Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - Writers Gonna Write

Episode Date: March 27, 2023

The guys dive back in to their writing process and talk some film and TV!

I've got a quick, quick question for you, alright? I wanna hear your thoughts, wanna know what's on your mind I've got a quick, quick question for you, alright? The answer's not important, I'm just glad that we could talk tonight So what's your favorite? Who did you get? What do I be? What's it up with? Oh, forget it I saw a movie, Daniel O'Brien When will I be remembered? Was it out there? Where did all that go? Did we not? Oh, forget it Saw a movie, Daniel O'Brien

Two best friends and comedy writers If there's an answer, they're gonna find it I think you'll have a great time here I think you'll have a great time here So hello again and welcome to another episode of Quick Question with Soren and Daniel, the podcast where two best friends and comedy writers ask each other questions and give each other answers. I won't have for that podcast. Senior writer for last week tonight, author of How to Fight Presidents and friend to many, brother to two, uncle to six, dog parent to one, Daniel O'Brien, joined as always by my co-host who is second to none mr soren buoy soren i wrote

this one out this time it was really good thanks it was really beautiful but what a turn of phrase and also thank you you were uh five minutes late and i spent that time thinking, dog parent to one, second to none. Do I have time to make this entire thing rhyme? And I didn't. Five minutes is not enough time for me to make that happen. But in the future, look out for a completely rhyming intro to this show. And you did friend to two, right? Brother to two. Oh, brother to two. I thought you said friend to two and then that two oh brother to two i thought you said friend to two and then that i was second to none which meant i was the first of the two friends that you have in oh no

yeah that would have been sweet but no it's friend to many brother to two okay and so i'm one of those right yeah yeah well it's funny dan that you should mention writing because i was thinking the other day about this podcast. Why? And I was like, how do I make it better? I'm always trying to improve. And it's like, how do I improve on what we've already got, which is perfection? It's tough.

But I was like, if I was objectively coming into this podcast between a comedy writer from Last Week Tonight, comedy writer from American Dad, what would I want from it? And decided in my mind, it wouldn't be, how's my workout schedule? It would be writing advice or it'd be like something about writing at least. Oh boy, we are coming at this episode in particular from very different places. You should probably, you should go first.

As a writer, I think maybe we can tie it together though. I think maybe there's a way to stitch it together. And that's sort of what I want to talk about is like that Frankenstein process. I mean, I don't think it's too early to just jump into the episode. It's not our usual format where I ask a quick question right away,

but I think we, let's just try it. Daniel, a quick question. Shoot. What's your outlining process um and i don't mean just like if you're gonna write a pilot or something like that like how are you gonna are you doing flash cards or are you um writing it on a whiteboard and breaking the story i mean like before you even start writing how how are you putting all those ideas in your head into one thing and being like, oh, okay, here's the connective tissue. Here's how it will all make sense. And then starting to write.

Like, how do you get there? You should probably go first. I think that'll be a more helpful answer for our audience. I've been thinking about it because I'm currently working on my story at American Dad. I've been thinking about it because I'm currently working on my story at American Dad. And again, struck with this panic that I always forget about this, where we're breaking a story, we're breaking it as a room. I have great writers working with me who are like way better writers than I am and understand story way better than I do, who are so good at articulating what a story is missing or where something needs more or

where already anticipating like no that act's gonna be too full that kind of stuff stuff i don't see coming at all until i'm sitting down i'm like oh fuck they're right um but uh there's every single time you you write something and when you're done writing it you're like i'm great at this and then you start again it's at writing and you're like i don't know what the fuck i'm doing i don't know how to do this uh and that whole process early on where you're so untethered to anything where you have maybe like six ideas that all feel somewhat cohesive but you don't know how to get from one to another or anything. But you're like, I like all these.

