Genre
Every episode tagged Genre, newest first.
2025
"The legislation of civil forfeiture breeds corruption it enables and facilitates corruption as opposed to the corruption being like these few bad eggs or rotten apples in this town. It's like this nationwide rot that humans are caught up in on both sides of the law."
— Kim Ho | DZ-122: Escalating Antagonism Across Genres
DZ-122: Escalating Antagonism Across Genres
How can you apply horror ideas to action and comedy?
AI✦Stu and Chas prove that TOMBS–a horror framework from a tabletop RPG–maps onto action thrillers and comedies, showing how the structure of antagonistic escalation transcends the genre it came from.✦
Listen to learn how thinking of your hero as the horror (for your villains) makes your script dynamic.
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In this episode Chas, Stu and guest Kim Ho continue their exploration into the power(s) of antagonism and how focusing on them can develop story… →
DZ-121: Escalating Antagonism in SINNERS
How do the antagonistic forces in your story escalate distinctly from the protagonists’ journey?
AI✦Kim and Stu map Noel Carroll’s Onset-Discovery-Confirmation-Confrontation horror cycle alongside TOMBS, showing how horror’s genre patterns align with and enrich the antagonistic escalation framework.✦
Listen if you want to stregthen your story by focusing on the antagonistic forces in your script
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We often struggle to develop the middle stages of a story. Could this be because we focus on our protagonists’ journeys and plot structure more than on how the antagonistic powers are awakened, wronged, discovered, gathering strength and revealing themselves… →
Films:
Sinners (2025)
DZ-117: Pulling Off Tonal Shifts
How can we teach our audience new storytelling rules in the middle of our story?
AI✦These three films all execute radical genre pivots mid-story, and Mel and Chas reverse-engineer how their writers made those shifts feel inevitable rather than jarring.✦
Listen if you want to write tonal pivots that land on the page without a director's toolkit.
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Following on from our episodes on establishing tone through action lines and through character, this is what we have been building up to: how to pull off a tonal switch… that does NOT throw the audience out of the film. And, in particular, how to pull that off on the page when writers don’t have framing, lighting, music, editing, etc. at our disposal… →
DZ-116: Writing Physical Comedy
How do you make extended technical scenes funny on the page?
AI✦Bringing Up Baby’s slug lines mimic the editing pace and camera movement to convey rhythm and humor through white space, while Bridesmaids uses action lines to show the geography of different rooms and character combinations executing the same gag in various ways.✦
Listen if you're writing physical comedy and have no idea how to make it work on the page
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Mel joins Chas to tackle physical comedy. We limited our homework selection to extended scenes (as opposed to moments and sight gags) in live action projects and – with the help of our Patreons – selected early sequences from BRINGING UP BABY, the pilot for HAPPY ENDINGS and that wonderful food poisoning scene in BRIDESMAIDS… →
Shows:
Happy Endings 1x01
2014
"I feel like you and I both agree, there is not like this line that shines out in the first five or six pages of this script as being, this is what the film is about."
— Chas Fisher | DZ-1: Do Screenplay Gurus win you Oscars?
DZ-16: Masters of Time and Whitespace
Does manipulating time on the page make your script feel more cinematic?
AI✦By examining scripts like PULP FICTION and THE BOURNE IDENTITY, Chas and Stu reveal how screenwriters use formatting and structure to write like you’d edit–creating visual momentum on the page.✦
Listen to learn how screenwriters use whitespace to recreate cinema's manipulation of time on the page.
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Chas and Stu are joined by Khrob Edmonds - an award-winning filmmaker - to discuss manipulation of time&hellip… →
Films:
Pulp Fiction (1994)
, The Bourne Identity (2002)
, The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)
, The Woman in Black (2012)
, Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
, Up (2009)
, Whiplash (2014)
, The Untouchables (1987)
DZ-1: Do Screenplay Gurus win you Oscars?
Do Oscar-Nominated screenwriters follow the structural formulas prescribed by the 'gurus' and books?
AI✦Stu observes that Philomena ‘could be written as a thriller’ with nuns as antagonists, but instead uses ‘people not wanting to speak to them’ as resistance, upending the genre’s opposition mechanics.✦
Listen if you want to know whether Blake Snyder, Michael Hauge and Christopher Vogler's structural theories actually apply to Academy Award–nominated screenplays
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Stu and Chas analyse two screenplays nominated for Academy Awards in 2014 – PHILOMENA and DALLAS BUYERS CLUB – to see whether they follow the structural theories espoused by Blake Snyder, Michael Hauge and Christopher Vogler… →