. It’s not that much money. And so you’ve got to be protecting that.

Also, she says that she’s paying her three reps, so she’s paying her lawyer, she’s paying her manager, and her agent. Her manager is getting 10%. Her agent is getting 10%. Her lawyer is getting 5%. That’s 25% away from the start. She doesn’t seem to have a writing partner, but if she had a writing partner that would be another 50%.

**Derek:** Half.

**John:** Half of that would be gone.

**Derek:** Plus taxes.

**John:** Plus taxes.

**Derek:** No, it’s a tough business when you’re starting out. I think that’s why people make exit plans and end up back in Texas or wherever they came from. And it’s hard. You have to keep both ears open and be looking for the next job. And it’s not your fault it got canceled as a staff writer. You have nothing to do with that. But, again, this business is way much more like a circus than it is like had you gone into the insurance business where you can build a 30-year career in the same company.

No, I mean, this is the same for John, the same for me. Chicago Fire could get canceled tomorrow and then I’m looking for my next gig. And you sock it away when you can, because you know there’s going to be some lean times. And you’re in a boat a lot of people have been in. So, find the next job. Save as much as you can. Work retail if you have to. And don’t worry about all the doubters. And keep at it.

**John:** Yeah. We have friends who are driving Uber. I mean, just whatever you need to do to sort of keep some liquidity, because that also keeps you able to stay in the game longer. And be available for meetings. Just try to get next staffing.

**Derek:** Yeah. A lot of people do the bartending and whatever jobs at night so that if you have to go to something you can get there.

**John:** Do you want to take Alex’s question?

**Derek:** Yeah, Alex in Brooklyn writes, “How do you typically handle writing dialogue where the characters are cutting each other off, arguing perhaps?” If you just cut the sentence off midline it looks fine on the page, but I find it’s difficult for actors to perform as their intonation tends to come down on that final word when it’s supposed to sound mid-sentence.”

**John:** Yeah. So cutting people off.

**Derek:** Cutting people off?

**John:** Derek, I’d like to ask you a question about–

**Derek:** How do I cut people off?

**John:** In your scripts are you a dot-dot-dot? Are you a dasher?

**Derek:** I’m both. I’m a dasher on cutting people off. But I use ellipses a lot in action descriptions. When I cut someone off, let’s say it’s John and he does a half a sentence and I do the dashes. And then the next person I put in the parenthesis, the Riley’s as we call them, I put “Interrupts.” So it would say Derek (interrupts) “You mean I cut you off?”

Now, what happens when you’re still involved in the production is that the actors will ask you what was the rest of the sentence going to be. And then you tell them and then they do it until they get interrupted. So, you know, they have to find it as an actor. I would much prefer you not put in parentheses the rest of the sentence in your script. Just write it the way it’s supposed to sound and then production is a whole different animal and you can always tell them what the rest of the sentence was going to be.

**John:** Yeah. So you will see some scripts where they do bracket out the overlaps dialogue.

**Derek:** I don’t love it. It’s fine.

**John:** It’s fine. It’s totally a choice. If you do it, do it consistently. It’s not a thing I like to do. What I do like about Alex’s question is pointing out that actors do have a tendency to sort of like drop that last word if they know it’s going to be going that way.

**Derek:** John’s rule that has stuck with me and Craig says this a lot too for as long as they’ve been on the air is just make it clear to the reader. So you can use brackets. You don’t have to. But you can always talk to the actors. You know, the script as Craig will often say is a blueprint for what you’re doing. It’s not published as set in stone. And so you should be able to talk to the actors and tell them, OK, here’s what I was thinking.

**John:** Yeah. Mel from Los Angeles writes, “My agent has just negotiated my first TV staff writer contract.” Congratulations, Mel. “So, if the series is renewed for more seasons, the next three years seem pretty clear as far as TV work is involved. I’m also interested in working in features, both original and open writing assignments, as well as creating a TV show one day. At one point do I really need to get an entertainment lawyer? I also have a manager, by the way? In other words, when would that additional 5% commission really pay off?”

**Derek:** Have you ever been without an entertainment lawyer?

**John:** I was for my very first job I did not have an entertainment lawyer.

**Derek:** So when did you decide?

**John:** I got one when I sold Go. So my first couple jobs I guess my agent just did the deal. They were scale.

**Derek:** I’ve had an entertainment lawyer the whole time, so I don’t know what the – in fact, I found that the entertainment lawyer is the one who does–

**John:** Makes the deal.

**Derek:** A lot of the micro negotiations within the negotiation. So, I would say do it as soon as you can. I think it’s worth it. I don’t know.

**John:** Yeah. So, I go back and forth, because a lot of writers in Mel’s position where like they’re staff writers, your deal is really boilerplate. There’s not a lot of magic there happening.

**Derek:** The agent can do it.

**John:** With a feature deal it can be a little bit more sophisticated and complicated. I would say that for my experience I feel like my entertainment attorney has more than earned his 5% on every single deal.

**Derek:** Me too.

**John:** Because he’s negotiating up things. He’s making sure that second step is covered. He’s watching out for eventualities. He’s been fantastic. But for a person who is starting in TV–

**Derek:** Maybe wait till the next step?

**John:** Maybe wait till the next job.

**Derek:** If you go from staff writer to story editor.

**John:** Or when you’re trying to sell a feature. I think on a feature it’s really clear that they’re going to be able to see some stuff that’s not going to be obvious to everybody else.

**Derek:** I was thinking about that interrupting question because in the last episode of Chicago Fire we had a woman talking and then the male actor interrupted her by kissing her. It was one of those where it was all heated. And so the director said to, Jesse Spencer is the actor, said to surprise her this time on where you’re going to interrupt her because I want it to be a genuine surprise.

So he goes in for the kiss surprising her and her tooth bangs into his lip and splits his lip. And we had to call lunch for the first time ever on the show. We had an injury that resulted in we had to stop shooting because he split his lip. I said how bad of a kisser are you, Jesse, that you can’t–

**John:** Wow.

**Derek:** Yeah.

**John:** That’s not good. So, how do you fix a lip like that? Is that a super glue situation?

**Derek:** I don’t know. I think the makeup people have stuff, so maybe they did.

**John:** A little styptic pen or something.

**Derek:** They came back from lunch and got the scene. I know that.

**John:** That’s nice. So we have a question from Anonymous Anonymous. It’s long. But I think it’s useful. So maybe we’ll split this one up. Why don’t you take the first half?

**Derek:** “A friend and I have collaborated on a series together. We’ve written a pilot, built a show bible, and broken a three-series arc and want to get it out there. My friend has previously written, directed, and sold a well-received independent feature and has an agent and manager, while I do not. Because of this, his agent and manager are pushing for us to change the Written By line on the pilot to his name only, with both of us attached as Created By.

“When we inquire about the motivation we get one of two common answers. A, if you are co-writers then you are splitting the fees of one across two people. So it’s not worth your time. And, B, we can’t pitch something with two writers attached due to common industry expectations.”

**John:** “So why should they care if they’re splitting our fees, they’d still get the same cut, right? Is it too cynical of us to think they might be pushing to split us up and then sign separately so they can get twice the deal?

“The second part is more nuanced and something that my friend and I have discussed at length. There are numerous examples of co-writers/co-creators from Lord and Miller, Benioff and Weiss, Coen Brothers, Duffer Brothers, Duplass Brothers, the Wachowskis. So the notion that ‘Hollywood doesn’t like pairs’ feels like bunk. And what they’re really talking about is their inability and desire to market or sell us a pair. Should we hold our ground and maintain the dual writing credit? Are the agents being shady here? Is there a compelling reason why we should follow their advice and change the byline simply for the sake of getting the script into the right hands and the potential for development?”

**Derek:** OK, was trying to analyze this in my mind. One thing I don’t like is when representatives are trying to change what actually happened, which is if you’re partners you’re partners. If you wrote this together, you wrote it together. Created by is a separate thing anyway. That’s who created the story. Of a TV show it’s generally if there’s an outline. That’s created by. If there’s a screenplay that’s written by. If there’s no outline and it’s just a pilot spec script that’s both. And so if you both did the work you should both have your names on it. And let the rest of the chips fall where they may. I don’t know why that would affect them one way or the other.

The only way where I can see where they’re coming from is when Michael and I were partners and we did television the first time and we got paid on that very first season we got paid the amount of what one person would get paid. We were taking up one spot so to speak in the writers’ room even though we were the creators of the show.

So, when season one ended and I realized I’m getting half of what some of the other writers are getting because we’re splitting our fee I said we’re not doing this as a team anymore. We’re going individual. So you can make more money that way. That doesn’t really affect why you should split this up on the pilot.

**John:** I don’t get splitting this up at this point. If they come back to you with sort of Derek’s explanation I can kind of see that logic, because I do know of other writing teams who have split up because they just make twice as much money. But I don’t think that’s really the case here. My hunch is that they represent this other guy and they want that person to be the marquee name on this thing that they’re sending out.

**Derek:** And make sure that the other guy isn’t behind your back – I hate to say this–

**John:** Yeah. But I think it’s true.

**Derek:** But they could be talking to the agent and saying, “Look, maybe I can get sole credit on this and we can move it.”

**John:** Our next question is a screenwriter question. Sean from Canada writes, “Generally speaking, how much work does someone need to do to get a Story by credit? Or is it impossible to generalize about this? And secondly does the amount of compensation match the work hours? For instance, what if two writers have a two-hour story meeting where they hash out the basic plot of the movie, but then one of those writers goes off and puts 200 hours to write the actual screenplay? Would the compensation reflect that difference in time spent working?” Generally.

**Derek:** I just did a WGA arbitration where I was an arbiter and so I’m familiar with the story credit and the way it works. Now, the very first thing you should know is it’s only about writing. It has nothing to do with the 100 hours you spent thinking about it or the two hours you spent thinking about it. If there’s an outline that you wrote, or you wrote the first draft of the script and that becomes the story of the movie, and I forgot the exact definition – you can look it up in the credits manual – but it’s basically things that aren’t endemic to the final shooting script but are endemic to the story if I’m using endemic correctly in terms of the plot, the character descriptions, those kind of things.

So, it has nothing to do with time. It only has to do with the document. And then generally speaking if the story that is the final shooting script came from that early draft then that merits credit. And you can only have two credited story by writers. So I would assume, or presume, it’s got to be a significant part of the story.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Derek:** There’s no percentages on story, but you can only do two. So typically it’s 50/50 or 70/30 if it’s significant.

**John:** Yeah. So the important thing for Sean to know is that story is written words.

**Derek:** Yes.

**John:** It’s how we’re basing it, and so it’s based on either outlines that were written, and so in arbitration we’re reading those outlines, or the underlying material, or we’re reading that first scripts, or other scripts that are providing the story for things. And you can look up the WGA credits manual for exactly what the definition is, because we don’t want to mangle it here.

But that’s what we’re actually basing it on is those words. Now, an interesting thing that does come up is increasingly some of these movies are being broken in mini rooms. And so they’ll put together a room to figure out like we have this piece of property and we’re going to figure out how to make three movies and two TV shows out of this property. And so as a room they’re breaking a story and creating an outline for this movie. That’s not a thing that we’re well set up to deal with.

**Derek:** No.

**John:** And so we’re encountering situations where it becomes really tough to figure out who deserves story credit when this document about sort of what the story was is really the product of a bunch of people working together.

**Derek:** I don’t know what the WGA rules on that are, but I was invited into one of those – this is a few years ago now – but we had to sign something at the beginning that said that you, no matter what your ideas are that you’re contributing are now pooled into the first writer’s draft. So that writer, you took the job and you got paid a daily rate to go there, but you got paid knowing that whatever idea you contributed was going into somebody else’s pocket. You couldn’t submit written material afterwards. It was all just talking.

**John:** Yeah. It was all just talking. Again, if it’s all just talking then that’s not–

**Derek:** Covered by the WGA. Right.

**John:** Do you want to take Sara’s question?

**Derek:** Yeah, Sara in LA writes, “Any advice for working with directors who are new to scripts? My bosses are veteran television commercial directors, but are new to features and working with a writer. Me. I’m trying to find the best way to communicate ideas, get feedback, and develop realistic expectations around the writing process, example first drafts are not perfect.”

**John:** Absolutely. I think that’s a good question. So whether your bosses are coming from TV commercials, music videos, other short form stuff, they’re probably not used to working with long form narrative. They might not have read many scripts. And so this may all be kind of new to them.

What I would encourage you to do is to not get lost in the micro and the macro things at the same time. Because I suspect they’re going to have very clear visions of how they want scenes to work, how they want certain moments to work, but they may have a harder time envisioning the whole overall flow of the story. And so make some conversations which is just sort of like the big white board. Like let’s make sure we’re seeing the whole journey of this character. Take your hero and just follow your hero through the whole story. Work through it that way. Make sure you’re talking about themes, those topics.

Then when they want to drill down to specific moments and their vision for things, or the color schemes of things, or when she says this or this confrontation, let those be a separate kind of conversation because that I think is going to be the hardest thing for a first time director to communicate with a writer.

**Derek:** The key that you said is talking. And I couldn’t encourage it more. We have in television something called a tone meeting before every episode where you just go through the script page by page. And if you have cool directors who actually value writers and your writing partner they’ll want to do that with you. And like John said, you can do that any time in the process. You can do that at the beginning, before you do a rewrite. You should. You can do it after the rewrite comes in. Here’s what I was intending. And that’s a two-way street. They should tell you, “Well I was thinking the camera would be low here. Could you write it more so that I can get that sense?”

Great. It’s all about communication and hopefully if you have good directors you can educate them a little bit about what you’re doing and then let them go.

**John:** Cool. Dan in Australia writes, “I’m currently out pitching a new show. I love this project. It’s the type of thing I’ve always dreamt of making. The first time I pitched it it was electric. I really felt the show as I was pitching it and happily had a great response. In subsequent pitches I’ve noticed that I don’t feel as emotionally connected to the pitch. I guess it’s what an actor must feel like with a play. Any tips on getting yourself to the right spot emotionally for the tenth, or the 20th time you pitch on a project?”

**Derek:** How do you do it, John?

**John:** I would say I always have to find something new about the project to be describing that time. So like a new way in. I try not to be so rehearsed that I’m just a robot who performs the thing. And I also try to make sure my pitches invite places for them to offer feedback and really communicate back in so that it really is a conversation. It’s not just a presentation.

