Lotteries, lightning strikes and twist endings

John and Craig look at the nature of fluke hits, everything from #alexfromtarget to huge spec sales. Is luck just luck, or is it about how often you play the game? Where does talent fit in? We walk through a great breakdown of twist endings by Alec Worley, looking at how expectation both inside and outside of the story shapes the experience. Then we answer a bunch of listener questions, on topics including using real-life locations, breaking up dialogue, and passing gracefully when you don’t like a project. The Scriptnotes Holiday show is December 11th in Hollywood, featuring guests Aline Brosh McKenna, B.J. Novak, Jane Espenson and Derek Haas. Check the link below for tickets. Links: Tickets to the Scriptnotes Holiday show are on sale tomorrow at the Writers Guild Foundation website Big Fish: The Musical is now playing at Musical Theatre West in Long Beach Writer Emergency Pack is going strong on Kickstarter The Five Types of Twist Endings by Alec Worley Alex from Target Darius Kazemi’s XOXO talk Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter Screenwriting.io on intermediary slugs Tim and Susan Have Matching Handguns by Joe Callander Too Many Cooks by Casper Kelly, and his interview in Entertainment Weekly Get premium Scriptnotes access at scriptnotes.net and hear our 1,000th subscriber special Outro by Scriptnotes editor Matthew Chilelli (send us yours!) You can download the episode here: AAC | mp3. UPDATE 11-17-14: The transcript of this episode can be found here.The post Lotteries, lightning strikes and twist endings first appeared on John August.