I'm very precious about these scenes or whatever. And you're like, how do I link these? And then how do I put an emotional arc through it? And the whole process feels so daunting and overwhelming. And it's impossible to chunk out the way you would with any other project where you're like, well, I'll just work on, I'll work on a little bit at each time because you have to see the whole big picture at the very

beginning before you even start writing because you need to know that the story has a has a real cohesion and arc to it yeah yeah so it's like no knock on people who do other jobs but i was visiting my parents uh the other day and and they have people building a deck in their backyard and you can just see like the the the frame of what it's going to be and as a writer who feels like i'm always in the dark i'm like oh you guys just started with the frame huh oh novel what's what are you gonna do next you're gonna pour some concrete is that how is that how dexter made it yeah seriously tell me guy yeah it's it's so daunting and bad and scary and i was trying to like think of what to even equate it to and i was like oh i i've had this feeling before and i get it from any time in my

life where i've redecorated in an apartment or like tried to redo something on a grand scale for a house or a room where I'm like, all right, we're going to do new furniture. We're going to do a paint on the wall. We're going to do art. Like there's all these little elements that need to go in and you have a few pieces in mind where you're like, this is a color I like, or this is like a, this is a picture frame from my wedding that like, I want to build something around this. And then as you're going, you're just like, you have no idea what's going to look right together because it's impossible to tell until you can see it. You can like try and see it in your mind's eye and like kind of envision like, do those colors even go together?

And like, or you're looking at stuff in a magazine or whatever, light fixtures. And you're like, I can't possibly foresee those light fixtures in that room unless I close my eyes and try really, really hard. But I have no idea what they would actually be if we try to like slam them together. And that terror that you feel, because you also have to purchase these things. So there's like a huge investment to it. And that's how i feel with writing as well as like as soon as you choose one door you shut six other ones that like could have led somewhere way more interesting and so you're you're deciding along the way you're making these big ultimately kind of

arbitrary decisions where you're like i hope that that this direction has, that this is right. And so you just start building. And then along the way, I mean, eventually it always works out because you end up, even if stuff doesn't work, you've got that. You're like,

ah, fuck. All right. Well, I spent a bunch of money on that, but it's, it's just not going to work. Again,

I got to find a way to like re redo this part or restructure this. And occasionally it is terrifying because you get to a point where you're like, you know what? None of this is going to work. And I just spent so much time and energy on it and it's not going to work. It's incredibly frustrating because no one likes to think, because in a very tangible way, it looks like work has being wasted when you have to throw out however many pages you've written of something or however many ideas you've you've conceived but like the very positive and uh a spin that i genuinely believe in is it's not work wasted like you had to do all this to eventually solve what you didn't realize was a problem at the time like the stuff you threw out

solve what you didn't realize was a problem at the time. Like the stuff you threw out leads you to like, oh, okay. Now I know what it can't be, which helps point me towards what it has to be. It's just such a, it's so defeating to constantly start from scratch. I mean, you're not starting from again, where you're like, I'm building that same thing again. I built before. I know the mistakes I made last time. Now I know how to build it.

No, every single time there's brand new and terrible problems that you're dealing with. And you're like, well, fuck. And sometimes you can't articulate the problems a lot of the time. You just know something's not working. And I'm in the hole. I'm in that right now where I'm like figuring it out. And you just feel like you're building a dock out in the middle of the water.

And you're like, well, I, I hope that I find a place where I get like a, some shore. Will this, where this will fit. Yeah.

Uh, that's, that's, that stinks, man. I don't know why I'm feeling I, I, everyone who listens to this

podcast should know that i that i also have imposter syndrome and struggle with writing a lot and it always feels like i'm reinventing it every single time i do it uh not reinventing the craft but like reinventing my process uh but you know i'm in a pretty good place with my work stories right now so i'm i'm in a rare window of feeling decent i'm gonna try to not sound like a bad writing coach just be like just pen to paper man just do it just like you got this just sit down and do it but that's that's a little how i feel i mean i'm i'm i was split mine with writing in general and to get one thing out of the way outlining it last week tonight is a very specific team-based process that won't be useful for our purposes so what i'm going to talk about outlining it's divorced from that job and is more

