John and Craig curate a collection of craft topics: character wants and needs, point of view, and letting your heroes drive scenes. From internal struggles to the external obstacles, they share how to design a story that best serves a character’s journey.

We wrap up our clip show with a discussion on what we are still learning about craft. Defensive writing, the demons of perfectionism–John and Craig also face these obstacles and share advice on overcoming them.

Finally in our bonus segment for premium members, John and Craig discuss how they deal with ‘want versus need’ in real life.

Links:

• Episode 279, What Do They Want?
• Episode 358, Point of View
• Episode 307, Teaching Your Heroes to Drive
• For more on character wants check out John’s blogposts: Rethinking Motivation and What Does He Want.
• Creatures before Dinosaurs: Dunkleosteus and the Carolina Butcher
• Fort Macleod
• Get our new 10th Anniversary T-Shirts
• Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription or treat yourself to a premium subscription!
• John August on Twitter
• Craig Mazin on Twitter
• John on Instagram
• Outro by William Brink (send us yours!)
• Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao (with segments by Godwin Jabangwe and Megan McDonnell!) and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.