**Derek:** Great advice. It’s funny, my youngest son Augie has gotten into magic. And he loves it. And he practices, like crazy. And he’s 12 years old and he’s probably spent a year now doing card flourishes. And what he forgets is that people are seeing the trick for the first time. And when you go into these meetings, even though you’ve done it eight times, they’ve never heard it. So it’s a performance. You have to pretend this is the first time. And I think the great actors on stage do that. They say, OK, all new audience. I’m doing it. I’ve got to give them my best. Man, you cannot bore yourself. This is your job. So, figure it out.

**John:** I will say for Arlo Finch I’ve had to do a lot of school visits, and so with those school visits I’m giving a keynote presentation and I’ve now done it 50 times maybe. I’ve done it a ton of times. It’s the same slides, same order, and largely the same jokes. And there have been times where I’ve had to look back at the slide and say like where am I – where am I at in this? But I’m still always like live and present for it. Because there is always something different. There’s always different kids in the front row. There’s always something about the environment and the situation that’s different.

And so key into what’s different about you being in this room with this group. Do your research to know who it is you’re sitting across from and what things they’re going to click into. And so in that initial five minutes of sort of BS conversation about movies and weather and all that stuff you can get some sense of what it is that they’re interested and excited about. And you can tailor some of what you say and some of what you emphasize based on who it is you’re talking to.

**Derek:** We always said it only takes one. It only takes one yes and you’re off and writing that project, so if, I mean, there’s really not that many buyers anyway. So it’s not like 50 schools. There’s going to be eight or nine times you’ve got to be able to get up for those presentations.

**John:** One of the things that’s actually the most challenging thing for me pitching is so let’s say I pitch to producers and then we’re going in to pitch for the studio, and so maybe early on I’ve pitched three times to producers, and then you’re going to pitch to the studio. And I know what the producers’ feedback has been and so I want to incorporate that, but also I know I’m talking to these new people, and so I want to both respect what the producer wants but I have to–

**Derek:** I ignore the producers in the room. I’m just, OK, now I’ve got this buyer.

**John:** Not even who I’m aiming it towards. Nothing to do with who I’m looking at, because obviously I’m looking at the most important person in the room.

**Derek:** You just know what their notes were and so you want to say–

**John:** Yeah.

**Derek:** Yeah, if you can give them a nod that they feel good about. My other trick when we were pitching a lot was that you use that five minutes of time where you, you know, how’s the weather, oh my gosh I took a trip to whatever, and don’t you like Sedona or whatever, and then I would say, “OK, before I begin the pitch I just want to tell you,” and I give like four things about the character, or the tone, or the theme. And then I say, “OK, now I’m going to start the pitch.” And they wouldn’t realize that I had already been pitching. You get yourself an extra five minutes and you’ve set the tone of what the pitch is going to be.

**John:** Absolutely. So, I think that you do get that preamble of let me contextualize the thing I’m about to do before you start, “We open on.”

**Derek:** Exactly.

**John:** Let’s do one last question. Jude writes, “Do writers have much if any input regarding the music for the scripts they write? Do writers have the opportunity to speak with directors about the kind of music they envision accompanying the script, or do they not even consider mentioning anything like that because it would be rejected out of hand?” What’s been your experience with music and scripts?

**Derek:** This question comes up a lot. It seems like it’s a super – I’d say put music into your scripts if you feel like it’s intrinsic to the story. It may not end being, you know, Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing. It could be some other inspirational song. But obviously there have been incredible movies where they wrote the movie specifically for the music. I can think of Baby Driver, Edgar Wright’s last movie. But your chances as an incoming first time screenwriter, not high that you’re going to get the actual music that you want.

No reason not to do it and set the tone of what you want to do. But just know it might change.

**John:** Yeah. For Go I did create a mix tape that had a bunch of tracks. None of those tracks made it into the actual movie. And I’m not even sure that the buyers or Doug Liman ever listened to that thing. It was important for me–

**Derek:** It set the mood.

**John:** For me. So it’s OK to do that. It’s not OK to sort of like say – obviously no one burns a CD anymore, but people used to burn CDs and send it with the script.

**Derek:** No, don’t do that.

**John:** That’s gross.

**Derek:** Don’t do any of the razzmatazz.

**John:** I guess links are not as burdensome, so if you have a Spotify playlist for it I guess that’s fine. But it would need to be important. I think what’s more crucial is that, as you’re describing the movie that we’re going to see and hear, describe the music if it’s important to what this is going to be. So there have definitely been times in scripts where over thunderous drums we descend upon a thing.

**Derek:** Yes. That’s great.

**John:** Fair game.

**Derek:** We don’t do a lot of source music on Chicago Fire, almost never. We probably in 7.5 seasons used five songs. But there has been at least three times that I’ve said, hey, I want this band playing at the end of the show. And then we just go and try to make a deal. Now, we don’t have a big budget for it the way like Koppelman and Levien have for their show where they are literally thinking out what the ten songs they’re going to play in an episode of Billions.

But, really recently on Chicago Fire I love this band Slothrust, and we have a scene at like a night club, like a happening nightclub, and so I said to our music supervisor right before Christmas I said, “I don’t know what it costs, but see if we can get this Slothrust song Double Down for this scene. I’ll let you know.” I’ll let you know if we got it.

**John:** Nice. We’ll see. All right, it’s come time for our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing is this Grover meme that happened this last week. Did you see this?

**Derek:** No.

**John:** So I’m going to play it for you here.

**Derek:** OK, sweet.

[Video plays]

**John:** So Derek Haas, do you think that Grover was saying a bad word there?

**Derek:** Oh, I didn’t hear a bad word. “Move the camera. I think that’s an excellent idea.”

**John:** That’s exactly what he’s supposed to be saying.

**Derek:** Oh, it’s like the dress thing? The white dress versus the purple dress?

**John:** It is. And so you are hearing what he’s actually saying, like that sounds like an excellent idea, but my first time hearing it – and other people’s time hearing it – it sounds like he’s saying the F-word.

**Derek:** That’s hilarious.

**John:** In the context. And so I saw this thing and it’s sort of like Yanny and the dress. But it’s actually slightly different. So my One Cool Thing is actually this blog post by a guy named Christian DiCanio who is a linguist who is talking about what is actually happening there.

And so it’s essentially human speech doesn’t break down as neatly as we sort of think it would break down. And so much of what we perceive is really our expectation of what’s supposed to be coming. And so if you read a certain transcription you’ll say like, oh, that’s exactly what he said. You read a different transcription, like oh that’s exactly what he said.

**Derek:** Interesting.

**John:** It was false just in an ambiguous enough space that you could hear both things equally valid. So I can now flip my head, my ears back and forth. So now you’re going to listen to it again.

**Derek:** OK. I’m going to listen for the F-word. OK.

[Video plays}

Now I can’t go back.

**John:** Yeah, now you can’t go back. So it’s not quite the dress situation, where it’s actually kind of genuinely spooky. This is just like ambiguous things. And I will say what’s interesting about it as a writer is that we rely on those sort of ambiguous situations for a lot of our jokes. And so there’s things that fall in the gap between things, like the dad jokes. Like my wife wants me to stop stealing the kitchen appliances, but that’s a whisk I’m willing to take.

**Derek:** Ah, whisk!

**John:** Whisk. It’s a whisk.

**Derek:** Hilarious.

**John:** Derek, One Cool Thing?

**Derek:** My One Cool Thing, I have two. I have Two Cool Things. Because I’ve been a fourth time guest I get to have two. The first one is – I was talking about magic earlier. David Kwong, friend of the show, is a wonderful human being and an incredible magician. He’s doing shows in New York in January at the High Line Hotel, which I know a couple of the nights have already been sold out. And he’s doing a matinee and a later show.

I’ve seen the show. It is incredible. It is mind-boggling. I don’t know how he does anything that he does. I never ask. And it’s a fun interactive show because you’re also – it’s kind of the idea of an escape room and magic. It’s called The Enigmatist.

If you’re in New York in January go see David. You will not be disappointed. That’s number one.

Number two, I did not know this, and John you’re so much more technologically advanced than I am that you probably knew this right when the iPhone came out. But forever I was on texts or on emails on my phone I was trying to highlight, you know, you’d misspell a word and you’d just want to correct one letter. And so you’d try to put your finger on it and then it makes the bigger window. And you’re trying to get – and it was always hard to do to get the cursor to line up with the letter you wanted to correct.

And then somebody told me if you hold down the space bar on the text then the cursor comes up above where you are and you can move the cursor into the text and it has changed my life. And I wish I would have known that a year and a half ago.

**John:** It’s really useful. And also on later model iPhones you can push harder, you can force click, and the whole screen becomes – you can move the whole cursor around with it. I’ll show it to you.

**Derek:** I have to come over here and get lessons from John.

**John:** I’m going to show it to you right now and you’ll see sort of what I’m talking about because it’s a little bit confusing.

**Derek:** Oh, so you don’t have to do it on the – cool.

**John:** Cool. That’s our show for this week. As always our show is produced by Megan McDonnell. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by James Llonch and Jim Bond with special guest vocals by Rebel Wilson.

If you have an outro you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions like the ones Derek and I answered today. For short questions, on Twitter Craig is @clmazin. I’m @johnaugust. Derek Haas is…?

**Derek:** @derekhaas.

**John:** Oh, it makes it so easy. And Derek sometimes will answer questions from his listeners. Like Sundays you do that?

**Derek:** I do it once a week. Sundays. Seven questions. And it doesn’t have to be about the shows, but that is what it ends up being.

**John:** You should get your questions in early because otherwise I’ll make some sort of prank question and Derek won’t even know I did it.

**Derek:** And Craig sometimes answers as though he watches the show. And he has never, ever seen a single episode. So, they’ll ask a specific question why did Casey do something and Craig will just make up an answer.

**John:** Chlamydia.

You can find us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Just search for Scriptnotes. While you’re there leave us a comment. That helps people find the show. You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find transcripts. We get them up about four days after the episode airs.

You can find all the back episodes at Scriptnotes.net. It’s $2 a month to subscribe to that and get all the back episodes and the bonus episodes. We also have seasons that are available in the johnaugust store so you can download them in blocks of 50 and listen back to the early episodes of Derek Haas.

**Derek:** Oh, I could make the five timers club next time.

**John:** Oh my gosh, you get the special jacket.

**Derek:** Do I get a jacket?

**John:** You should get the jacket. I remember you actually came when we were doing, I think it was Chicago because you were–

**Derek:** It was Chicago. I just started Chicago Fire.

**John:** That’s crazy. Way back when I was doing Big Fish.

**Derek:** So go look for that episode.

**John:** Derek Haas, thank you very much for pinch hitting. This was so much fun.

**Derek:** Always great. Bye.

**John:** Bye.

Links:

* Thank you, [Derek Haas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Haas)!
* Join us for the WGA’s [Princess Bride screening](https://www.wga.org/news-events/events/guild-screenings) on January 27th. Seating opens up to non-WGA members 15 minutes before showtime.
* [How Hollywood Gets the Publishing Industry Wrong](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/01/books/review/hollywood-publishing-industry-younger.html) by Sloane Crosley, author of [I Was Told There’d Be Cake](http://www.amazon.com/dp/159448306X/?tag=johnaugustcom-20), for The New York Times
* Is Grover swearing in [this video](https://twitter.com/EvanEdinger/status/1078358697921966081)? This is [Christian DiCanio’s blog post](https://christiandicanio.blogspot.com/2018/12/is-grover-swearing-no-its-in-your-ears.html) about it.
* David Kwong’s [The Enigmatist](https://enigmatistshow.com/)
* Holding down the spacebar on a text so you can move the cursor more accurately on an iPhone.
* T-shirts are available [here](https://cottonbureau.com/people/john-august-1)! We’ve got new designs, including [Colored Revisions](https://cottonbureau.com/products/colored-revisions), [Karateka](https://cottonbureau.com/products/karateka), and [Highland2](https://cottonbureau.com/products/highland2).
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [Derek Haas](https://twitter.com/derekhaas) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Find past episodes](http://scriptnotes.net/)
* [Scriptnotes Digital Seasons](https://store.johnaugust.com/) are also now available!
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by James Llonch and Jim Bond ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_382.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2018/the-worst-of-the-worst).

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

**Craig Mazin:** My name is Craig Mazin.

**John:** And this is Episode 378 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the podcast we’re going to dash hopes, ruin friendships, and destroy things we love most.

**Craig:** Oh, thank god.

**John:** As we talk about why bad things need to happen to characters we love. Plus, we’ll be answering questions about WGA signatories and old TV scripts.

**Craig:** Well that sounds fun.

**John:** Yeah, Craig, it’s nice to have you back.

**Craig:** It’s good to be back. I’m so sorry I missed – since I’ve been working and traveling, you’re working and traveling, and then I had some needle shoved into my spine last week.

**John:** Oh, no, not good. Don’t do that.

**Craig:** It wasn’t an accident. It was on purpose. There was a medical professional doing it.

**John:** All the kids are doing it.

**Craig:** All the kids are doing it.

**John:** Yeah, just inject – first it was Juuls, and then they’re injecting things into their spines.

**Craig:** Exactly. So that was why. Initially it was supposed to happen first thing in the morning and our podcast interview with Phil and Matt was going to be in the afternoon, and then they had an adjustment. So when I got out of that thing I was about two hours away from doing the podcast and just feeling really weird and oogie. So, yeah, but I’m back. I’m back.

**John:** He’s back. He’s no longer oogie. He’s full of boogie. And you can see Craig in person on December 12th which is tomorrow as this episode comes out. We are doing our live show in Hollywood. Our guests are fantastic. Zoanne Clack of Grey’s Anatomy, Pamela Ribon of Ralph Breaks the Internet. Cherry Chevapravatdumrong of Family Guy and The Orville, plus Phil Lord and Chris Miller of Lego Movie and the new Spider Man: Into the Spider-Verse. So we are hyping this show, but for all I know we’re sold out and it’s just–

**Craig:** We should be based on that list of people. By the way, Zoanne Clack I think is a medical doctor.

**John:** She’s a medical doctor. So if Craig has an emergency, she’s the person.

**Craig:** We’ll be talking about my spine on that show. But this is an amazing lineup of people. Totally – everybody from different places – well, we do have three representatives of animation come to think of it. All right. All right. Lord and Miller, I mean, boom, Pam Ribon has got this huge movie out. Everybody is famous. And you know what? Why would anyone not want to go to this show? Plus, me and you.