about like other shows i've written for cracked or stories that i've written or pilots that are being written right now um disclosure uh disclaimer out of the way i'm of split minds with with process on this and i thought it was interesting that you talked about redecorating a room because part of my brain thinks about it like uh packing for a big trip which is always an overwhelming process for me at the start and i will often do what i'm i'm doing right now because i've got a trip coming up to florida where i just like i put every option almost every piece of clothing that i own on a bed and i just stare at it for a while and my brain goes kind of crazy about it and i don't

i i never really know how to start packing and i reinvent it every time where i make lists and the lists are they they start from answering questions of like, well, what are things, what am I going to want to do when I'm there? What might I be interested in doing and what do I definitely need for that? And just breaking it down into like, yeah, there's this many days, so I need this amount of running shorts and this amount of running shorts means I need this amount of running shirts and socks. And maybe I'll golf. That means this, maybe I'll swim. That means that. And it makes the whole thing less daunting. That is your, your, there's no, there's no art in it yet. I'm not thinking about what outfits look good together or anything other than function of like, what, what will I definitely need in this? And when I'm figuring out a story that is one half of my brain doing that kind of work of what definitely, you know, are you writing a pilot? What definitely is important to you to address in this pilot? What are the things that need to happen in not this story, but any story? And once you start to articulate what those are,

you have an immediately less daunting process. The other part of my brain is the frustrating part that I can't control, which is I do a lot of free writing when I'm breaking things. I just will put the people that I want in a room together and have them talk to each other and try to... I always say talking about writing in any kind of mystical terms, the i always say talking about writing in any kind of like mystical terms because it was the kind of talking that uh made me feel very discouraged as a young person who wanted to be a writer because it seemed like it was out of my hands but it is something in later life that i certainly gravitate towards that george saunders my the best short story author of all time talks about a lot which is just your your your you need your characters to be smarter than you and you that requires uh the real training that comes in comes in for being a writer which is i'm i'm working so hard to not say muse but like making yourself available to

listen to the voices in your head to what the the universe is telling you, and to just sort of like trust that your skill isn't in coming up with the best idea or a life-changing bit of dialogue. Your skill is to be able to listen and to know when to pay attention and to seize on the opportunity when the thing does fly into your head from the ether. Well, that strategy is very similar to the way David Milch talks about it. David Milch who wrote Deadwood. He talks about it as if your characters are sound, like if you're creating people who feel very real, then it's your job to get out of the way and just let them react how they ordinarily would. And I don't know. I mean, like I kind of agree with that,

but also like there's things I want to get out. So you're like, I guess so. Maybe I'm just not building good enough characters for that, but I think you're right. I think that there, a lot of it is like if if you when you're before you've been putting pen to paper where you're deciding on oh this is an interesting scenario i've created let's see how the characters react to that and then you're just sort of like watching it a little bit in your

brain right you're like where does it go what is happening oh oh that's interesting yeah that would be a nice piece and i feel like that's where you're collecting those little uh those little nuggets along the way that you're like i would love to hit this i would love to get to that um and then try and then just like trying to figure out what that connective tissue is and by the end you're like yeah that was clearly the only path there was yeah how did i not see it early on but there's that and this is more like mystical george saunders stuff when you talk about how it was how did you not see it the my belief is that it is you're like the the magic part of your brain does see it and it's guiding you towards there and that that's your your experience as someone who's read a lot of things and talked and thought about a lot of things that

you've read and written a lot of things that is the training that you've been doing to like get the magical part of your brain to work with you instead of against you and to get the tactical part of your brain ready to listen to it and understand it like it's the same eminem chamelon talks about and i know he's a divisive i think he's great he talks about uh the amount of drafts that he did for the sixth sense and how it didn't land on him the twist ending where bruce willis is dead until like the very last draft that was the only thing that clicked and when you hear that it's like what the what the were you writing what did you think was good about that story without that and that's like he didn't think

it was good that's why he kept doing drafts but like right the magical part of his brain that i hate talking about is like it's always in there it it knew that you needed this twist and you needed to get there by this long circuitous circuitous process yeah that uh was gonna put you through 10 or 11 drafts that didn't make sense, but like something in your brain and your bones and your hog were telling you like, no, there's something in this story and you haven't unlocked it yet. And it happens to be the most important part of the story. And you'll get there.

