Write Your Screenplay Podcast

"...On this podcast episode, Jacob Krueger interviews Doug Jung, co-writer of Star Trek Beyond, and Emily Dell, indie writer & director of Compass Rose and Helen..."

"...Writing really is self-exploration. Facing certain things that you may not be dealing with in every day and recognizing those things and giving them a voice..." - Sebastian Stan

Building on the ideas from Part 1 of this series on how to revise your screenplay, Jacob Krueger shows you how to take your screenplay revision process to the next level.

In the first installment of this Revision Tips Podcast, Jacob Krueger shows you a simple approach to take your screenplay rewrite to the next level.

Jacob Krueger shows you how one song, "Remember Me", was used to build the structure for Coco's Screenplay.

Jacob Krueger analyzes the structure of the screenplay for Coco and the role of research when writing a script.

Jacob Krueger reveals the hidden keys to a successful TV pilot with a deep structural analysis comparing the Stranger Things 1 pilot and the first episode of Stranger Things 2.

Jacob Krueger analyzes the first episode of Stranger Things 2, to show you the difference between Primary and Secondary Structure in a TV pilot.

"...I got lucky. I got to work with David Fincher. He is willing to give anything to the creative process. He was willing to play with "what if". For me, it was about being of service to somebody else's story. I had to accept that the "nos" were part of the process of finding the "yes" and not taking any of it personally..." Pamela Cederquist.

Jacob Krueger breaks down the structure of mother! and the three simple screenwriting concepts that make it both succeed and struggle to connect to its audience.

Anything I am working on, that is really the first question I ask myself: “What is the point of the story? What is this about?” If I don’t have the answer to that, I almost am incapable of writing it...for me, I always have to really justify-- What is the point of the story? What are you going to get out of watching the story? I need it to be emotionally true, and then I will believe anything. As long as I believe that what the characters are feeling in the scenes feels right, then actually anything can happen!

Annabelle: Creation is not a fully successful film. For all that’s great about it, it’s also full of holes, gaps in logic, violations of its own rules, crappy dialogue… but there’s also a ton you can learn from it as a screenwriter, particularly when it comes to how to write your first ten pages.

"...When we think about traditional television series, there are certain confines of the narrative structure. We have to be able to sustain a half-hour or an hour every week. But one of the things that I think is really exciting about Web Series is, because Web Series are so short, you can kind of blow the roof off the house...you have the freedom to do it your way"

"... The Big Sick is a hugely successful film adaptation of Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon’s true life story. But the structure of the film actually differs in many ways from the true life events that inspired it. In this Podcast, Award Winning Screenwriter Jacob Krueger discusses how to adapt a true life story, and how to navigate the pressure between truth and fiction to get the real story on the page ..."

"There’s no doubt that some of the most successful movies ever, from Dead Poets Society to Little Miss Sunshine, have more than one main character. And at the same time, there are genuine risks when we start telling a story from the point-of-view of more than one main character. In this podcast, Award Winning Screenwriter Jacob Krueger shows you how to write a script with more than one main character and how to avoid the pitfalls when building this kind of complicated screenplay structure."

For all its many structural problems, Atomic Blonde succeeds in its fight sequences in the same way that Iron Man succeeds. Atomic Blonde and Iron Man both succeed because they realize that guns are no fun...

... in addition to being an extraordinary cinematic experience, Dunkirk is a particularly interesting script to look at as screenwriters, because it breaks pretty much every rule that you’ve likely been told about screenwriting or about filmmaking in general, or certainly about the war movie genre…”

"...and you can see, if you look at the structure of Spider-Man: Homecoming, that this isn't just the formula for creating a great bad guy, it is actually a way of creating an entire cast of unforgettable characters, and shaping the journeys they all go on in the script. Because every single one of these characters is really just a person with a really strong want and a really strong obstacle that forces them to reveal their really strong “how”—the way that they pursue the things that they want differently from everybody else..."

"...one of the cool things about movies and one of the cool things about life is that pretty much everybody in the world thinks that they are the hero and that other people are the bad guys. And that means that if we want to learn to write bad guys, we need to learn to step into their shoes, and see the world through their eyes-- to empathize with the people that we hate the most, the people that we don’t understand, the people that we think are horrible. There are people who I might feel exist only to antagonize me; there are people who might drive me crazy. But the truth of the matter is, if I stepped in and saw the universe through their eyes, they don’t think of themselves as the antagonist. They think of themselves as the hero...”

"... As a screenwriter, you need to see, hear and feel everything. And this is really the hardest part, because we have this urge to finish. And that urge to finish makes it really hard to actually see, hear and feel everything. We want to put a band aid on it. If you’ve ever had a fight with a loved one, you have probably had the same urge, “I want the fight to end.” And the desire for the fight to end doesn’t allow you to actually see, hear and feel what is actually going on. So you just keep glossing over it. And what happens is our little A.D.D. minds want us to escape, “okay over here…no, no, look over here, no, no, no look over here.” Because the other thing about seeing, hearing and feeling everything is it is scary. It is hard and it is scary..."