**John:** Well that’s us. I mean, that’s the other celebrities in this whole thing.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Sometimes we like try to land a big name and then it’s like, you know what, let us be the big names sometimes.

**Craig:** We’re the big name.

**John:** Zoanne Clack, yes, she’s a medical doctor, but what I really want to talk to her about on the show is how she’s transitioned from being a doctor to writing a show about doctors. Because we get so many questions from listeners about like “I am a police detective, but I want to write detective stories.” And that’s an interesting, fascinating transition. She has done it, so she will be able to tell us what that life is like.

**Craig:** Maybe she can also chat a little bit about our episode where we went through all the mistakes that, like the fake medicine on TV. I wonder if she’s ever – well, you know what, let’s save the Zoanne questions for when we’re with Zoanne.

**John:** Absolutely. We also have another live show to announce. I’m very excited to announce that we are doing a screening of Princess Bride and an episode afterwards in which we’ll be talking about the movie we just saw. So, William Goldman passed away this past month. We are going to be doing a series of screenings for the WGA. This is going to be at the WGA Theater on January 27th. So, Craig and I will watch the movie then discuss the movie afterwards with the audience. And so this is I think going to be open up to everyone. So once there are tickets there will be a link in the show notes for that. I’m very excited to do that.

**Craig:** Yeah. Me too. It’s one of my favorite movies and William Goldman was a giant. So it’ll be nice. It’ll be nice to do that in his memory.

**John:** Absolutely. And so this will be kind of a trial run also because I’d like to do more of these on the whole. So if this goes well there’s some movies down the road I want to do a deep dive on. We’ll screen them and then do a deep dive. So we’ll let this be a test run.

**Craig:** Brilliant.

**John:** Brilliant. We have some follow up. First is from Partis about the Start Button. Craig, do you want to take this?

**Craig:** Sure. OK, so Pardis writes, “The problem with the system you outlined on the podcast where the WGA can be the bad guy if you ask them to, calling the studio on your behalf to enforce the terms of your writing agreement is that the studio knows the WGA is only calling because you, the writer, have asked them to. And since writers are more dispensable than directors, yes, you can get labeled as a diva or as a problem child or as more trouble than you’re worth and lose out on future writing assignments as a result. So, what’s the solution?”

Pardis says, “A system whereby the WGA is alerted to commencement on a feature automatically. And a system whereby the WGA checks on progress for all feature products automatically without asking the writer first. That way the studio can’t blame any specific writer for asking the guild to be the bad guy. There’s just automatic oversight across the board. But, how can we put this system into place if the guild isn’t already alerted to commencement automatically?

“Option number 1: Negotiate a meaningful financial penalty into the next contract for studios that fail to file their paperwork for new project with an X number of days of the agreement being signed. That money can go toward covering the guild’s increased oversight and enforcement costs.

“Option number 2: Create a small financial penalty for writers who fail to alert the WGA that they’ve started work on a new project. Option 2, because then the studio can’t get mad at writers for alerting the WGA about new projects because writers have no choice but to inform the WGA directly less the writers be penalized themselves.”

**John:** All right, so let’s take a look at Pardis’ suggestions here and sort of how Pardis is laying out the situation. So, I think what Pardis is suggesting overall have some merit to it. You want the WGA to be the bad guy. You want the WGA to step up and do this work on behalf of writers. And if it feels like the WGA is only calling the studio or only getting involved because the writer complained I can understand that hesitation.

That said, the goal is for this to feel like it is just automatic. It’s like changing the way we’re just doing this on a regular basis. And so that even without a financial penalty for failing to hit the Start Button and report a new project, that it will become a matter of course for writers to do this. And the WGA has increased already the number of enforcement people there are to do that work. And so they are going to be checking up on people anyway. And so regardless of hitting the Start Button or not hitting the Start Button, there’s a lot more outreach to say like, hey, what are you working on, how is this going, and are you being paid on time? Is anything going on? And that is one of the overall goals and functions of the WGA is to make sure that our members are being paid and are treated appropriately.

**Craig:** These ideas, all ideas really, have been discussed ad nauseam since I have been involved in WGA stuff, which is, you know, over 14 years ago or something. But I would say that Pardis you’re not the first person to suggest that we should maybe start penalizing writers. But good luck. It’s not a great idea, honestly, to essentially crack down on writers to solve the problem that is created by studios. We already have enough problems. You’re dealing with writers that are already being abused and now they have to send money to the guild because they’ve been abused? It’s not great.

Can you get a meaningful financial penalty for studios that fail to file their paperwork? No. Probably not. And again when things start is kind of fuzzy. So, the Start Button actually is the best idea I’ve seen to date. And I think it will bear fruit. So I would say, Pardis, patience.

**John:** Related aspect here is that when you are hitting a Start Button or even now if you’re not hitting the Start Button, you are supposed to upload your contracts. And so I have been uploading my contracts. Everyone is supposed to upload their contracts that show all the steps of your deal. When the WGA has this information they can be checking on it independently so they don’t need to necessarily wait for you to say that there’s a problem. They can say like, hey, according to what we have this is what’s happening on this project – is this accurate? And you need to answer that honestly. And so that is a way in which the WGA can become involved, even if you are not reaching out to them to say help me here.

**Craig:** Yeah. Hopefully this works the way we would want it to in an ideal situation where the guild is helping you without feeling like they’re bonking you on the head. And in getting in your work process. So, let’s see how it goes.

**John:** Second bit of follow up, a previous One Cool Thing was the show Please Like Me. And last night I was out and randomly bumped into Josh Thomas the creator and star of Please Like Me. And so I want to talk a little bit about sort of what to do when you meet somebody who you’ve only seen their work in person. Because it can be sometimes kind of awkward. So what I did is I said, “Oh hey, you don’t know me, but I thought your show was fantastic and you do great work.” I asked him if he moved to Los Angeles fulltime and is writing here and he is. And then I left him be and let him sort of go on and be about his night.

So maybe we’ll get him on the show at some point and he can talk about what he’s doing here. But as a person who gets approached like Josh Thomas gets approached in that situation I want to talk about sort of best practices when you’re going up to talk to someone whose work you admire, but it’s in a social situation. Because, Craig, you must encounter this, too.

**Craig:** Yeah, I mean, it’s not on a daily basis by any stretch of the imagination, but it does happen. And mostly people seem to do it well. You know, I haven’t had any weird encounters. Any actor that’s on television has astronomically more of these encounters than you or I. And my guess is just that numbers wise they’re going to run into some odd ducks, probably at least once a day.

**John:** Yeah. So I would just say I would encourage – if there’s a person who is doing great work and you want to say like, oh, I really like the thing you’re doing. It’s good to say that, because sometimes it’s just good to hear that you’re making stuff that the world appreciates. But I would say if you’re going to make that approach plan for an out that’s going to get you out of that conversation within 30 seconds to a minute, because they were going about their life before you interrupted them. And so you want to be able to say what you need to say and then like let them go off and do their thing. If they want to keep engaged, they can engage. But make sure you’re giving them the release to get out of the conversation.

**Craig:** And take a look at their face before you walk up to them, because listen, everybody is a person. Everybody is going through stuff. Sometimes we’re in a nice happy mood, sometimes we’re in a neutral state of mind. Sometimes we’re concerned, we’re running late, we’re sad, we’re nervous. And then we don’t want anyone talking to us. Anyone, by the way. Much less people that we don’t know. So, just take a look. I know it’s hard because – and again, this isn’t something that I think anyone has towards somebody like me – but when people see a movie star in their minds they think you know what it doesn’t matter how they’re feeling and it doesn’t matter what’s going on. This is my moment to shake Tom Cruise’s hand and I’m doing it. Because the rest of my life I shook Tom Cruise’s hand, right? I had that moment. And he’ll get over it and he will. He will. But, you know, it’s not that big – who cares? I guess that’s my whole thing is like who cares.

**John:** My ground zero for getting recognized, well of course Austin Film Festival I get recognized a lot there, which is – I sort of go there knowing that’s going to happen. The lobby of the ArcLight I get spotted a lot. And sometimes at the Grove. And there was one time I was walking through the lobby of the ArcLight and this guy goes, “Wait, you’re that writer guy. You’re good.” I’m like, OK. I guess I’m good. Thank you, random stranger. That’s nice.

**Craig:** You’re that writer guy. Well, that’s pretty much right. This is one of the nice things about living in La Cañada is that nobody cares. Nobody cares. They don’t care.

**John:** Let’s get to our marquee topic which is bad things and bad things happening to the characters that you love. This came up for me this morning because I was working through the third book of Arlo Finch and I was looking at my outline and just looking at how many bad things happen, which is just a tremendous number. I think partly because it is the third and final book, so if something could happen this is the last place where it could happen. But also the character has grown to a place where he can handle some things that he couldn’t otherwise handle. So, there’s a lot of serious stuff that happens in the third book.

But I want to talk about it because I think there’s this instinct to sort of protect our heroes, protect our characters, and it’s hard to sort of get us over the hump of like, no, no, no, you have to – not just allow bad things to happen but make bad things happen to your heroes in order to generate story. And this is really very much probably more a feature conversation than a television conversation because in ongoing series there will be conflict within an episode, but you won’t destroy everything in their life every week. But in features that’s a really important part.

**Craig:** It’s a huge part. And, yes, you’re right. In television you need to make sure that people come back the next week in roughly the same shape you found them. So there will be little mini ups and downs. But in movies we feel narratively like we have to see people torn apart. And this goes all the way back to the bible.

**John:** Oh, the bible.

**Craig:** The story of Job.

**John:** Tell me the story of Job.

**Craig:** I will. And I should mention I don’t believe in anything in the bible. However, the bible is evidence of something. And it is evidence I think of deep seeded instinctive narrative patterns in the human mind. They are expressions of these things that are in us. They are not always sensible or logical, but they are there. So, that’s how I’m going to take a look at the story of Job. It’s a very simple story. Job is a very pious guy. He believes in God. He’s just super godly. And God therefore rewards him with a fortune and health and, I don’t know, bountiful crops, or I don’t know, whatever God would give people. And God is hanging out one day with Satan, as he used to do, and Satan says, “You know, Job only loves you because you reward him.” And this is a general moral conundrum that has been dissected over time. You watch The Good Place, right?

**John:** Oh yeah. It’s fantastic.

**Craig:** Of course, so they refer to this as moral dessert. The idea that you behave well so that you get your reward from whatever metaphysical/supernatural deity you believe in. And God says, “No, no, no, no, no. Job loves me because he’s a good guy. And I’ll prove it. I will remove my protection from him and you go ahead and do whatever you want to him. And you’ll see. He’ll stand by me.” And so that’s what happens. God removes his protection and Satan begins to torment Job – torment him – torment his health, and ruin his crops, and scatter his children. It’s just awful. Like every bad thing you could do to somebody he does to Job. And Job just stands by God.

And in the end, you’re the winner Job, and God rerewards him and gives him even more crops and frankincense or whatever they had back then.

So, why am I bringing up the story of Job? Because there’s a moral inherent to it that I think is why we need, narratively, to torture our characters. And the idea is that our goodliness or our growth or whatever you want to call the evolution of our selves, the betterment of our selves, it doesn’t count to other people unless it is perceived to come at terrible cost.

Now, is that actually true? I don’t think so. I think it’s perfectly possible to become a better person without suffering. But when it comes to narrative it seems like we need it or we don’t believe the change.

**John:** Yeah. We didn’t see the work. We didn’t see the struggle. We didn’t see sort of the cost and it doesn’t feel like it was merited.

**Craig:** Exactly. So what we like to see is somebody that has experienced a trauma and they’re going to get over the trauma but only by facing it in the most hard and difficult way. They are going to repair a relationship with somebody by that person leaving them. They’re going to appreciate what they have because they lose it all. So, every character starts with this flaw and then we as the writers we torment them and force them to confront it through a series of increasingly difficult trials the way that Satan did to Job. And through that there is this falling apart. Break you down to lift you up. And we call this the low point.

The low point in a movie is the low point because the writer has tortured the hero to the point where they give up. They finally give up. That’s what you have to do is – you’ve lost your, whatever your ego is, and your hubris, and you give up and from that you will rise back. But those moments are so notable. And one of my favorite versions of that is the Team America puke scene which is just perfect. It’s perfect.

**John:** Let’s play a clip from the Team America puke scene.

[Clip plays]

So this scene classically is a character who has lost everything and then sort of loses more and in this case is literally vomiting up the last they have left. But let’s talk about some of those things that a character can lose and list off some of those classic things you’ll see characters losing here.

Some bad things might be to take away their home. So you might literally burn it down, or you might cast them out of society. You might take away their support system, so taking away their friends, their family, the institutions, the organizations that they’re a part of. You might have the rest of the world see them as the villain. And so you have a hero who is being perceived as the villain which is horrible. Incarcerate them. I have a note here sort of incarceration, also the weird case of Paul Manafort at this moment. So as we’re recording this, this is a guy who is going to probably be in jail for the rest of his life and he’s acting really strangely which leads me to believe that there’s something else he could lose, which is always fascinating to speculate on that. There’s something worse than being in prison for all this time and so he’s acting on behalf of that. So figuring out what that is.

You can kill a character. You can lop off a limb. You can force them to act against their own beliefs, so classically they have the daughter kidnapped and so therefore they have to do things that they can’t believe. You can sew tension and conflict between their allies. You can destroy the item they love most, so it’s like he finally gets that car he’s been hoping for his all his life and you destroy that thing.

So, those losses are bad things you’re doing to your character and they’re pretty crucial. If you don’t do some of those kinds of things over the course of your movie it’s probably not a movie.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, what you’re doing is burning away what needs to be burned away. And it’s unpleasant. And we need it to be unpleasant. We need to see this character suffer. What is it, hamartia I think is the Greek word for suffering. And then catharsis is essentially vomiting. Which is one of the reasons why I like that scene so much because they just did it.

