Structure
Every episode tagged Structure, newest first.
2026
"Information puts players in danger and danger rewards characters with information, right? That's kind of the loop with like thriller game design."
— Stu Willis | DZ-126: Secrets and Clues
DZ-126: Secrets and Clues
How can Secrets and Clues motivate characters?
AI✦The hosts directly address whether characters are pushed forward or pulled forward by information, and how that distinction shapes the kind of escalation each character can sustain across the film.✦
Listen if you want to understand how hidden information drives character motivation and plot structure!
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“Getting information puts your character in danger. And danger rewards your character with information." — One of three ideas we steal from game design in this episode. In this two part series, we talk about how secrets, clues and hidden information motivate characters and may (or may not) help you plot from a character perspective. Part One (this episode) looks at WAKE UP DEAD MAN; while Part Two looks at SIDE EFFECTS, and the pilot episode of SHRINKING… →
Films:
Wake Up Dead Man (2025)
DZ-125: Oscars One-shot - BLUE MOON
What craft tools make a low-budget, contained, period drama riveting?
AI✦Mel and Chas break down how Blue Moon’s almost total commitment to Larry Hart’s perspective–he’s absent from only two beats in the entire film–shapes both the script’s structure and the audience’s emotional experience of his decline.✦
Listen if you want to understand how narrative POV, screenplay format, and dialogue craft can elevate a contained biopic into an Oscar-nominated film
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BLUE MOON is a talky, period-drama that film about an obscure songer-writer in the 1940s. Yet, it attracted world-class talent AND Academy Award nominations, including for it’s script. Join Chas & Mel as they explore how narrative POV, interweaving relationships, hooky dialogue, and even the screenplay format itself make the script for BLUE MOON so great… →
Films:
Blue Moon (2026)
DZ-124: Making the Despicable Compelling
How does Film Noir show us terrible people doing terrible things without endorsing it?
AI✦Mel and Chas argue that noir films control audience investment in morally compromised characters by controlling the questions they raise–whether it’s ‘Am I a bad person?’ in Devil in a Blue Dress or ‘Did he really let her go?’ in Woman of the Hour.✦
Listen if you need audiences to root for characters who do terrible things
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Mel and Chas continue to explore what Noir (the genre) can teach writers of all other genres. In particular:… →
Films:
Devil in a Blue Dress (1995)
, Woman of the Hour (2024)
, Double Indemnity (1944)
, The Long Goodbye (1973)
2025
"It gives you that kind of uh you know positive negative alternate contrast thing. Character A is now slumbering but character B now has transgressed. Then maybe they're the one who's slumbered and then the other person transgresses right and that's what makes this film have such a riveting push-pull to it."
— Stu Willis | DZ-122: Escalating Antagonism Across Genres
DZ-122: Escalating Antagonism Across Genres
How can you apply horror ideas to action and comedy?
AI✦Stu, Chas, and Kim use TOMBS to reveal how antagonistic forces work across genres–showing that thinking of your hero as the horror for your villains creates dynamic escalation in action, horror, and comedy alike.✦
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 Ho introduces TOMBS (Transgression-Omens-Manifestation-Banishment-Slumber) as a generative story cycle from the MOTHERSHIP RPG that can develop your antagonistic forces independently from your protagonist’s arc.✦
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-119: Final Character Choices & Great Endings
How do you dramatise a protagonist's internal journey through their final decision?
AI✦Chas and Stu compare narrative POV structures across five films to show how much the audience knows about a character’s options, the act of choosing, and the consequences, with Michael Clayton’s approach withholding experience to serve theme.✦
Listen if you want to understand how to better dramatise a character's internal journey
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In this episode, Stu and Chas focus solely on the final choices made by protagonists and how that reflects their character journey and successfully, or not, dramatises the internal… →
Films:
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023)
, Finding Nemo (2003)
, Michael Clayton (2007)
, Promising Young Woman (2020)
, Talk to Me (2022)
DZ-118: ADOLESCENCE and Tension Through Questions
How do dramatic questions create tension?
AI✦Chas and Stu demonstrate how ADOLESCENCE controls what questions the audience asks at any given moment–plot questions in episode one, character questions in episodes two and three, thematic questions by the end–and how this macro-level precision creates tension without relying on plot.✦
Listen if you think tension only comes from plot.
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In this episode, Stu and Chas delve into the cultural phenomenon of ADOLESCENCE. We try to find the craft tools that have made the show so compelling and such a catalyst for conversation… →
Films:
Adolescence (2025)
DZ-116: Writing Physical Comedy
How do you make extended technical scenes funny on the page?
AI✦The Happy Endings wedding sequence exemplifies how spending time in setup–establishing props like the beer float and Kleenex box–pays off later when those same items trigger gags, giving actors and designers material to play with.✦
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
2024
"It's very Minority Report, right, where they're almost giving you, hey, we're going to give you the audience bits that you need to know about the world by playing ads to the characters that we're hoping you watch and you pick up on this like world building that we're doing."
