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Endings

Every episode covering Endings.

"No one’s meant to notice this scaffolding. But it needs to be there -- because otherwise people would be like, where did that come from?"

— Stu Willis  |  DZ-90: Setups & Payoffs in EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE

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DZ-92: Insightful Recognition in Powerful Endings

How can endings prompt an audience to reflect on your story?
AI✦The episode directly investigates what makes certain endings powerful by analyzing LA LA LAND, INCEPTION, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, and TURNING RED as case studies in ending craft.✦
⏱ 1h 26m
29 SEP 2022
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)… →

DZ-119: Final Character Choices & Great Endings

How do you dramatise a protagonist's internal journey through their final decision?
AI✦Chas and Stu argue that final choices are easy to dramatize as binaries when you’ve done the groundwork, but Talk to Me chose cool over clarity, which is why the ending resonates as spectacle rather than thematic closure.✦
⏱ 1h 52m
18 JUN 2025
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… →

Even More

DZ-90: Setups & Payoffs in EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE

How can you use setups and payoffs to stitch your film together?
AI✦The episode includes a deep dive into the film’s Michael Arndt-inspired ending, examining how setups and payoffs converge at the final structural moment.✦
⏱ 1h 30m
27 JUL 2022
Listen to understand how setups, payoffs, and reversals create narrative cohesion even when your story is fkn bonkers.
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In this one-shot, Chas and Stu jump into the utter chaos of EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE. Y’know, nultiverses, butt-plug action sequences, hot-dog fingers, a raccoon chef, a nihilist bagel. All the good stuff. And yet it lands emotionally in a way that feels inevitable… →

DZ-41: Theme and Worldview

How can your characters' worldview dramatise your theme?
AI✦The closing scenes of these pilots mirror and complicate the thematic setup of their openings, showing how theme operates across the full arc of a pilot structure.✦
⏱ 2h 32m
24 MAR 2017
Listen if theme feels abstract - we talk how how to make it visible through what characters believe.
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In this episode, Stu and Chas tackle one of the more esoteric topics in screenwriting (and writing in general): theme! To help us tackle this topic, we decided to look at television pilots, because we felt that television requires the theme to be more explicit. Our zig-zagging (and long) discussion covers thematic engines, music themes, thematic loglines, punishment vs reward, and - perhaps most of all - the worldview of characters… →

DZ-4: Catharsis and the Post-Coital Cigarette

How does the end of certain films make your soul shudder?
AI✦Stephen Cleary joins the hosts to analyze how the last few pages of Field of Dreams, Toy Story 3, and Se7en trigger outpourings of emotion from audiences.✦
⏱ 1h 25m
14 APR 2014
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-114: Climaxes in CHALLENGERS

How does ending your story on the climax affect audience experience?
AI✦The episode’s central question asks what happens when you cut to black on the climax without further resolution, and whether that withholding becomes the story’s greatest thematic tool.✦
⏱ 1h 17m
29 NOV 2024
Listen to understand how withholding resolution can make your story great!
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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… →

DZ-67: Writing Passive Protagonists & Melodrama

How do I tell a powerful story where the protagonist cannot drive the plot?
AI✦The hosts note that melodramas don’t end so much as close--a structural principle distinct from how agency-driven narratives typically resolve.✦
⏱ 2h 58m
30 APR 2020
Listen if you want to write powerful stories centred on characters without much agency.
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Stu and Chas are joined by Stephen Cleary following his exploration into Melodrama, and together they try to reclaim the word from its pejorative meaning… →