Humiliation is something that we see all the time. The writer creates circumstances in which the hero is humiliated. Where they lose all sense of self-worth and pride. We can kill or harm the people they love the most. We can make them feel terribly guilty and confront them with the consequences of what they’ve done. It’s good because it’s tortuous.

There’s that scene, people of our age always remember this moment in the second Superman movie from the late ‘70s/early ‘80s where Superman willingly gives up his power so that he can marry Lois Lane. And he gets beaten up by some guy in a bar. And it’s crushing. It’s crushing because you see someone brought low. I remember seeing that scene in the theater and feeling terrible inside. And it was the same feeling I had when I watched the animated The Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe when all the evil Snow Queen and her minions shave the mane off of Aslan.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Take his hair away and reduce him to just this pathetic wretch. And, yeah, it’s – you need it. You need it or else when they come back you don’t feel anything.

**John:** Yeah. So let’s talk about the timing of when these bad things happen, because there’s a couple different moments over the course of a movie where you see these things happening classically. So, the first is the inciting incident or whatever you want to call that moment early in the story that sort of kicks this story into gear. And so, you know, in the first 10 to 15 minutes of a story where a change has happened. This is the village is raided and the hero’s parents are killed. This is a big change has happened that is starting this story with this character.

Often the end of act one. So you’ve arrived at a new place. We’re not in Kansas anymore. The hero’s house has burnt down. We’re entering a new world. There’s a big change and the hero has lost something. They may be excited about what they’re headed towards, but there is a loss. They’ve crossed into a place where they can’t get back to where they were before.

There’s a lot of times, moments in the second act that are going to be losses, where allies turn on them, where new obstacles arise. There’s a plan that fails, seeing things that were important to the character that we were hoping for for the character don’t come true. And then classically the biggest of these losses, which is probably the vomit scene from Team America, is the end of act two, sort of the worst of the worst, which is you’ve gotten to this point and you’ve lost everything. It should generally be the character’s lowest point, or at least the lowest point in this character and how they’ve evolved over the course of the story. That thing that looked like it was potentially in their reach has been taken away from them. And that’s classically the end of the second act.

**Craig:** It’s the end because there’s nothing left to lose. You, the writer, have beaten it all out of them. They have no pride left. They have no resources. Or whatever it is. You’ve removed the stuff that they were relying on. Their crutches are all gone.

It’s important to note that when you visit these bad things on your character you must do so sadistically. It’s not enough to just have some bad things happen. You have to do them in a way that is deeply ironic and miserable. Especially miserable. Because then oddly the more exquisite the torture the more we feel positively when they overcome it.

So, the example I always think about is Marlin at the beginning of Finding Nemo. He’s a happy fish and he’s there with his wife and their hundreds of little babies. And they’ve found a place to live. And then his wife is eaten and all of the babies are eaten except for one. And that is very bad. But then Pixar understood it’s not bad enough. They have to make that little one disabled. They have to give him a bad fin so that he will need even more protection. And then that’s not enough. He is the one that goes missing. And so you have to go get him. And that’s not enough. In the end you have to let him go into more danger to save a friend. And then that’s not enough. You have to feel like he died there. And in that moment where Marlin thinks that Nemo is dead, he flashes back to holding him as a little egg and if you’re human you cry. Because the torture has been so exquisite. And therefore the relief and joy is beautiful and our appreciation for how far Marlin has come as a character is real.

They earned it. Did I ever tell the story of Jose Fernandez, the pitcher?

**John:** No. Tell me.

**Craig:** So this sort of goes to what I think of as the essential ingredient of character torture is irony. It’s not enough to just sort of make bad things happen. You have to do it in a way that feels ironic, as if the world had conspired against them.

So, it’s a guy named Jose Fernandez. Like a lot of baseball players he came from Cuba. So he had to escape from Cuba and he escaped on a small boat with – it was one of these crowded boats full of refugees and at some point on the voyage the boat gets tossed and turned and someone says, “Someone has gone overboard,” and without even thinking Jose Fernandez just jumps into the ocean to save whoever that person is. And he does. He grabs them. He brings them back on board. He pulls them up. They live. And it turns out that the person he saved was his own mother. He didn’t even know it.

He arrives in the United States and he becomes a baseball player. Not just a baseball player. He is an amazing pitcher. He plays for the Marlins. He is fantastic. He is going to earn many, many hundreds of millions of dollars. So, just the kind of dream come true for somebody that had to escape Cuba on a small boat and rescue his mother from drowning.

Unfortunately, two years ago he died. He died in an accident. And if I told you that he died in a car accident you would think that’s bad. But he didn’t die in a car accident. He died in a boating accident.

**John:** Oh my.

**Craig:** And that is ironic in a terrible way. It implies that the universe was doing something. It had its thumbs on the scale so to speak. It is tortuous to think of. And when we write our terrible tortures for our characters I think it’s important for us to think of that. Because – and it’s a sad thing of course – but the worse it is and the more ironic it is the better the ending feels.

**John:** Yeah. Well let’s talk about sort of how those bad things come into the story. Because I can think of three main ways you see those bad things happening. The first is an external event. So that’s the earthquake. That’s the world war. In Finding Nemo that is the – is it a shark who eats the fish originally?

**Craig:** No, he gets grabbed by some fishermen who are looking to capture fish to sell, like for aquariums.

**John:** No, but at the very start of the movie where–

**Craig:** Oh yeah, it’s like a barracuda or something like that.

**John:** So that’s really an external threat because that – so barracuda is not the primary villain of the story. I don’t remember Finding Nemo that well. That barracuda itself never comes back.

**Craig:** Correct. It was just nature.

**John:** It’s nature actually. So some external force that you cannot actually defeat comes back. But sometimes it is the villain itself who is the character who arrives who is the one who is causing the suffering. So, every James Bond movie. Many fairy tales. Die Hard is an example. So, there’s a personified threat. A villain who is doing the thing that is causing the suffering. That is beginning the suffering.

But in some of my favorite movies it is the hero themselves that is doing the action that is causing the problem. So if you look at Inside Out or Ralph Breaks the Internet or Toy Story, it is the hero who is causing the problem. The hero who is ultimately responsible for the suffering that the characters are going through. And that’s often great writing. Because it gets back to the idea of like what is the character’s flaw and something about that character’s flaw is causing the suffering. And we see them having to address that flaw in order to stop the suffering.

**Craig:** No question. It’s very common with Pixar movies. In fact, I’m hard pressed to think of a Pixar movie where the bad stuff is majority villain driven other than Bug’s Life, where Kevin Spacey, a real life villain, portrayed a villainous grasshopper. But typically in Pixar films – and sort of I guess in The Incredibles, but yeah, mostly they bring it upon themselves because it is more interesting.

**John:** I mean, in The Incredibles movies there’s sort of an attenuated thing where it’s like it’s because of past actions, it’s a boomerang effect that sort of comes back in, but it’s not a thing we saw them do at the start of the movie. It’s not generally responsible for most of the suffering.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** But movies are about consequences and if characters are allowed to freely make choices and then have to suffer the consequences of those choices, that is good and appropriate and compelling storytelling, especially for a feature which is something that is designed to happen just once.

So, a television show theoretically should be able to repeat itself ad nauseam. A feature is sort of a one-time journey for a character. And so that one-time journey is going to about big steps and big swings and big failures when they happen.

**Craig:** No question.

**John:** So some takeaway on this idea of bad things happening to your characters. I would say really as you’re breaking a story you have to be thinking about what are the biggest worst things that could happen. And when I say the biggest worst things that are in the universe of your story. So, obviously you can’t stick a tornado in space. But within the context of your movie what are those and what are the character effects for it?

I think so often when we get notes about like well the stakes feel light here, sometimes the proposed solution is to make it be – it’s the end of the world. Like if we don’t do this then everyone else around us dies. I think that sometimes that’s mistaking the bigger scale for more personal consequences for the things that the characters are going through. So, making sure that it feels like a punishment very specifically tailored to this character that you’ve created.

**Craig:** Exactly. And you don’t have to – you don’t have to substitute volume of badness for quality of badness. In the beginning of John Wick the bad guys basically kill his dog. Which in and of itself would be like OK that’s bad, except it was the last gift he received from his deceased wife. That’s all it takes. I’m good.

And, you know, it doesn’t have to be this massive visitation of problems. Sometimes it’s just the cruelty of it really. Little bits of cruelty.

**John:** The Wizard of Oz, she’s trying to take Toto away at the start. That horrible woman is trying to bicycle away with Toto. That’s horrible. And that’s absolutely the right scale of problem for that movie so before the tornado comes that is what we’re experiencing. We can see it from Dorothy’s eyes like this is one of the worst things she can imagine ever happening.

**Craig:** A lot of times I do think about The Wizard of Oz when people start harping on stakes in meetings. Because I’m like what are the stakes exactly? What are the stakes?

**John:** There aren’t stakes in a classic way. It’s not like the Lollipop Guild was being horribly oppressed. It’s not like there was – she ended up changing the world but kind of by accident.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, I guess the stakes were that she would get killed or something. I don’t know. But yeah, it doesn’t matter. Sometimes it’s really more about how closely we empathize with the character and the stakes are whatever is stakey to them. It’s about what makes them feel. And if you make me feel what they’re feeling, those are stakes. That counts.

**John:** Absolutely. In a previous discussion we talked about want and want versus need, which I think is a false dichotomy. But when characters express their wants they have a positive vision of the future. So they can imagine a future and in that future their life is better because they have this thing that they want. And that’s a positive vision. Fear is a negative vision of the future. And so they are afraid. They’ve seen the future and in the future their life is worse because this thing has happened or has been taken away from them.

That’s really what we’re talking about with these things we’re trying to – these horrors we’re trying to visit upon our characters is that those things that they feared or those things they didn’t even think they had to fear, those are happening to them now in this story and they have to figure out how to deal with it.

**Craig:** Absolutely.

**John:** All right. Let’s get to some listener questions. First off is James in Napier, New Zealand. I assume it’s Napier, but maybe it’s pronounced a different way. It feels like one of those words where it could be Napier, or Napier.

**Craig:** I think it’s probably Napier.

**John:** Napier. James writes, “How in god’s name do you make sure a TV script is the right length? There’s a lot of flexibility in how feature film scripts can run. I know the one-minute per page rule is a rough guide when you’re writing. TV and radio are much more time-constrained so how do you make sure the script is exactly the right length to start with? And how do you keep it that way during production?”

Craig, you just went through TV.

**Craig:** Yeah. We’re doing this right now. Don’t panic over here, James. It’s no big deal. Generally speaking, you know, we’ve got this rough 30-page/60-page guideline for half an hour or an hour. But the truth of the matter is it’s all guess work. The pages don’t really conform clearly to one-minute per page. Things are going to get cut. Some things are going to be expanded.

The good news is that we don’t really live in the world where the vast majority of television is constrained by rigid time formats. Everything is far more loosey-goosey now which is nice. If you’re writing for network television, different story. But with that point I would say, again, don’t panic. You can edit. And you can speed things up or slow them down editorially. So just generally, you know, get roughly in that zone and that’s what it will be.

And, you know, my experience at least with Chernobyl so far is that the scripts – at least for the first four episodes – are around 59 to 63 pages and they’re all timing out to be about an hour.

**John:** It does work that way. I was talking with Rob Thomas, the creator of Veronica Mars and iZombie and other shows and Rob hates the one-page-per-minute rule because he feels that sometimes networks try to value it too much. And so the way he writes it doesn’t really match up that well. He believes that you could probably actually do a word count that would more accurately reflect how long something really will take to fill.

I don’t know if that’s true, but I think it’s an interesting experiment. The truth though is that once you start making a show, so iZombie or Crazy Ex-Girlfriend or any of Derek’s Chicago shows, they know. Ultimately they get a sense of like, OK, our scripts need to be about this length because this is what the episodes cut out to be. And even then there will be episodes that are running long for a while and they have to find way to get two minutes out of it. And when we had the Game of Thrones creators on, Benioff and Weiss, they were talking about how in the first season their episodes were too short. They didn’t understand sort of how long stuff was going to play. And so they needed to add additional scenes to sort of fill them out because they just didn’t have a sense of how long an episode was going to be based on the script page.

**Craig:** Exactly. All right. Joe has a question. He writes, “I am a WGA member. I have an offer on the table from a reputable Middle Eastern production company looking to produce a more Western style show. The offer is about 15% less than WGA minimums. They won’t go any higher because they say lower budgets and the Arabic-speaking portion of the MENA territory,” Middle East, I don’t know, “simply doesn’t support it. I asked the WGA and they said flatly I cannot work for any company who is not a WGA signatory.

“I asked my reps and was told the WGA does not have jurisdiction here and becoming a signatory should not be what stands in the way of signing this deal. To be honest, the WGA response rubbed me the wrong way because it felt like they were using me to gain signatories when they didn’t have anything to lose and I did. A job.

“That said, I owe a lot to the WGA. I’m eking out a meager living as a writer and I recognize the WGA is part of that. But I don’t have so much work that I can just turn stuff down willy-nilly. So, does the WGA actually have jurisdiction here?”

John, what do you think?

**John:** I think there’s probably some situation in which you can be hired by a foreign company as a WGA member and they don’t have to pay you minimums. But this is probably not one of those situations. I know there’s international working rules, essentially one of the things the WGA needs to make sure never happens is that international companies sort of come in and sort of scoop up American writers to really write American things but try to pay them less than that. So I think that is why the WGA’s response is that.

But, Craig, you know more about the rules. Tell me.

**Craig:** Well, I have an understanding here, but it will be interesting. I would love to get the WGA’s official position on this. My understanding is that the WGA here is correct. The issue is that Joe is here and the WGA’s jurisdiction covers the United States. It is chartered by the Department of Labor. So, if you are a member of the WGA and you are writing something here in the United States it has to be for a WGA signatory. You cannot go lower than that. Period. The end. Assuming that there is an applicable collective bargaining agreement which obviously there is here.

So, no, you can’t do that. Listen, Sony, right, owns Columbia. We call them Sony now. Well obviously Sony is a Japanese company. So why wouldn’t Sony just start saying everybody who works for Columbia Pictures, we’re actually employing you under the Japanese branch of Sony, so you don’t have to do WGA. No. That doesn’t work that way. At all.