Right. If you trust the the muse um there's a movie that came out while we were working at crack called seven psychopaths and you and i started talking about it before either one of us had seen it but i mean or maybe you'd seem like to trailer something like that and there's a moment in that movie where there's like a you might have to help me here there's like a monk who's an assassin sitting on a bed yeah it's kind of what is the scene a martin mcdonough uh movie seven psychopaths colin farrell is a writer he's writing a movie in this movie that is called seven psychopaths

and he knows he's got the title and everyone is like great title what's it about he's like i'm not quite sure yet and you get little snippets of, he knows there's going to be seven psychopaths in it. And one character he keeps writing is this, we don't know anything about him. He's this Asian assassin who's in a hotel room and he's angry and he's got a bunch of weapons and he knows he wants to do something and something happens. Colin Farrell doesn't know what it is, but he keeps coming to this and he knows he wants to do something and something happens Colin

Farrell doesn't know what it is but he keeps coming to this and he tells like he meets one of the other seven psychopaths Sam Rockwell and Christopher Walken and all these other different psychopaths and like he's collecting stories from them to flesh out his movie and he keeps coming back to like the strange puzzle pieces where it's like okay it, it's a, it's a, he's from Tibet and he's angry and, and there's rage. And, and, and in this scene, he's with a woman and in this scene, he's not with the woman. And I don't know where I go from there. Yeah. As a writer, he doesn't know where he goes from there. Yeah. That, and you and I, I remember us talking

specifically about how that felt like a very good encapsulation of the process of writing, which is you have this, you have these elements like the, in your hands, you've got just this pile of stuff where you're like, this is cool. This feels like something important. Like this, I gave all these things where you're like, I'd love to use all of this stuff. I just don't know where any of it goes. And then by the end, you not only have to make it look cohesive where you're like, oh, now I'm getting from A to B to C, but you also have to make it look like it couldn't have gone any other way. These pieces are crucial. The story would

fall apart without them. And so that's when a story really clicks is when you've got these amazing moments where you're like, and we had to get to that amazing moment. Like the story couldn't have gone another direction. And boy. Right. And by the end of the movie, Christopher Walken saves that bit of writing for him. Where he's like, I've been thinking about this monk

and I don't think he is a psychopath. I'm spoiling by saying monk. I don't think he is a psychopath. I don't think he is uh a psychopath i don't think he's violent i think he uh you're getting the portrait of this man who's who's got rage but he's really he's uh a monk who i believe is self-immolating okay is that where the story goes and it's like what if he's not an assassin in a hotel room what if he's doing this and what if he's doing an assassin in a hotel room? What if he's doing this? And what if he's doing this act of pain and violence in a show, a demonstration of peace and an end to violence and all that?

And it's one of those things that in the movie clicks for Colin Farrell, clicks for the audience. And it's like, oh yeah, I had the pieces. I just wasn't, I wasn't building the Lego thing right. I didn't, I was building it without instructions and I didn't realize that it's a castle instead of a tank or whatever yeah that's actually a really good way of putting it is that you've got Lego pieces and no instruction because you've got pieces that are like what is clearly the windshield of some sort of spaceship and you're like okay i know where this goes but like now i gotta build all the shit around it i'm just kind of like and you look over and then suddenly there's like the bottom jaw of a t-rex and it's like oh oh no i gotta start over but then you you build it but it's so much of a spaceship we've been doing it long enough that no matter how you build it

you can then look at what other people have built around you and you're like, it's never going to look like that. I know that no matter what I build here, there's a ceiling to it. I know I can only conceive of how this would look so much in my brain. There are other people who are clearly, they can see the cathedral before it's built. And you're like, how? How did you know? Maybe they didn't, though, is what I'm saying. I think that maybe along the way, we're all just sort of like, you start, you try and build the best foundation that you can so that when you rebuild over and over,

the whole thing doesn't collapse. And everybody's doing it the same way. And no matter what, you think, okay, well, maybe this one will be painless. I will build a great foundation, and maybe I'll get lucky, and everything that goes on top of it will be exactly where it needs to be. And it just never, it just never happens. You're always going to be like, I should take that whole part apart and rebuild over here.

