Making Things Better by Making Things Worse

John and Craig talk structure and escalation. Structure is simply what happens when. Escalation is how things get tougher. In features, characters are usually going on a journey that can only happen once, so you need to make sure that the events in your story are constantly challenging your heroes in new ways so they can continue to grow. In television, you’re often telling stories in which the character themselves don’t change much, yet the sequence of events within the episode (and in the season) needs to feel like it’s pushing forward. Along the way, we discuss Intro to Journalism’s Five W’s, and what people mean when they say a two-hander. John and Craig are headed back to the Austin Film Festival again this year for a live show and other special events. Use the code SCRIPTNOTES to get $25 off our Conference and Producers Badges. Links: Badges for the 2014 Austin Film Festival are available now Scriptnotes archives are available on scriptnotes.net or at the John August Store Two-handers on screenwriting.io Scriptnotes, Episode 152: The Rocky Shoals (pages 70-90) The Five Ws on Wikipedia John Robbins on Wikipedia Scriptnotes, Episode 150: Yes, screenwriting is actually writing In Dreams Begin Responsibilities and Other Stories by Delmore Schwartz The Answer to the Riddle is Me by David Stuart MacLean Outro by Scriptnotes editor Matthew Chilelli (send us yours!) You can download the episode here: AAC | mp3. UPDATE 7-24-14: The transcript of this episode can be found here. The post Making Things Better by Making Things Worse first appeared on John August.