**John:** So I suspect that where we could get to with Joe is if this company was willing to fly you over to the Middle East and put you up there and you were doing your writing services there–

**Craig:** Yep.

**John:** They could pay you less than that and that would not be a great situation for you. So not only are you giving up 15% of this money, which by the way 15% of scale is not a ton of money. I just feel like they could find that money for you. But, you are giving up your credit protections. You are giving up kind of all the stuff. Health and pension. You’re giving up much more than you sort of think to take that job. So that is why we have protections like this so that you cannot be undercut by a foreign thing.

So could this company form a WGA signatory? Yes they could. It would be great if they did.

**Craig:** Yeah. I don’t think the WGA, by the way, Joe is using you to get this company to sign up as a signatory. I don’t think they care about this company. I think they care about everybody else that’s in the WGA and the value of our minimums not being degraded. So, what I would say here is you can say to them, listen, this isn’t me asking you for anything. I’m not allowed to do this. And, by the way, company, if you come here to the United States you can’t get anybody in the WGA to do this. None of us will be able to do this. You’re going to have get a non-WGA writer.

So, you know, which generally speaking won’t probably be as good. So, that’s where they’re at, Joe.

**John:** All right. Kofi from Woodbridge, New Jersey writes, “My question pertains to the release of completed scripts after a television show has aired or a movie has been released to the public. Who decides whether or not the completed script will ever be released? I’d love to read the script for every episode of my favorite shows, but usually only the scripts for the pilot and episodes selected for awards are available. Movie scripts can be hit or miss, too. Why isn’t every script made available to be read for educational purposes?”

**Craig:** Well, there are certain circumstances where the writers actually have the publication rights over screenplays. If you have separated rights in feature films that means you have a Story By or Written By credit then I believe you have the right to publish your screenplay.

But, look, by and large they don’t do it because it takes time and it costs some amount of money and it takes some tiny bit of effort and they’re just not willing. It’s no one’s job. It’s a massive company and they can look around and who wants to be the person responsible for scanning and posting 4,000 screenplays. Nobody wants to do it. And there isn’t really a huge clamoring for it, which, you know, is a bit of a bummer. That said, there are plenty of kind of underground swap meets for these things online. I’ve seen them around.

So, yeah, it would be nice. But it comes down to sheer laziness and lack of interest, I think.

**John:** So, the situation is actually a lot different than it was 25 years ago when Craig and I were starting. I remember when I arrived at USC for film school they had a script library. You could go down and could check out two scripts from this library and they were literally printed bound scripts. Not even brads in them, but these special posts that sort of like are sturdier than brads. You could check them out and read them and take them back in. And it was a great experience for me to read all of these scripts from classic movies I loved but also things that had never been produced and it was a really good experience.

So, I think reading scripts is fantastic. But, now there’s the Internet and now there are PDFs of screenplays. And so while Kofi can’t find all the screenplays he wants to read, he can find a ton of them. I mean, even just in Weekend Read we have hundreds of scripts. Things that are going for awards, those are posted online and those things are easy to find. It’s harder to find the scripts for movies that are not sort of award contenders. But, you can kind of find them.

But Kofi’s more interesting point is he wants to read the episodic scripts. Those are harder to find. You tend to find pilots or just those marquee episodes of things. And it’s great to read the normal episodes. That’s one of those things where it actually is much easier to do if you are in this town. Because then you just have networks and assistants at places who can get you copies of scripts. They’re not really under lock and key. They don’t have a lot of value in and of themselves. You can’t do anything with the scripts and so no one is trying to sort of keep them from you. But what Craig said is like it’s no one’s job to publish them or post them. That’s why they don’t happen.

**Craig:** That’s why they don’t happen. Well, keep looking. And by the way, Kofi, spent a lot of time in the mall over there in Woodbridge myself, so just waving hi to you back there in the old country.

And we’ve got one more question here from Cory right here in LA who writes, “I’ve got an award-winning short film and I just hired a screenwriter to adapt it into a feature. Though I’ve come up with much of the story, he will be hitting the keys to bring the story and script together. I am a one-man production band with a small production company. I’d like to make sure that I am setting both he and I up for success.” That should be him and I. Setting both him and me. Yeah. Because, right. Anyway.

“I’d like to make sure that I’m setting both him and me up for success and possible WGA membership or eligible points toward. First, should or must I make my company a WGA signatory? Second, since I or rather my company is self-financing his writing of the screenplay do I need to adhere to WGA payment standards to allow him eligibility? Finally, if I’m the creator of the original work and I’ve come up and will be credited with Story By is there an opportunity for me to earn WGA points or is that just for the screenwriter?”

Oh, excellent list of membership questions there, John. What do you think?

**John:** Absolutely. So, I don’t have all the answers but I will tell you that you’re not the first person to encounter this and I think the WGA has done a much better job over the last ten years dealing with these kinds of situations. I think Howard Rodman deserves a lot of the credit for that.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** What you’re describing is probably a low budget independent film. And if you go to the WGA website there are resources there to talk you through what happens with low budget independent films. Classically these were done outside of WGA jurisdiction. But recognizing that some of the best work was happening there and this was obviously writer’s first work they set up these low budget agreements so that you can do this kind of stuff. That you don’t have to pay people the full amounts for writing services and other things but still allows for things like credit protections. It allows for other parts of what you get with a WGA package for these productions.

So, I suspect you will click through on the site, we’ll put a link in the show notes, and see what you need to do and how you sort of put the script into a place where it’s eligible for these low budget agreements. And I don’t think you will have to become a full signatory. I think there’s just ways you can sort of use an associate membership to get you started here. So, it’s good you’re doing it. It’s good you’re thinking about this now. But just read the stuff and then make the thing.

**Craig:** Yeah. Definitely you want to take a look at that low budget independent film agreement. To become a full-fledged WGA signatory there are quite a few hoops to jump through. I mean, it’s not trial by fire or anything, but for instance you need to show that you have enough financial resources to be able to cover your residuals obligations. So in this case because it’s just you and this is just one independent film I think that’s the way to go. Take a look at it.

In terms of credit, the original work will be considered source material. It was written outside of the WGA so it will be based on a short film by blah-blah-blah. If you want proper WGA story credit, on the title page of the screenplay it would need to say Screenplay by Jim, Story by Jim and Corey. And that, of course, requires Jim to agree. The truth is the story in the original film is essentially akin to the story in a novel. The novelist doesn’t automatically get WGA credit for the movie of it. They have to actually do some work. So in this case what you would need to do to warrant Story by credit or Shared Story by credit is to work up a written story for the new movie that you’re talking about, either on your own or with the screenwriter that you’re hiring, and then that is now part of this chain of title of the work that’s leading up to this film that would be covered by the independent film low budget agreement.

Hopefully that makes sense.

**John:** I think it makes sense.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** All right, it’s time for our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing feels like a Craig One Cool Thing, but it’s the story in the New York Times by Moises Velasquez-Manoff and it’s about how emergency rooms and other medical professionals are starting to examine ketamine as a suicide prevention or a suicide drug for dealing with people who show up suicidal and it seems like it is potentially a quick life-saving drug to be using for people with severe suicide ideation.

So, it’s a really nicely written up story about the potential of a drug which we only think of in sort of bad context possibly having some really good uses.

**Craig:** Yeah. It was a fascinating article. Totally my kind of thing. Ketamine is one of these drugs that’s been around for a long time and it’s kind of one of those – I think the World Health Organization has their list of essential medicines, like if you were building your doomsday locker of medicines you’d want ketamine in there. It is a sedative. It is kind of a tranquilizer sort of thing. It can be used anesthetically, you know.

And what they found, and I didn’t realize this, but in this article they are saying that very small doses of ketamine can almost stop suicidal ideation in its tracks. So you have somebody coming in who is in severe distress who was just taken by the cops off of the side of a bridge and brought to the emergency room and you give them this tiny injection of ketamine and suddenly they don’t have that anymore. They don’t want to jump.

And, now, that doesn’t last obviously, right? So then there’s work to be done after that. But what they’re pointing out is that suicidal ideation, kind of underlying depression, to reverse that pharmacologically with say serotonin reuptake inhibitors takes weeks. Maybe months. Same thing with talk therapy. But if you need to make sure that someone doesn’t hurt themselves over the two, three, four weeks, this may be a viable deal.

Now, part of the issue is that it can be used recreationally and if there’s a certain dosage you start to have hallucinations and, you know, psychoactive effects. So, that’s why I think in general people are a little, you know, but we have to kind of get over some of this stuff. You know?

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** Doctors in the emergency rooms are pretty good at figuring out who is there because they’re actually suicidal and who is pretending to be because they feel like getting a ketamine dose.

**John:** You look at sort of this work, you look at work on LSD, you look at work on ecstasy, these are clearly drugs that should be studied for what they can do in a clinical setting and sort of what good can come out of them. But instead they sort of become demonized because of dangerous uses of them recreationally.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, we wouldn’t use them recreationally if they didn’t work on some level. So, yeah, obviously how much we use and all the rest. So, anyway, that was really promising. So you did that and I went the other direction. I went all the way over into computer world. So I’ve been playing Red Dead Redemption 2, of course, and I want to call out the people that worked on the environment because it’s so good. It’s the best environment experience I’ve ever had playing a videogame.

There was a moment where – it’s not just the detail of the appearance of things, which is quite extraordinary. But it’s the way it interacts sort of synergistically. Just sort of trotting along on my horse and I’m going through sort of a path with some trees on either side and the wind kind of blows and leaves rustle off the trees and kind of swirl in the air around me and then fall to the ground. And I’m like, what? This is getting good.

The wind people talked to the tree people. And then the tree people decided, you know what, some leaves come off when wind blows but not a lot of them, not all of them, and how do they come off? And what happens when they go? And it’s perfect. It’s really amazing how well they did with those little things. And you and I know because we work in movies and television how much work goes into making something look effortless.

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** God only knows how many hours were spent trying to make the wind make the leaves go just right. It’s really well done. So, tip of the hat. My One Cool Thing this week the people that did the environment in Red Dead 2.

**John:** Very nice. Those leaf physicists, they did God’s work there.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** That is our show for this week. Our show is produced by Megan McDonnell, edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Michael O’Konis. 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 like the ones we answered today.

But short questions are great on Twitter. Craig is @clmazin. I’m @johnaugust.

You can find the links in the show notes for the things we talked about, so that’s at johnaugust.com. Just follow through to the links there. Or if you’re listening to this on most of the players swipe and you will see a list of links there.

Come see us at our live show tomorrow night if there are still tickets. But also January 27th is our big show for William Goldman’s The Princess Bride. Looking forward to that.

You can find us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you subscribe to podcasts. While you’re there, leave us a review. Those are lovely. We need to read some of those reviews aloud so we’ll try to remember to do that.

Transcripts go up within the week and so you can find transcripts for all the episodes back to the first episode. You can find the audio for all our episodes at Scriptnotes.net. It is $2 a month for all of those back episodes and bonus episodes, too.

**Craig:** So cheap.

**John:** So cheap.

**Craig:** So cheap.

**John:** Craig, I will see you tomorrow for the live show.

**Craig:** See you tomorrow for the live show, John.

**John:** Bye.

Links:

* [Tickets](https://go.wgfoundation.org/campaigns/8810-the-scriptnotes-holiday-live-show) are on sale for the Holiday Live Show!
* The Team America: World Police [puke scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKqGXeX9LhQ), with some bad language
* The opening of [Finding Nemo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HG3L98NFyro)
* Aslan’s sacrifice in [The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQ6VAGyhWXM)
* [Can We Stop Suicides?](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/30/opinion/sunday/suicide-ketamine-depression.html) by Moises Velasquez-Manoff for the New York Times
* The environment in [Red Dead Redemption 2](https://www.rockstargames.com/reddeadredemption2/)
* T-shirts are available [here](https://cottonbureau.com/people/john-august-1)! We’ve got new designs, including [Colored Revisions](https://cottonbureau.com/products/colored-revisions), [Karateka](https://cottonbureau.com/products/karateka), and [Highland2](https://cottonbureau.com/products/highland2).
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
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You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_378.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2018/the-second-draft).

**John August:** Hello and welcome. My name is John August and this is Episode 377 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Craig is out sick today, but luckily we have two remarkable screenwriters to take his place. And today on the show we’re going to be talking about the second draft, and hopefully offering some practical tips for your first big rewrite on a project. Then we’ll be digging into questions from the mail bag.

To help us out we are welcoming back the writers of The Invitation, Ride Along, and the upcoming Destroyer, Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi.

**Matt Manfredi:** Hello.

**Phil Hay:** Hey John.

**John:** You joined us on Episode 244. My first question for you is what did we talk about in Episode 244?

**Phil:** We talked about our motion picture The Invitation.

**John:** You did.

**Phil:** We talked about reboots and preboots.

**Matt:** Oh yeah.

**John:** Very nice you remember. And do you remember the specific term that we were trying to suss out?

**Phil:** It wasn’t preboot?

**John:** It wasn’t preboot, but preboot is really close to it.

**Phil:** It was pre-imagining?

**John:** Requel.

**Matt:** Requel.

**John:** Was the word of the day.

**Matt:** It didn’t catch on.

**Phil:** Clearly it’s dead.

**Matt:** Preboot really still has a chance.

**John:** Preboot has a good chance. I think we’re all pulling for preboot. I think I’m working on a preboot right now.

**Phil:** Is that right?

**John:** Yeah.

**Phil:** You’re keeping it alive. There’s hope.

**John:** Before we get started today, some news on Scriptnotes land. We have our holiday show December 12th in Hollywood and Zoanna Clack of Grey’s Anatomy is a guest. Pamela Ribon of Ralph Breaks the Internet. And Cherry Chevapravatdumrong of Family Guy and The Orville will be joining us. Plus, Phil Lord and Chris Miller of Lego Movie, Lego Movie 2, Last Man on Earth, Spider Man: Into the Spider-Verse. It’s a remarkable lineup of guests.

**Phil:** Great lineup, John.

**John:** Great lineup.

**Matt:** Murderer’s Row.

**John:** Murderer’s Row. Come join us in Hollywood December 12th. It’s a benefit for The Writers Guild Foundation. You can find tickets. Just click on the link in the show notes or go to wgafoundation.org.