And, and that process is, uh, it's just like lonely and dark. I think more so than even the writing. The writing you could really lose yourself into and get very excited about it. But the process of figuring out what you're about to write, it's just, it's overwhelming. Yeah. I remember we had, when we were all younger writers in the early days of Cracked,

I mean, we had the benefit of not knowing what we're doing so we didn't know how hard it was yet and we also had the benefit of writing much shorter things like agents of cracked ended up being great training for me because uh we knew that this the the show if we were to do it, was going to be three seasons. Like, we started with very bare bones. There are two co-workers. One of them's wacky, one of them's nerdy and not wacky, and it's us two.

We wanted three seasons. Season one, this was after, like, long conversations to get to boiling it down to the simplest possible thing. Season one, enemies become frenemies. Season two, frenemies become friends. Season three, frenemies become lovers. That's like a very simple, basic thing because we wanted to, because we had no money,

so we couldn't have too much ambition. And also it was just like a very straightforward, simple way to write, okay, that's our season. And then every episode we tried to season and then every episode we try to treat as almost every episode we got we got wacky towards the end but for a while we tried to treat every episode as you're solving one problem within that episode if if the arc of season one is frenemies become enemies become frenemies you know that you need to have some element of that in your thing but in the meantime this episode is about this person wants to just do his job but this person wants to

give him a nickname like the problem is nickname how do you solve the problem of nickname it's like great all i need to do is solve this problem and then i'm done with my episode and like through that uh you figure out who the characters are, because you, I mean, again, I guess that's more of the George Saunders, M. Night Shyamalan, close your eyes and be ready to listen to whatever it's telling you. And then you get like your fun little bits of jokes

that you expand and turns a phrase that end up turning into character. And then, oh my God,'s it's a person suddenly i know who the michael character is in this show and now i can play with him to help solve whatever episode two's problem is going to be yeah now he's got runners now he's got bits that are like that he's going to go back to yeah and now you know how he sounds now you like you have voices for people it was the same deal with uh rom.com that was a series that i was i felt the most in the dark out of anything because i was writing that completely alone and nothing existed

yet and i had to do the the the same thing as i did with as as we did with agents of cracked where i was like okay what is this show about this show is about there's one person who thinks uh relationships can be solved with science and there's one person who thinks relationships can be figured out with love and heart it's brain versus heart okay every episode's about that this episode brain wins this episode heart wins this episode they realize it requires a little bit of both and like they're not characters yet it's just person a and person b talking through these problems and then they slowly it's like all right this character what happens if if the science character goes through a breakup

that challenges her ideas what happens if the heart character does xyz and the same way with agents of cracked they if you get them in a room long enough they start talking to each other instead of me just writing person a says science is good person b says heart is good you know you get them in a room together and they start saying things and uh suddenly you have oh this is josie and this is max oh okay i understand them now what would now it's not solving a problem I mean you're still solving a problem but it's also they're solving a problem but how would Max specifically with uh the flaws that I have discovered because he talked to me about them

how would he handle the situation right I think you're starting and you're starting when you're starting from scratch like that and you've got a character, you're really working with broad strokes on somebody. You're like, okay, this person is exclusively left brained and this one is like right blank brained or whatever. And so you're like, all right, well, I'm working only within those parameters. And then as you're going, you're like, well, I'll cheat a little here or, and as you do it, you're like, oh no, this is a really good character trait. This is like a mutation in the gene that is much more fun. So now that becomes like, now you've got some color to the character. And then you continue to build that way where you're like, well, what if they have like a crazy opinion you wouldn't expect from somebody who is exclusively into the objective, objectively looking at love? And you're like, okay, well, then that now becomes intrinsic to who the person is that's what i would try and like when we would write after hours all there's a