— Mel Killingsworth | DZ-109: Talking DIRECTLY to your audience
DZ-115: A Christmas Special - Rewatching & Rituals
What magic do Christmas movies use to make them so rewatchable?
AI✦The episode credits intricate plots as a structural ingredient that keeps holiday films engaging and rewatchable, suggesting complexity as an antidote to predictability.✦
Listen if you want to understand what makes holiday films enduring parts of our seasonal rituals!
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In this “backmatter” episode of Draft Zero, Stu, Chas, and Mel Killingsworth embark on a festive exploration of what makes holiday films so engaging and so re-watchable that they can become part of our rituals. To that end, we breakdown the charm of of Christmas films like KISS KISS BANG BANG, RIDERS OF JUSTICE, and IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE… →
DZ-114: Climaxes in Challengers
How does ending your story on the climax affect audience experience?
AI✦Mel and Chas examine what it means structurally and thematically when filmmakers choose to end their story at the climax rather than after it, using CHALLENGERS as a case study in how that choice reshapes audience experience.✦
Listen to understand how withholding resolution can become your story's greatest statement.
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While Stu is on show, Mel and Chas sit down to analyse the meaning behind the ending of 2024’s CHALLENGERS, especially when - upon reading the script - the most impactful moment of the ending on screen (for Chas in particular) is not written on the page… →
Films:
Challengers (2024)
DZ-113: Tools For Filmmakers To Talk To The Audience
What tools help ensure that you as the filmmaker are not misunderstood?
AI✦The episode’s central question–what tools help ensure you as the filmmaker are not misunderstood–operates as a thematic throughline uniting how ADAPTATION, STORIES WE TELL, and THE FORTY-YEAR-OLD VERSION each answer it differently.✦
Listen if you want to explore how you can make your creative hand visible through meta-storytelling and structural choices!?!
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In our final (ha!) episode looking at Talking Directly to the Audience, we turn away from character-and-text based craft tools to look at other ways that filmmakers - whether they be directors, writers, editors, or anyone else - can make the audience feel their ‘hand’ more. To that end, Mel, Stu and Chas dive into ADAPTATION, STORIES WE TELL and THE FORTY-YEAR-OLD VERSION… →
DZ-111: Unreliable Narrators and FIGHT CLUB
How does the unreliability of a narrator impact the way a story is told?
AI✦Jack’s perspective as narrator determines everything the audience receives, and Stu and Mel show how point-of-view becomes a weapon when the person telling the story cannot be trusted.✦
Listen to learn how unreliable narrators shape storytelling through voiceover, structure, and control.
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In this episode, Stu and Mel (sans Chas!) take a deep dive into FIGHT CLUB and its use of the unreliable narrator. This is a bridging episode between our previous episode on VOICEOVER and our forthcoming episode on TALKING TO CAMERA as Fight Club does both.… →
Films:
Fight Club (1999)
DZ-109: Talking DIRECTLY to your audience
What are the different ways a filmmaker can ask something of the audience?
AI✦Chas uses the concept of perspective and point of view to distinguish between objective narration, subjective internal monologue, and the Rashomon effect of multiple competing viewpoints.✦
Listen if you've wondered what a character actually wants when they're talking directly to the audience!?
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What are the different ways a filmmaker can ask something of the audience… →
Films:
Fight Club (1999)
, Fleabag (2016)
, The Big Short (2015)
, F for Fake (1973)
, Star Wars (1977)
DZ-108: The Emotional Event with Judith Weston
How and why should every scene have an emotional event?
AI✦Judith Weston frames the emotional event as the core unit of scene work–a shift in the relationship between characters rather than plot advancement–and Chas, Stu, and Judith dissect how this concept lives on the page through close reading of scenes from Oppenheimer, Casino Royale, and Past Lives.✦
Listen to understand why a scene's power lives in what shifts between characters, not what happens to them.
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2014
"most of his emphasis about the beats is in the first act. That's where he gives the most information. You know, you've got to have your opening image, you've got to state the theme, you've got to do the setup, you've got to do your catalyst inciting incident. You have to have your debate, which I think is Snyder's term, effectively for the call to adventure and the refusal of the call. We'll get to the hero's journey, but that's kind of that same section. And then you break into the second act, right? And then it becomes, oh, then you got your B story, your midpoint, your rise to your third and then beginning your third act."
— Stu Willis | DZ-1: Do Screenplay Gurus win you Oscars?
DZ-6: Key Scenes and Unlocking the Story
Can one scene be the key to unlocking the whole story?
AI✦The dynamic between protagonist and antagonist in these key scenes is what generates the story’s forward momentum and thematic weight.✦
Listen listen if you want to understand how a single key scene between protagonist and antagonist can unlock the entire structure of your story
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DZ-1: Do Screenplay Gurus win you Oscars?
Do Oscar-Nominated screenwriters follow the structural formulas prescribed by the 'gurus' and books?
AI✦Stu and Chas measure two Oscar-nominated screenplays against the structural formulas of Snyder, Hauge, and Vogler to ask whether professional writers actually follow these prescribed plot points.✦
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… →