Phil and Matt, we have some follow up on previous episode stuff. I’m hoping you can help us out here because Craig is gone so we’re going to pretend that you guys are all the way caught up on all your back episodes of Scriptnotes. I asked in a previous episode whether other industries had a way of dealing with endless pitches. And sort of like when you go in to pitch on a thing like 19 times. Have you ever encountered that situation?

**Phil:** We have tried to really limit that recently, but I think everybody has encountered that. You know, where the goal posts sort of keep moving and the existence of the job itself starts to become in question.

**Matt:** And early, I mean, like especially starting out you pitch to the lowest person on the totem pole and you work your way up, and you work your way up. Or sometimes even worse, they pitch it all the way up and it just gets bastardized and bastardized.

**John:** Yeah. It’s bad. So specifically we’re trying to get to the situations where like you’ve gone in like 10 times to pitch on a project and it’s just not clear whether they’re ever going to do anything on this.

So I asked on the podcast whether people had suggestions from other industries about how they deal with these situations. So two people wrote in. Chris wrote in to say that she works as a production manager on commercials and she says, “Whenever we audition actors they need to fill out an initial Exhibit E, an audition time card. Depending on how long they are kept for an audition or how many auditions they are called in for, they are entitled to some payment.”

So we’ll send a link to the SAG form for Exhibit E. So there’s some record of how many times they’re going in on a project and if they are held for longer than a certain period of time they have to be paid for that audition.

Would you want to be paid for a pitch?

**Phil:** I think that regardless of me personally it actually sounds like a pretty feasible idea to – wasn’t there a concept way back in the old day, something called approach money or something like that? I feel like I’ve heard a term where it’s just saying we are officially asking you to come and basically “do a prototype for us,” which is your pitch, and we’ll pay you a very modest amount of money to do it, but we are paying you.

And so, you know, if we call you in for a second time we’re going to pay you again. I mean, I’m sure there’s a million reasons that people don’t want to do that, but the amount of labor that goes in to trying to get a job is so significant that, you know, I’m not writing those checks but I think it would be extremely helpful and useful because it would also make sure – I mean, it would increase the odds that there was something at the end of that process. That they’re going to invest even a small amount of money means that they think it’s headed somewhere.

**Matt:** I wonder if it’s past a certain point. You know what I mean? As a freelancer, essentially, I feel like the initial pitch is part of my job. I want to get the job. I’m essentially auditioning for the job. But once I’ve gone in, we’ve discussed our take, this is what I would do with the project. Once we get past a certain level, I don’t know what that level is, it does seem like some kind of thing would be–

**John:** Yeah. I mean, as we talked about in No Work Left Behind, this idea of making sure you’re not leaving written material behind after a pitch, so often we hear that writers lose the job to no one. Basically they just decided that there’s no – like that idea wasn’t a very good idea and so we’ve wasted everyone’s time trying to do this.

**Phil:** Thank you for proving to us that we shouldn’t ever spend any money hiring anyone to do it.

**John:** And so if there were some cost to actually having done that search process, you know, I think you could rein that in a little bit. We look at these mini rooms where they bring in a bunch of writers to crack an idea. They have like a piece of IP and they’re bringing in five writers to work for a month to try to crack that stuff. Those writers are at least getting paid. There’s a thing there. Intellectual labor is being rewarded. So, it feels like there’s some way to be thinking about that.

**Phil:** Well, and there’s a structure in place, right, so that there then can be rules. And there can be – maybe this is what complicates it – the ownership of the material. What are you selling when you take that money? So maybe that’s maybe the rub. But, yeah, I think that increasingly we’ve been talking – we talked about this a lot that just the job of the screenwriter now – the job of your typical screenwriter includes so much unpaid time that is very – it’s intense work.

**Matt:** I think it’s expanded. I think it’s a lot worse than it used to be.

**Phil:** Yeah. I agree.

**John:** I think even the nature of what a screenwriter is supposed to be doing has changed so much even in the 20 years I’ve been doing this is that screenplays have evolved into this thing which is not just a plan for making a movie but is really like a kind of marketing – it’s a vision document for what this is. It’s like a director’s reel but in a printed form.

**Phil:** It’s interesting. Yeah. Because we all came up with an edict that someone taught us, which is saying every draft is a sales piece. You’re selling to someone. You’re selling to first the studio or first a producer, then you’re selling to an actor, you’re selling to a director. But it does seem like you started selling now constantly. The organization, the principles by which this thing is going to be in the public you’re starting to sell within the screenplay itself.

**John:** A way you might get there, so Philip in Hamburg, Germany wrote to say that he works in advertising in Germany where pitches have gotten very competitive and big. Sometimes it’s two to four weeks fulltime to meet the deadline for the pitch, costs up to $100,000 in man hours, all of it for free. “So we managed to improve the situation. Companies are now starting to increasingly pay a pitch fee which often doesn’t cover all the costs but it’s something.” So he says, “The way it changed was for three things.” First, they made the clients aware of the situation and asked for the money. Because sometimes the clients really didn’t know how long it was taking or sort of how much they were spending on it. They got stronger together. So there’s an association for creative agencies. We have the WGA. And they started lobbying on behalf of the topic.

And finally they just started saying no. They would actually decide not to go in on a pitch because they didn’t feel like – if they weren’t going to get paid for pitching they would just politely say no. And so as writers, I mean, sometimes we’re spending 10 hours, 20 hours, more getting a pitch ready or going to talk about a movie, but it’s the directors who actually weirdly have it worse. Sometimes those directors who are trying to land those jobs because they’re the ones who have written in to say like, you know, I’m spending two months developing this reel to sort of promote myself as a director for this and I’m not getting those jobs. So maybe that’s the case where if they really are curious about that director, they need to be sending some money that director’s way to build that reel or to build up that proof of concept.

**Matt:** Yeah. And Phil gets at a point earlier, like if they do pay you for a pitch, a writer for a pitch, where does that come in terms of work for hire, in terms of chain of title? What is then owned? You know what I mean? Like it gets into a–

**John:** Yeah. But if they’re not actually taking a written document then maybe it’s not so bad. Basically if they’re paying for your time and they’re paying you for your time to meet you to talk about stuff, maybe that’s–

Phil Hay: Also there’s such a cultural–

**Matt:** It’s like a roundtable. You know?

**Phil:** There’s a cultural issue at hand which is the – and I think it’s always been weirdly baked in – but it seems increasing where there’s a sort of resentment toward paying people to do something creative. You know that there is a baked in societal kind of like wanting to get away with just kind of taking that work. Or just saying, I mean, in the world of kind of freelancers out there in the world that classic thing of like well what is the payment? “Well exposure.”

**John:** Of course.

**Phil:** For exposure. And so there’s that component, too, where I think in a way it’s not hard to imagine a slightly different society which says, yeah, of course, you should be – if you are attempting to create something or you are using your labor at their request to come in and potentially then be hired to create something complete that would make sense.

But I think we do have this cultural idea that there’s kind of a resentment toward that work.

**Matt:** There’s also something that my wife experiences. She designs book jackets. And if you’re designing a book jacket and it just doesn’t work out for various reasons you get a kill fee, which is like half of your fee. Do you know what I mean? There is something past a certain point where if you don’t get the job there’s essentially a kill fee as opposed to on the front end.

**John:** Obviously as writers we’re paid for our words, but we’re also valued for our time, and so making sure that we get the value out of that time is crucial.

**Phil:** And you also have to really peer through the language to figure it out, because so often we hear like – now we’re fortunate to be in a position where we say, OK, if it’s going to be multiple people then we’ll just back out. You can hire one of those other people, but we’re not going to spend the time to go in and do all this work.

**John:** So you’ll ask?

**Phil:** Yeah. We will ask. And we’ll kind of make sure we ask and then make sure our agents ask and make sure everybody is asking because there’s also all these way around. You hear so many times, I’m sure John you’ve heard it many times, “Well we really want you. Believe me, we really want you for this. We just need the – just give me something. And then I can just force it through. But we just have to as a formality.” There’s always something behind that.

**John:** Yeah. There was a project recently where I assumed I was the only person going in. And it wasn’t until I actually had landed the job where I talked to other folks like, “Oh yeah, I was up for that. I pitched a couple times on that.” I had no idea. So I felt really great that I got it, but also it was like, wow, I just assumed that I was the only person you were talking to.

**Phil:** We once ran into in the lobby of a studio we ran into Craig. And we were like wait a minute. And Craig was like, “Wait a minute.” And then it turned out to be for different things, so it was OK. But for a second we were like hold on.

**John:** Hold on. So, these are jobs that you’re going in to pitch on, things that already exist and you’re trying to land. But increasingly you guys have been making your own stuff. And so you were here last time to talk about The Invitation. Your new movie is Destroyer. And let’s listen to a clip. Phil, can you set up this clip we’re about to listen to?

**Phil:** This is an encounter between Erin Bell, who is the lead character, played by Nicole Kidman, and her teenage daughter Shelby who she has a very fraught relationship with. And this is sort of a scene of honesty between them.

[Clip plays]

**John:** Great. So that is a really quiet moment, because I was trying to find some big shouty moment, and there clearly is a tremendous amount of action, but that action has no words that would actually make sense on a podcast.

**Phil:** We’d like to try.

**John:** So, the reviews are fantastic. Raves. And so most of them talk about how great Nicole Kidman is and Karyn Kusama who directs it. But I had to dig pretty deep to find one review that really emphasized the script. But I did. I found it. So it says, “[John speaks in Spanish.]”

So guys, that’s pretty amazing.

**Phil:** That is amazing.

**John:** So what Maria Fernandez is saying is that beyond Nicole Kidman’s remarkable performance and a very solid cast, the most impressive thing about Destroyer is the sophistication of its scripting and its mise en scène.

**Phil:** Right on.

**Matt:** All right.

**Phil:** Well I think what’s interesting that we’ve encountered, you know, Nicole has made this point many times, and Karyn makes this point many times is to us there definitely is a natural tendency to – what Nicole does is truly astounding to me. I mean, it’s a performance that I am so blown away by just as a person watching it.

**Matt:** And she’s in every scene of the movie.

**Phil:** She really is.

**John:** It’s entirely on her back.

**Phil:** And so I understand and love that that attention is there for her. But if you ask Nicole and you ask Karyn, I think to all of us the character is the story, is the direction, is the performance, is the story, is the direction, is the performance. That they are all completely unified. And this character is, you know, for us the whole movie also for us flows through this one character and she is the focus of everything. And so to me it’s one of the most unified movies that we’ve ever been involved in because of what I just said. It is this story of this person who we tried very hard to give every dimension we could as a human being.

**John:** So, let’s talk about sort of how you conceptualize, pitch, write, set up a movie like this movie. Because this isn’t a thing where you’re going in. There wasn’t a book. There wasn’t an anything. This was an idea. And so where does the idea for this character and for this world become a thing that you guys do? At one point does Karyn become involved? And how do you say like this is the next thing we’re going to do? What is the process of saying, OK, we have this character and this world, this is the movie we’re going to make? What is that process?

**Matt:** We had just finished up The Invitation. And we were thinking of what the next thing we were going to do is. And we had this idea that had been kind of marinating for like 10 years. And it was this structure for a cop movie. We had all these scenes that kind of supported the structure and we were just kind of like – it’s kind of a complicated structure so we would pick it up and put it down.

**John:** Now you said you had these scenes and these ideas, so how much had been written versus just like kind of note carded or sketched?

**Matt:** Notes, like little notes documents.

**Phil:** And really like conversations more than anything else.

**Matt:** Conversations. We had spent so much time discussing it. And then finally, so we kind of knew the general direction of it, but we kept running into a wall until we discovered – and maybe it seems obvious – but until we discovered the character of Erin Bell who was going to populate this world and her relationship with her daughter. And when we actually outlined it and put all the cards up on the wall, I mean we knew it was going to be for Karyn, and so we brought her in, took her through the outline. Kind of like half-pitched it to her. And she gave some ideas. And then we were just off to write it. And that was kind of – from there Karyn started making her look book and stuff and she was kind of off to the races. And so on a kind of parallel track while we wrote the script.

**Phil:** There’s a lot of simultaneity to how we do these movies, you know, the ones that we do together where while we’re writing the script Karyn is doing all that, and our composer Teddy Shapiro is already writing music based on the script. And Plummy Tucker, the editor, is one of the first people to read the script, so she already kind of has it in her head.

And it’s kind of a unique and kind of amazing way to work because then we also get to the point – and another wonderful thing about Nicole is that, and Karyn, is that the script is the script when we get to shooting the movie. And they both are real believers in the screenplay. And that the answers are in the screenplay for whatever questions come up. And then we’re there as writer-producers. We’re there to provide context, to write new things if necessary, but it’s kind of a very organic and simultaneous process with these movies which have been so gratifying for us to be able to do that.

**John:** Stepping back, you said the idea, the Erin Bell character was what made these collections of things really pop. And so the 10 years where this was just bits and pieces, was it the character that wasn’t holding the thing together? What was it that changed? What was it that putting that character into the situation? Because was it always written for a woman that was kind of like Erin Bell but not specifically Erin Bell? Or was it a story that was missing a central character? What was different about it 10 years ago?

**Matt:** I think it was a story that was missing a central character. And we knew the beats of the story and the structure is kind of tricky. And so we would kind of puzzle over that without having the central character.

**Phil:** So it was really more like we had–

**Matt:** A puzzle.

**Phil:** Yeah. We had pieces of a puzzle and we had things and feelings and certain interactions that we could kind of see from one side in a way. And then we had a feel, this kind of feeling that was driving it, the kind of restlessness of a ‘70s noir in a way. And then it was like – when it kind of occurred to us it was kind of in conversation. Then we brought it to Karyn and we started talking and realizing who Erin was and how specifically she couldn’t be to us a woman “filling a man’s role or wearing a man’s clothes” basically. The story had to be about this woman who had this relationship with her daughter, had a very specific relationship with the world that was a relationship as a woman. And that’s kind of what made it necessary for us or essential for us. You know that thing when you’re writing where you know there’s something you like about it but it’s not ready yet. And something has to make you just light up. And that character and the opportunity to write someone and knowing that – the other thing that’s so great about getting to work with Karyn is we know where it’s headed. So we know that we can write this character and that Karyn is going to receive that in its fullness and so we can try and go for it and take swings and do all of that.