lot of obviously there's a lot of piping that needs to be done in after hours you have to get across all these whole ideas but you can also play with the characters a little bit and like you every time that you defy who the character is you're building that character more um yeah in a way that i think is was like i love doing i that was the only element of after hours that i liked writing it's like oh no what if like what if katie hates the police yeah like somebody who is has like this real distrust and hatred towards authority out of nowhere and it's like okay yeah where is that born from let's let's find out what that is and it's fun it's fun to add new layers and it's also fun after hours specifically because the characters had gotten so defined because we were doing it for

a hundred years uh finding yourself realizing oh wait a minute soren would never say that katie would never say that like yeah when you're starting out as a writer, you don't think about that because I think the puppets will say what I tell them to say. And then- Yeah, I have a point to make. It becomes a real joy when it's like, no, that doesn't make sense. Sorin, the character Sorin wouldn't do that. This person we made up. Right. And they become more crystallized in your brain. Also, part of the reason I was asking about

this is that I've worked at my job long enough and worked with everybody in it long enough that when they're breaking their own stories, it's very interesting to see how drastically different people approach this. experience because I think you and I have sort of a similar writing style, but there are people, like I know some people at my job who come in with an idea to a room when we're going to break a story for them. And this one woman will come in with basically a feeling. Like she's like, I want to capture this feeling. And you're like, yeah, I would never have started that way, but I love this. I love thinking about a story in terms of a feeling. And so you're building around that. Or I know another guy who is, he is very logical about it the same way that you pack clothing, where from the jump, where you're pitching out an idea that's very loose, he wants to know, okay, well, what would be the first act blow like where's the turn the second act like what how he wants to like he wants the structure of it because that's important you have to know how it fits within the structure but so many of the times people are like i'm not worried about that yet man i'm just like this is all loose we're still free flowing but for him it's really important to know well okay well what if that's where you want to start then where do you get to by the end of the

first act then what do you get to by the end of the second act how are we going to finish the end it's just people think about it in completely completely different ways and that's it's what they need in order to get it right yeah because you'll very often you're talking about writers who are all writing for the same show they're going to arrive at the same place they're not all writing the same episode but they're all going to eventually write a great episode of american dad at the end of it it's it's it is wild to think like all right off i go to sit in my typewriter and write act one beat one act two beat whatever and then someone else is like i want to just sort of go in a field for a while and spin around and i'm gonna read my favorite book and then in two weeks you'll

have an episode right i do like playing with with both of them a lot and i think that as i i get older i'm i'm leaning much more towards um letting characters talk than I did when I started out, which I think is just something that comes with age and experience and like trusting that the outline parts are in my bones somewhere and just having more fun with following strange impulses. I was really fascinated with an interview with the guy who wrote Barbarian, that movie we both love, that hopefully it's been out long enough now that we can say spoilers. But if you haven't, just stop listening right now because it's best to be enjoyed with absolutely no information. Okay, stop listening. Now the rest of you keep listening if you don't care about being spoiled or if you've already seen it. It was a guy who'd never written horror before and didn't really have an interest in it but just decided to start writing it one day and he's writing the beginning of it which feels very much like it's like all tension between this guy this guy and this girl who are strangers

and they're they're forced by circumstance to be in a house together and there are so many red flags about this guy and this house and you really think like this this big guy and it's specifically played by a scars guard who has historically played nothing but monsters in everything he's ever done he was the it he was pennywise etc uh and that all works in its favor and you're just waiting for like this when is he gonna break this girl's neck this girl is like clearly in a in a bad place and like it's raining all the time and and it's so so the house has got this weird dungeon basement and like he's not taking any of her concerns seriously and he and apart from that he seemed too good to be true and you're all like yelling for the girl get out of the house this guy's clearly evil and the writer in this interview was talking about how he got so bored with what he was doing because he was like yeah it is

it is obviously this guy who's going to be the killer it's i've seen this a thousand times i'm so sick of it fuck it out of nowhere a giant naked lady runs out of the out of the the darkness and smashes his head against the wall and kills him and he's like wrote that into the script and then from there just like all right well i didn't see that coming now what happens and the movie when when you understand that that's his process of just like, what is a surprising thing I could do next? It makes total sense. You couldn't predict what's going to happen in the movie. But it does like that flavor of just I've set up this very clear and compelling thing.

