DZ-91: Raising (different kinds of) Stakes

Listen listen if you're writing a biopic or any story where the audience already knows how it ends. Chas, Stu and Mel take a deep dive into stakes, using then lens of biopics to help us think about them. If an audience already knows the “plot” outcome of a story, then how do you create stakes to make a story tense for the audience? To explore this, we deep dive into HIDDEN FIGURES (about the NASA Friendship 7 mission), DOWNFALL (the final days of Berlin in WW2), and BRIGHT STAR (the life and death of romantic poet John Keats). We unpack the ideas around internal, external and philosophical /moral stakes and propose some new terminology that may help us write stakes more effectively. Thanks to Chris Walker for editing this episode. As always: SPOILERS ABOUND and all copyright material used under fair use for educational purposes. LIKE THIS EPISODE? Send us feedback. Thanks to our Patrons, especially Malay, Casimir, Eduardo, Jennifer, Leigh, Garrett, Bjorn, Randy, Jesse, Sandra, Theis, Alex and Khrob. ——— CHAPTERS 00:00:00 – Intro 00:04:41 – What even are stakes? 00:24:26 – Hidden Figures 01:00:46 – Downfall 01:33:38 – Bright Star 02:10:33 – Key Learnings 02:18:57 – Thanks Patreons! FILMS HIDDEN FIGURES (2016) — (w) Allison Schroeder, Theodore Melfi (d) Theodore Melfi DOWNFALL (2004) — (w) Bernd Eichinger (d) Oliver Hirschbiegel BRIGHT STAR (2009) — (w) Jane Campion, Andrew Motion (d) Jane Campion SCRIPTS Study the script: HIDDEN FIGURES (2016) — Allison Schroeder, Theodore Melfi ——— More Draft Zero is brought to you by our awesome Patreons. If you enjoy the show, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts, a rating on Spotify, or a review on Podchaser. We are @stuwillis, @mehlsbells and @chasffisher on Twitter. You can find @draft_zero and @_shotzero on Instagram and Twitter. Full show notes at: https://draft-zero.com/2022/dz-91/