**John:** You didn’t feel like you had to make any safe choices.

**Phil:** Exactly.

**John:** Or round any corners or over-explain something just to make sure, to protect yourself and to protect the script. You didn’t have to have those extra lines that were in there just so in case–

**Phil:** Exactly. And that becomes so crucial because for Nicole she said a few times that she really responded to the mystery of this character and that there’s one line that basically tells you everything you need to know about what she suffered as a kid, a line about that she was burned with cigarettes by her mom and that she had these brothers who were just this kind of feral pack living by themselves basically. And to Nicole, she said like that was everything I needed and that’s what inspired me and more detail, more exhaustive archeology of her psyche would have not – that doesn’t inspire me. So it’s interesting. And that’s always – everything you write you’re looking for that balance. And it’s so great to not have to do anything because you’re worried someone is not going to get it, or you’re worried that they’re going to kind of – it’s going to go off the rails because some critical thing is not obvious enough. You know?

**John:** Right now, I’ll ask the question separately, how many projects are in your head that are sort of where this was over the last 10 years which are sort of like bits and pieces? How many different movies or other things do you think you have? Phil, I’ll ask you first.

**Phil:** OK. I can think of three off the top of my head that are in the sort of like, yeah, an idea. Sometimes there’s just a title on a notecard in the far corner of our corkboard that I don’t even know if Matt explores over there. He’s probably got his other corner with his stuff.

**John:** Matt, how many are on your list?

**Matt:** I think I have three as well. I mean, three that really like–

**Phil:** Maybe they’re the same. Or maybe we have six. We have to consult afterwards.

**Matt:** There are three that are kind of nagging at me in the same way. And, you know, like with both The Invitation, but more so because I guess we took longer with Destroyer. I was like we’re going to write this, we need to write this, I just don’t know when it’s going to be, but we’ll get there.

**John:** I always found that I’ll have a whole bunch of ideas that are sort of swirling around and every once and a while you think of the idea or basically the idea makes you think of it so that you don’t forget it. So like, oh that’s right, I do have that thing. And then eventually they’ll sometimes conspire and sort of gang up in ways. If we combine our efforts, John will have to think about us more.

**Phil:** That’s right. Exactly.

**John:** I didn’t intend for them to be the same project but they became the same project. It was like, oh, this is a way to get his attention.

**Phil:** They’re like we’re fighting for our lives here. We have to do something.

**Matt:** They wormed their way into other projects. You’re like well this could just be overlaid right on that.

**John:** 100%. And people often ask are there things that get cut out of one movie that you put into another movie, and like usually you can’t do that.

**Phil:** No.

**John:** There’s been little bits of an action sequence where they didn’t shoot that–

**Matt:** Yeah, we’ve done that.

**John:** In general like everything is so clear and specific once it’s been written down in some form. But these little ideas that are kind of floating around, they’ll try to get themselves into whatever I’m writing at the moment because they want to exist. And the only way they can exist, the only way they can be out there in the world is if they get me to pay attention to them and somehow get down on the paper.

**Phil:** Yeah. I think that happens a lot with little like – I mean, there’s something in Destroyer that’s a very specific story from when I was a kid and it just had been rattling around for a long time. And it’s just like one of those stories that I’ve told many people many times. And it sort of found a home in this movie, very unexpectedly. It was just sort of like, oh wow, that weird incident actually is a version of what we need in this movie right now. So, sometimes it’s something from life. And sometimes I think like, at least for me, I just needed to grow up more to understand what the thing was or to – or I needed to have a kid to be able to write that movie.

But I think it’s interesting what you say about you’re trying to keep – they’re trying to keep themselves alive out there in hopes that you’re going to find them again.

**John:** Writing a movie by myself, I’m sort of all the characters and I’m fully inside. I’m the camera into this world and I feel myself in all the different characters. Are each of you individually feeling that? Are you guys dividing up a sense of who is more what person in a movie? Is there any split that way or are you both fully inhabiting all the characters in scenes?

**Matt:** Usually both inhabit them. But every once and a while we’ll be working on something and there will be a character who is in maybe three scenes or something. And we don’t write in order. We just choose a scene that appeals to us and gets us motivated.

**John:** You’re the only other writers I talk to who do this.

**Phil:** Really? I can’t believe this. It’s like the greatest revelation that ever happened to me.

**John:** Okay, so let’s sell this to the world so people know that there’s more than one way to do this. I will write whatever scene appeals to me and I will skip over a thing I don’t want to do. Whatever scene appeals to me I will totally write.

**Matt:** Absolutely. I mean, in Destroyer it helped me get to know the character of Erin better because she is quiet and picks her spots and is watchful. And so one of the first scenes that I took a crack at was a scene where someone is really talking at her over and over and over again. She doesn’t have much to say, and so you’re thinking like OK well how does she have power, how does she have agency in the scene when she’s just kind of listening. And so I got the voice because I was writing out of order, you know what I mean?

**Phil:** And I think that it really changed everything for us I think because if you outline meticulously enough and you know where things are beginning and ending, it’s such a difficult thing to write at all, at least for most of us.

**Matt:** However you find your motivation.

**Phil:** Exactly. If you can get actually excited about a scene, go for it.

**John:** Totally.

**Phil:** And trust that you’ll find a way. And sometimes those scenes, like we learn so much just by the process of us splitting up the scenes. So Matt will say I really want to write this scene. And sometimes I’m like, oh, I really want to write that scene. So, wow, that’s a scene – obviously there’s something going on there. Or there’s a scene where Matt says I want to write and I say, thank god, I don’t actually think I know what to do with that scene, or vice versa. And you kind of go through and the scenes you gravitate toward tend to be the islands that really are the movie, so you’re kind of teaching yourself what the movie is. Those scenes tend to be the ones that change the least through the process, like those first maybe four or five sequences, because they are just like – that’s the tone, that’s the character, that’s the style. And you can use those then as touchstones.

You know, you’re writing, you refer back and then you also learn – you get to those lonely, sad little scenes at the end where no one wants to writes them and maybe they don’t need to be written.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Phil:** They haven’t earned a place in the story. And maybe you just can skip them.

**Matt:** And maybe the scene that introduces your character is much better informed by a scene that you’ve written earlier.

**Phil:** Yes.

**Matt:** But to get back to your question, sometimes because we’re jumping all around there will be one more scene left with the character who is in maybe three scenes. And I realize, oh, I’ve read Phil’s stuff and he’s done the other two and I’ll be like, OK, well you seem to have a handle on her voice or his voice, so why don’t you do that, and I’ll work on–

**Phil:** There’s sometimes, yeah, where in something like Destroyer, too, which is kind of an odyssey in its structure so she encounters all these people and some of them come back and some of them don’t. You know, there’s sometimes where I look, we talk through the character and I just know, OK, Matt just has a feel for this person’s voice, this one character. And like he’s saying, so great. You take the first shot at all that stuff. I’ll take the first shot at this stuff. And then once we get to that it’s usually pretty congruent. We’re so molded together at this point and we have the same instincts, so it’s rare that we see one another’s scenes and say, hmm, the voice sounds wrong. The voice almost never sounds wrong to either of us. There may be other questions. But that’s also the product of working together for 25 years or something.

**Matt:** And if we’re each writing a scene with the same character we’ll trade. Whoever is finished first will look at it and be like, OK, well I see what you’re doing here. I think we are on the same track.

**Phil:** Put this tremendous line that I just thought of in and we’re good to go.

**John:** I’m never going to write a screenwriting book, but if I do a chapter I’ve just come up with right now is how to be your writing partner.

**Phil:** I love that.

**John:** Because it’s that sense of – there are scenes you want to write and scenes you want the other guy to write. So write the scenes you want to write and leave your writing partner, which is your other self, to write the other scenes. And that’s why you write things out of order because write the scenes that are most meaningful for you to write and don’t worry about the other ones until you get to them.

**Phil:** Exactly. Because – and also often – we always know the ending before we start writing a script. Always. In great detail.

**John:** It’s one of the first things I write is the ending.

**Phil:** Yeah. And in some cases – I think I knew that about you actually – and in some cases in really extreme detail. I’d say with both Destroyer and The Invitation that was true. We absolutely knew what the end had to be for both of those movies. So we tend I think a lot of times to write the beginning of the movie much later in the process. We have the ending, we have these islands, you know, it’s different for everybody.

But, you know, you come up and it’s perfectly logical to think, well, I start on page one and I just keep going. And if I’m having a bad day I just fight through it. And I really don’t believe in that. The liberation that you feel when you realize I want to write a scene. That’s incredible. How did this happen?

**Matt:** I think it helps with the outline, too, because then you’ve got this scene and once you get to the place where you like it, you know, oh, well we’re actually going to need a different kind of scene to support this, or something else is going to have to follow this because of what we discovered here. And so it almost – I’m not going to say it – like everyone talks about second act problems, but we’ve outlined it like that, but we don’t really think of it that way. And so it doesn’t really occur to us in the same way.

**John:** Yeah. Also, by writing those scenes out of sequence those big marquee scenes you’ve figured out like you know what your in and your out is on those things. And so the scenes that are supporting those you might figure out like, OK, well I’m going to need to slope into that scene in a different way or get out of that.

**Phil:** Exactly.

**John:** You know what your in and your outs are.

**Phil:** And they can have a gravitational pull under those scenes. And so the other scenes I can picture how they orbit around that scene as opposed to a linear way.

**John:** So you’re not going to have nine talkie scenes back to back.

**Phil:** Exactly.

**John:** There will be a quiet thing before we get to this big long dialogue thing.

**Matt:** I think there was one movie, I don’t remember which project it was recently where Phil and I were both like I think we need to write the first act. I don’t know if it was Proof of Concept or something, just so we can – maybe it was the tone was different. I forget what it was. But we did it and then once we saw what it was we’re like, OK, now let’s try to bounce around.

**John:** We got a tweet question which was from Keith Hodder. He said, “Tips for approaching a second draft? Even with index cards I’m finding it tough to navigate the skeleton of the first draft. Feeling stumped. I revisited the transcript for Episode 199 but it mostly focused on the emotional toll of the second draft and being uneasy with seeing the original vision change. I have notes and I’m cool with them, but I’m unsure how to structure the second draft in terms of a game plan.”

Guys, do you have some suggestions on tactics and strategies for approaching a second draft, a successful second draft?

**Phil:** This is where I look at Matt, and I hope Matt does.

**Matt:** I would say, I mean, we tackle like what we want to tackle first. I mean, usually with a second draft if there’s big scenes that have to be changed or added we do those and then we go through and do all the little things. If it’s a character issue that needs to – the character needs to fundamentally change or we need to learn more, we map that out. The bigger scenes to tackle first is what we usually do.

**Phil:** Yeah. I think that’s true.

**Matt:** Is that helpful at all?

**John:** It’s helpful. For me, like I always make sure like you’re saying that I have a real game plan. This is what I’m going to try to do with this. And so I may have gotten other people’s notes, but that’s not really like how I’m going to do it. I’m looking at sort of like this is what’s going to need to change for me to do this. This is my checklist of things I want to make sure happens. And I’ll almost always start with a new document, and I’ll copy and paste in the stuff that I need from the old script but I won’t try to just work through the old script.

If it’s a significant amount of changes I’ll copy and paste the scenes in and sort of bullet point the stuff that’s brand new to write in there, but I find if I’m working on an existing script I end up just polishing stuff and I won’t do some of the big machete work that I sometimes need to do if I’m still working in that same file.

**Phil:** That’s interesting. Yeah, I think that we tend to keep the document, but then we’re very freely – you guys have talked about this before – we create the depot and just very freely grab scenes so that you don’t have to worry about it and throw them in that so that they exist, but they’re not in the script.

But what you were saying, I realize is so helpful not only internally for us, but sometimes we actually share this with our partners, is a written plan. A document that says here’s the plan. We’re going to cut these three scenes. We’re going to go through the entire script through the lens of this character and we’re going to make sure she is here by this point of the script and we’re going to fix this relationship and we have a new idea for a scene that’s going to go between this scene and this. And just kind of the process of just doing that is helpful.

And it also has been helpful when we’re – especially in movies where we’re like trying to head toward production the people kind of can envision what we’re doing and so we’re not “shocking” them when they get the draft back. But we are–

**Matt:** Sometimes as you know the note isn’t the note.

**John:** Yes.

**Matt:** What it really means is we don’t like this. This character isn’t working as opposed to like this scene. And so by kind of giving them something back it kind of creates a new notes document in a way that everyone agrees on. So now everyone feels included and heard and we’re all going forward toward now this new thing that is the new notes document.

**Phil:** Yeah. And I think for the listener that would, you know, just as an internal process I think that is really helpful to just write out your plan and maybe even write out your feelings about it. Write out how you feel about what’s going on in the second act that’s really bothering you.

Or the other thing I find useful is to go back to – and it goes back to this sort of islands concept – go back to listing, for yourself, what are the scenes that absolutely this movie.

**John:** Yeah.

**Phil:** What is this movie? Period. And then anything else can be – has to arrange itself around that. And I think that’s helpful to just keep your kind of self together when you’re approaching the second draft.

**John:** What Matt pitches about the document, what’s good about sending through that document to your collaborators is it reminds everybody what the actual plan was. Because they may have forgotten what their notes were, what they talked about in the room. But if you say like this is what I’m going to do, they can respond to that. But even if they don’t respond to that when you turn in that draft they may still not love it. There may still be new issues. But at least to see this is what he said he was going to do. This is what he did. They can see the work that you actually put into it.

**Phil:** Yeah. And they also might be able to tell you like, oh, wait a second, I see that you’re planning on changing this part. I really love that. I think that’s so important. Can we find a way to modify that so it still fits? And so it’s wonderful when you have people fighting for things that they like in the script. And that’s what I always find just in any notes process. When I am asked to give notes to someone or to come up with a plan for someone, like that’s what’s helpful. There’s this sort of idea that you’re supposed to, it’s just this cage match of awful brutality, where I think it’s like hearing what is really the thing and what’s really great that just orients you.

**Matt:** When we’re talking about a script with somebody and giving them notes and ideas, sometimes you find it through the discussion. So like if you think of a studio notes document which is a list of questions, they’re kind of looking for something. And it might not be there yet and so you have to work through it as opposed to like take that in silence, go off and do it. You know what I mean? It takes a lot of discussion sometimes.