What is a zag that I can make now instead of zigging? And he does that. We stay with this woman until we don't and suddenly we're across the country following a different character for a while and and all of it is just this this writer who is clearly just having fun free writing and following impulses and then i'm sure he did a tremendous amount of work to tie it together at the end but it really is like a process of writing that's very inspiring to me of just like yeah let's try that let's like let's just go and see what happens and and when we get bored

naked a giant naked woman runs out of the darkness and kills one of the main characters so anyway i got six giant naked women who run out of the darkness on my script i got bored a lot uh yeah i do like i mean if you're not on a time crunch you don't have a deadline the idea of writing a script that way where as soon as you start writing it's it falls into a path yeah and it's like a path that previously exists like no matter what because it's in your brain and you've watched so many things that you know oh i'm working towards this like it's clear that this is the the end result uh or this is this is where the final destination of this line of of plot goes and to be like no and

dig yourself out of the rut and be like let's just try something brand new let's see something else is a really fun way to start a script but man so scary and not a way that you can outline for in any capacity where you're just like i would like to just start writing i would like to see as soon as it starts to feel predictable deuce the exact opposite and now what where are we um and by the end like you there's no guarantee by the end you're getting anything cohesive no and i i had a big murder my own work and throw out a script moment. This will be frustrating because I'm nobody and also frustrating because I'm not going to give enough information about what these projects are. But like a pilot that I was working on about people who work at a summer camp and a few of the kids at the summer camp worked on it for a while and like refined it a bunch of times. And I have some writer friends that we get together and swap pilots and give each other notes and all of my writers pointed to the same thing they were

like this like we understand this this script and uh we're happy with it and everything but um one of the the little kids in the in the the show is so strange. She's such a weird fit for this show. I don't think, I really don't think you need her. And everyone's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. She's really intense.

She's like a 12 year old girl. And the show is about the counselors and this weird, intense 12 year old girl just feels like a strange fit. And I was like, you're right. She doesn't belong in this world. This world is too small for her. I need to build a bigger world just for her

and just throw out absolutely everything else and pivot completely to this strange character that that spoke to me louder than any of the other ones that's that's gonna be my barbarian yeah you found that what was actually interesting yeah in writing it i mean who knows this might be wrong too i don't know if it's interesting it wasn't interesting to any of the people who read the script man that's wild um anyway i the process is i i'm over complaining about it i mean i know that it always works out i'm yeah i'm being hyperbolic a little bit but i right and you're not allowed to know that it always works out yeah because then i and and because i can't see it you can't i can't see it now so i'm like okay well what the what am i even making here like trying to keep all the pieces together

and making sure that it's going to fit within the structure that it's going to have like there's all these other undercurrents of it as well like with a narrative anyway where you've got to have you might want something that's very plotty like something where like and now the character is driven to this because they have no other choice and now like and now we have to get to this and now we have to move on to here because these are the only logical decisions that could be made but then you also need that whole emotional arc to a story that's the undercurrent of it which is a character starts at zero something needs to happen that drives them down they fall into the pit you know like they've got to they have to fall somewhere where they're

not comfortable and things are not good and so like and it's their own doing most of the time and then they're like in them trying to dig their way out without doing any emotional work they're digging themselves deeper and so these solutions can't work and then by the time they finally fix themselves like then they're allowed to ascend again for through the other side and usually they come out at zero again or they come out a little bit on top a little bit better like that's in every single story and you need it uh and that's this whole element that you could write the best plotty story in the world and then you look back and you're like oh you know what there's no way to layer the emotional story over this like we have to redo a bunch of it to get that in yeah that was uh a devastating note for a pilot that i wrote that i sent to a producer friend of

mine who was just like who like actually makes things happen i sent a draft to him and he's like the jokes are great this is really funny which which one is the main character it's like what he's like and i was like well it's it to me, it's clearly the, like the, the first guy you see. And the, the, the guy who was like the lead of this particular group of friends. And he's like,

okay, well then he needs to learn something this episode and he needs to want something. I was like, Oh, Oh, you mean like in, you mean like in movies and TV shows when characters learn things and want

things. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's a great note. I'm going to do that right away. The audience wants to want it for them. And like we're, it's ingrained in us to like, to want that.

