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Anagnorisis
Every episode covering Anagnorisis.
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DZ-92: Insightful Recognition in Powerful Endings
How can endings prompt an audience to reflect on your story?
AI✦Stu and Chas use Aristotle’s anagnorisis as the central lens for understanding how endings move characters from ignorance to knowledge, particularly of self.✦
Listen if you want to write endings that make audiences pause and ponder (in a good way, obvs)
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Stu & Chas set out to explore what makes certain endings powerful, in particular those of LA LA LAND, INCEPTION, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN and TURNING RED. The lens they bring to those endings is Aristotle’s moment of “anagnorisis” (don’t worry - we can’t pronounce it either), traditionally when a character moves from ignorance to knowledge (particularly of self)… →
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DZ-83: A Very Thematic Stand-up Special!
What can screenwriters learn from the storytelling techniques used by stand-up comedians?
AI✦Alice describes how in Nanette the arc is Hannah realizing the corner she’s backed herself into through her use of jokes as a distancing mechanism from trauma, an act of recognition that reframes everything that came before.✦
Listen if you want to understand how stand-up comedians grip audiences and build emotional arcs (and what narrative tools screenwriters can borrow from comedy)!
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Standup comedians can keep audiences gripped to their every word for over an hour, and often bring them to emotional climaxes by the end. So how do they do it and what tools can apply to scripted narratives… →
DZ-4: Catharsis and the Post-Coital Cigarette
How does the end of certain films make your soul shudder?
AI✦The episode traces how recognition and revelation function as the mechanical trigger for cathartic release in these three radically different films.✦
Listen if you want to make you endings great!
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Stu and Chas are joined by their first guest – illustrious script developer and producer Stephen Cleary – to explore how certain films can trigger an outpouring of emotion from the audience. Turns out that Aristotle may have figured it out a few thousand years ago and called it Catharsis… →
DZ-119: Final Character Choices & Great Endings
How do you dramatise a protagonist's internal journey through their final decision?
AI✦Finding Nemo tests the lesson Marlin has learned by forcing him to choose between saving his son and saving Dory, which means the recognition of what matters most becomes inseparable from the act of choice itself.✦
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-59: Avengers Endgame - Ending Character Journeys
Do you want your audience feeling with or for your characters?
AI✦The conversation turns on whether Tony and Cap reach a moment of self-recognition or change in understanding--the recognition that would constitute genuine character transformation.✦
Listen if you're interested in how to dramatise character change, position your audience in relation to characters, and explore the difference between empathy and sympathy in screenwriting
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One day, Chas saw Avengers: Endgame for the second time and wrote a review on Letterboxd. In particular, he had issues with how little he perceived the characters of Cap and Tony changed within the film, their big finale (spoiler). Then friend and patron of the podcast Julio Olivera vehemently disagreed in the comments. He was egged on by Stu. And there in the comments began a debate that looked a lot like an episode of Draft Zero. So we decided to make it one… →
Films:
Avengers: Endgame (2019)