DZ-91: Raising (different kinds of) Stakes

Listen listen if you're writing a biopic or any story where the audience already knows how it ends.

Chas, Stu and Mel take a deep dive into stakes, using then lens of biopics to help us think about them. If an audience already knows the “plot” outcome of a story, then how do you create stakes to make a story tense for the audience?

To explore this, we deep dive into HIDDEN FIGURES (about the NASA Friendship 7 mission), DOWNFALL (the final days of Berlin in WW2), and BRIGHT STAR (the life and death of romantic poet John Keats). We unpack the ideas around internal, external and philosophical /moral stakes and propose some new terminology that may help us write stakes more effectively.

Thanks to Chris Walker for editing this episode.

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

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CHAPTERS

• 00:00:00 – Intro
• 00:04:41 – What even are stakes?
• 00:24:26 – Hidden Figures
• 01:00:46 – Downfall
• 01:33:38 – Bright Star
• 02:10:33 – Key Learnings
• 02:18:57 – Thanks Patreons!

FILMS

• HIDDEN FIGURES (2016) — (w) Allison Schroeder, Theodore Melfi (d) Theodore Melfi
• DOWNFALL (2004) — (w) Bernd Eichinger (d) Oliver Hirschbiegel
• BRIGHT STAR (2009) — (w) Jane Campion, Andrew Motion (d) Jane Campion

SCRIPTS

• Study the script: HIDDEN FIGURES (2016) — Allison Schroeder, Theodore Melfi

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Full show notes at: https://draft-zero.com/2022/dz-91/