DZ-19: Car-Crash Characters

Listen when you're writing a protagonist who does terrible things but you need the audience to keep watching.

Stu and Chas revisit a topic from a year ago: how do screenwriters make unlikeable characters compelling? This time, we turn our focus to dramas and analyse how AMERICAN HISTORY X, YOUNG ADULT, NIGHTCRAWLER all make their asshole protagonists compelling to watch. We expand our original list of five writer's tools to include a few more for your tool belt.

In response to our audience survey, we also introduce our first episode of backmatter.

As always: SPOILERS ABOUND and all copyright material used under fair use for educational purposes.

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FILMS

• AMERICAN HISTORY X (1998) — (w) David Mckenna (d) Tony Kaye
• YOUNG ADULT (2011) — (w) Diablo Cody (d) Jason Reitman
• NIGHTCRAWLER (2014) — (w) Dan Gilroy

SCRIPTS

• Study the script: YOUNG ADULT (2011) — Diablo Cody
• Study the script: NIGHTCRAWLER (2014) — Dan Gilroy

LINKS

• Read: YOUNG ADULT by Diablo Cody (Final Draft) - First 20 pages. For educational purposes only
• Read: YOUNG ADULT by Diablo Cody - First 20 pages. For educational purposes only
• YouTube: Young Adult - Trailer
• YouTube: New York Times: 'Nightcrawler' Anatomy of a Scene with Dan Gilroy
• YouTube: THE KILLER INSIDE ME - Trailer
• Watch: Every Frame a Painting: Snowpiercer - Left or Right
• Read: The Contrarians: Episode 2 - Alien 3
• Read: Temple of the Seven Golden Camels: Staging and How It Affects Mood & Drama
• Read: Temple of the Seven Golden Camels: (Just a Little Bit) More Flat and Deep
• Watch: Every Frame a Painting: Drive (2011) - the Quadrant System
• Watch: Every Frame a Painting: The Bad Sleep Well (1960) - the Geometry of a Scene
• Read: Day One: A Simple and Elegant Journal for iPhone, iPad and Mac
• Read: Shawn Blanc: Day One review
• IMDB: David Caesar

RELATED EPISODES

• DZ-03: Making Unlikeable Protagonists Compelling

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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/2015/dz-19/