**John:** Yeah. So the response document is sort of continuing that discussion and so it may be a way of getting that down on paper. Some questions from listeners. “I just read your blog answering a question about sending a script to an actor. I have written a script in which the actor’s name is in the title and he would have a role. What is the best way to get it to him? Do I send a synopsis to his agent? The script to his agent? Do I send it to his agency care of the actor? How do I get this actor to read my script?”

Good lord.

**Phil:** Wow.

**John:** Yeah. So Being John Malkovich or something.

**Phil:** Yeah. I don’t know if it’s any different than any other script I guess would be the main thing because I think who knows. There might be actors out there who would be so curious to see that they’re being portrayed in a script that if they just caught wind of it they would want to check it out. I wonder if it would be harder to get an agent to give that to their client depending.

**John:** The right actor I could see being sort of curious enough about it, like if you’re writing a Michael Ironside feature, totally.

**Phil:** Oh yeah. Get it to Ironside. Now.

**John:** Get it to Ironside. Nothing better than Ironside. If it’s a megastar that you’re going after it’s going to be a challenge regardless. And I think there’s always the worry do you look like a stalker.

**Phil:** Yeah. It’s a rare – and that’s the thing. You’re taking such a big swing. And I’m usually also – I’m very fond of the idea of taking a big swing. Like you might as well. So in a way that’s really bold. And if you have the goods to back it up then you have the goods to back it up. But you have to be aware that you are definitely – you’re also making it impossible to make a movie without getting that one person. And in any movie if there was ever a script that we wrote that was like if this one person isn’t going to do it it will not exist, that’s pretty rough.

**John:** I will say that most times when you see an actor’s name listed in the title of the script it wasn’t because they really thought that one actor was going to do it. It’s because it’s a way of signaling what’s unique about the script. It’s a way of getting attention for the script. It gets on a list. It gets passed around the Black List because everyone says it’s really funny. This wild sex comedy with Wilford Brimley. There’s something about it that makes people want to pass it around.

**Phil:** Yeah. That’s interesting. And that may be in fact – that may be the point. It’s hard to know where this person is headed. But that idea of if it’s the right name it’s going to make somebody more likely just to pick it up.

**Matt:** I think sadly though if you’re not going through traditional channels, like if you’re not doing this through your lawyer or manager or agent the cold approach just is so rarely successful I think.

**John:** I think you’re right. Chris writes, “I’ve introduced a doctor into my script who has a fairly important role and I’m wondering what is the best way to write her action and dialogue? Wendy versus Dr. Patterson. Her first name seems more economical and she asks one of the main characters to call her by her first name, so it would be consistent. But is it confusing to go with her first name, or does it lose respect?”

So, you guys, what is your basic guideline for a character name for a doctor character. It says it’s an important character, so probably not the principal character.

**Phil:** Yeah, I would say if it’s not the principal character you use Doctor because I feel that just is doing a lot of work for you. And whether you call that character Dr. Johnson or Dr. Wendy, you know what I mean, you can actually say some things about the character.

**Matt:** Also it seems important to the writer that we continually know that this person is a doctor. So even if Dr. Wendy comes over to your house late at night it’s like, oh, it’s interesting because it’s Dr. Wendy.

**John:** Yeah. I would say in terms of the character cue, like the character name above dialogue, it’s weird to put the Doctor there unless it’s actually sort of part of the joke or part of just reminding like, oh, that person really is a doctor. There are characters in scripts where I’ll have like, you know, Mrs. Van Owen and I’ll keep that Mrs. there because Van Owen by itself you might lose her gender. You might sort of forget who it is if that person hasn’t shown up for a long time.

**Phil:** Sounds like a police sergeant.

**John:** So that’s reasons why you might want to keep the Mrs. And every script is going to be different, but the decision to go with the character’s first name versus their last name really tells us a lot about sort of how personal they are with the main character and sort of where they fit into the world. It can be confusing to have a lot of first names. It can be confusing to have a lot of last names. So finding a balance is important.

**Phil:** Yeah. I think it’s actually a really great question because it is another opportunity to teach people about those people and the tone of the thing. And I think for example in Destroyer the character–

**John:** Is it Bell or Erin in the character cue?

**Phil:** Erin Bell. She’s written as Bell always.

**John:** I was going to guess it was Bell.

**Phil:** It is Bell. And she’s never written as Detective Bell. Whereas other detectives that appear in the movie are Detective Kudra. That’s how they’re referred to. And also there are some honorifics. It’s funny, it’s easier to write Det. Kudra than it is to write Officer Kudra. Like you have a scene with Officer Kudra, Officer Kudra. You wouldn’t do that. I think you would just call them Kudra. And Doctor is a similar thing. You can write Dr. and that actually just to your eye – you’re used to seeing that. And if you’re spelling it out you think it’s like maybe it’s a drug dealer or something like that.

**Matt:** If they’re always functioning in the capacity of their job, Doctor, but if the main character is a doctor.

**Phil:** It’s actually sort of funny. Can you imagine a romantic comedy the person that’s their job is a doctor, but they’re just referred to as–?

**Matt:** Because they have a Ph.D.

**Phil:** Dr. Rehoboth. And they’re just falling in love. It’s the story of Steve and Dr. Rehoboth falling in love.

**John:** I guess an important thing to remember is that we’re talking about the words that you’re seeing on paper, but that’s not the same experience as what an audience is going to have in a theater. And so always be thinking about like, OK, I’m writing this on this page but what’s going to be seen on the screen is going to be very, very different. So, if we’re not going to be thinking of that character as a doctor with that line that they’re saying, don’t put the Dr. there. If it’s really all about them being the doctor we’re going to be seeing them in a lab coat. Putting that Dr. in front of their dialogue will help us remember sort of the context for all this stuff.

**Matt:** Yeah.

**John:** Last question is probably a simple one. Gary from Orlando writes, “Is there a preference for using the term montage or series of shots? From what I understand they both convey a similar visual but I would like to know from some pros which they use and how they use it.” Do you guys use the word montage? Do you use series of shots? How are you indicating a series of bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum?

**Matt:** I think more often than not we write “series of shots” only because – and this is just idiosyncratic – like montage to me in my mind is Love Story, you know what I mean, or like a romantic.

**Phil:** Someone is dancing and singing into their hairbrush when you use the montage going on. Which is delightful.

**Matt:** It’s obviously not just that. But series of shots, for some reason it just feels–

**Phil:** It’s tonal actually. There’s times when we’ve used, we’ve definitely used both, but I think Matt is right that it’s like series of shots. And then usually we do series of shots. Or often for us it’s more something like “Images – Colon – Dash – this image – Dash – this image – Dash – this image.”

**Matt:** Also, montage to me sometimes feels like we’re cueing music.

**Phil:** And it feels meta to me. It actually feels like removed when I see “Montage.” I feel like I’m now just watching a movie and I’m not inside the thing. And the immediacy seems less to me. I mean, this is all idiosyncratic. Other people might feel differently. But I think that’s probably why we lean away from calling something a montage and just like if we can not even labeling it, or just getting the little–

**John:** Yeah. A lot of times I will drop out either term. It will just be clearly a series of shots and there will just be slug lines of what it is you are seeing and it gets the same effect.

**Matt:** Yeah. Or just bullet points.

**Phil:** And then later we have to put the slug lines back in because the line producer is yelling at us.

**John:** “I need the slug lines.” I think the other thing that ruined montage for me was to American World Police you need a montage. And so then you hear that word enough and you’re like, OK, I’m [crosstalk] that kind of development.

**Phil:** It changed history in so many ways.

**John:** I forgot to warn you because Craig wasn’t here about One Cool Things. Did you guys come prepared with One Cool Things?

**Phil:** I know this show.

**John:** He knows the show well.

**Phil:** Front and backwards. I know it.

**John:** Phil Hay, will you start us off with a One Cool Thing?

**Phil:** I have One Cool Thing that I’m so sad that Craig is not here for this because it’s baseball oriented.

**John:** Oh my.

**Phil:** And Craig and I really share a love of baseball.

**John:** How do you have time for baseball? Baseball just feels like it’s just time to follow a thing that I just can’t care about.

**Phil:** John, that’s OK for you. Well, I coach baseball now. I coach my son’s baseball team, so it has kind of become the thing that I’ve arranged my life around. And so it’s reawakened my love for baseball, which I’ve always had. So there’s this Twitter, what do you call it, Twitter handle, a Twitter person, a Tweeter.

**Matt:** What’s up, old man?

**Phil:** Oh, god, I know. Called Pitching Ninja. It’s @PitchingNinja. And it’s a guy named Rob Friedman who is a pitching coach. And he has collected these incredible little gifs. It is a gif, is it jiff? I’m still getting older and older.

**John:** I say gif. There’s controversy, but gif makes much more sense.

**Phil:** So he’s collected these. He’s overlaid different pitches from the same pitcher. So if you are at all interested in baseball, if you play baseball for sure, but if you just love baseball and the kind of weird – there’s definitely parts, some of these images that crossover into kind of beautiful art. These incredible almost like mechanical drawings of the human body doing something incredible. So @PitchingNinja is my One Cool Thing.

**John:** Very nice.

**Matt:** Very nice.

**John:** Matt, what you got?

**Matt:** I was thinking about it because I knew this was coming and first it was going to be my six-foot iPhone charging cord which is really–

**John:** So it’s a long charging cord so you can sit on the coach.

**Matt:** Yeah, or at a hotel, or anything. I mean, that is One Cool Thing.

**Phil:** We’re not going to say it’s not cool.

**Matt:** No, but my daughter had a bake sale today.

**John:** Oh nice.

**Matt:** And she has this girls group and they are raising money – they were raising money to support the bees. And the organization it went to is called Backwards Beekeepers which is a Los Angeles group of treatment free bee keepers and they support feral bee colonies. So I’m giving them a shout out. People out there trying to make the world better.

**John:** Yeah. Bees. Bees are good.

**Matt:** So we saved them.

**John:** Yeah. You saved all the bees. One bake sale is all it took.

**Matt:** No one needs to do anything.

**John:** No colonies are collapsing.

**Matt:** Last year they saved the rhinos, so we’re good with those.

**Phil:** What’s next?

**Matt:** I don’t know.

**John:** The universe. My One Cool Thing is a show called Great News. Did you guys watch Great News?

**Matt:** No.

**John:** Not enough people watched Great News. So it was an NBC show that lasted two seasons. It was canceled after last season. But it showed up on Netflix. And so I knew of it in a general sense. And so it’s executive produced by Robert Carlock and Tina Fey who did 30 Rock and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Same music by Jeff Richmond. So it feels like it’s in that universe.

It is a workplace comedy that takes place at a television station. It’s 30 Rock-ish. It’s Mindy Project-ish. But it’s created by Tracey Wigfield who also plays a character on the show and it is delightful. And so it’s a show that I wish was still on and was making much more episodes. But they’re all there on Netflix. And so I think in a weird way it’s probably more successful seeing it all together as a block because it does build on itself in a really nice way. So it was a good little half hour comedy if you want an extra Tina Fey/Mindy Kaling style comedy. It’s there. It’s on Netflix. It’s called Great News.

**Matt:** Sounds good.

**Phil:** So nice when you discover something like that. Just thriving in the wild.

**John:** Tracey Wigfield, you made a good show. So I’m hoping she’s going to make other cool, good shows.

**Phil:** Right on.

**John:** That is our show for this week. Our show is produced by Megan McDonnell. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Luke Davis. 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 like the ones we answered today. For short questions on Twitter Craig is @clmazin. I am @johnaugust.

You can find us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get podcasts. Just search for Scriptnotes. While you’re there leave us a comment.

You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com.

If they want to see your movie they should go to see it in theaters on which day?

**Phil:** If you live in Los Angeles or New York City you can see it on Christmas Day.

**John:** So December 25th in New York/Los Angeles.

**Phil:** And then in the following weeks more and more cities. It will be everywhere on January 25th.

**John:** Great. But what if they are in Australia or what if they’re in London?

**Phil:** I don’t have – London will be January 25th. And it is actually being released all around the world. So if you tweet at me and you want to know where it is in your country I promise I will look it up.

**John:** How can they tweet at you? What is your handle?

**Phil:** It’s @Phillycarly.

**John:** Yes. There will be a link in the show notes. Matt, do you have a Twitter handle?

**Matt:** I’m @mattrmanfredi.

**John:** I also recommend that you follow Matt on Instagram because he takes photos of trees and bushes and pipes that he finds that are beautiful.

**Matt:** Yes. Manfredeus, like a Roman emperor.

**Phil:** Or an international conglomerate that is a front for political conspiracy.

**Matt:** Yes.

**John:** You can find all the back episodes of Scriptnotes at Scripnotes.net. That’s where you can listen to Episode 199 or whatever episode you were on before where you talked about The Invitation which is also still great and available where you find movies.

**Phil:** Right on.

**John:** And people should see that movie because it’s really, really good. I really–

**Phil:** Thank you, John.

**John:** And I think I’m going to be hosting some sort of Q and A with you guys at some point for Destroyer.

**Phil:** We have many of those coming up.

**John:** I’m excited to watch it with you guys and talk to you about it. Guys, thank you so much for coming in.

**Matt:** Thank you.

**Phil:** Thank you, John.

**John:** Bye.

Links:

* [Tickets](https://go.wgfoundation.org/campaigns/8810-the-scriptnotes-holiday-live-show) are on sale for the Holiday Live Show!
* Thanks for joining us, [Phil Hay](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0006534/?ref_=tt_ov_wr) and [Matt Manfredi](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0542062/)!
* [Episode 244: The Invitation, and Requels](http://johnaugust.com/2016/the-invitation-and-requels)
* [Commercial actors can get paid for excessive auditioning](https://johnaugust.com/Assets/2016_commercials_ex_e_audition_form_0.pdf)
* [Destroyer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqHaLUoiWZU) is in US theaters December 25, 2018
* [@PitchingNinja](https://twitter.com/PitchingNinja)
* [Backwards Beekeepers](http://www.backwardsbeekeepers.com/), and having a 6 foot charging cable
* [Great News](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_News), created by Tracey Wigfield
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