So when a character doesn't like Dazed and Confused, I found so hard to watch when I was young. Cause like, I thought the main character was the pitcher kid who doesn't want shit. He's just this kid who's just like living out this last day of school. And I was like, by the end, I i was like that's the end of the movie we didn't go anywhere we didn't do anything um and that a lot of paul thomas anderson movies i have a hard time with for the same reason where instead of giving you a character who's who's clearly got that he's just like hey i'm gonna you're gonna live with these people for a little bit, right? This is just a slice of life.

And, and so I certainly, you can make, you can make stories like that. You can make really great stories like that, but it's the majority of stories that an audience who people who aren't writers themselves or constantly thinking about this kind of stuff, they expect something from a story. And it's usually that it's like,

you want to want the same thing as the character. want to want it for them yeah and they need and they should learn something at the end of the episode and like it's okay if if they forget it by the next episode that's fine that's the simpsons it's all right but they need in the first act they need to say boy i really hope i get varsity and by the last act they either need to get it and realize they didn't want it or they need to not get it and realize that's okay or they need to a different option i don't know i'm not going to give away uh this clearly well thought out varsity show that i'm working on steve wants to be varsity hold on hayley uh yeah

uh totally yeah it it's um it's and it's a thing that here's the thing that drives me the most crazy when somebody reads a thing that you wrote and that you feel like you was very good until they bring up a detail yeah when somebody will be like i don't like any of these characters which is immediately a complaint i get i bristle towards because i'm like yeah well fuck you you don't like tony soprano either like no he don't like any of those characters and then the real what they're really telling you there is i i don't feel anything for them like i i don't care what happens in the places where i'm not supposed to like them yeah but i also don't want them to get what they want and so you have to like you're like oh fuck i have to make these i have to give these characters something like i have to it's like big frankenstein

i mean like yeah all right where's the lightning like where how do i make this character feel more alive though that like people will actually care about this yeah um what if what if the character was on uh um crutches would you feel bad then is that no he needs like a personality okay damn it all right i thought maybe i just gave him an eye patch what if i told you this character had a dog is that doing anything for you oh they love that dog right it's great that some of the like the dumbest shit like that does work on me there was that uh 310 to yuma movie which is just a very basic cowboy movie christian bale is a slower cowboy russell crowe is like the ultimate bad guy cowboy or like villain cowboy whatever and

they are at odds and you heard so much stuff about how ruthless russell crowe is and he dresses in black and he is advertised as the bad guy and there was seen really early on in the movie where he's just drawing a picture of a bird and it's like a really well done drawing and it's clear that like oh he could have been an artist if things didn't go. All right, he's complicated. I'm sold. We don't ever need to show him drawing again. I will remember this detail and be sad when he dies.

Those moments in movies have, I'm sure this is true for you. They've been ruined for me. Like I can't just watch a movie and feel that anymore. Instead, I'm like, oh, locking that away. There's a tool. There's a tool for the arsenal. I'm watching Last of Us, which we talked last week about how much we loved and how you can... In the last episode, this isn't giving anything away. A girl goes to sleep or she's lying on her bed when it's raining. And it's raining really hard outside of her room. The rain isn't adding anything. Maybe like emotionally it's helping her

feel more trapped in, but then all of a sudden it's not raining. Like it's like completely dry and you know, time has passed immediately. And you're like, oh, that's such a good device. Instead of having to look at a clock and knowing like I have to, first of all, I'd understand, oh, it's not even bedtime yet. And then later seeing that it's three in the morning, which is like a device we so regularly use. It's so easy to denote time passing by being like, okay, it's raining. It's raining.

It's raining. And then it's hard cut. It's not raining anymore. Oh shit, man. This must be hours later. You're already, you already know exactly what's going on. And I think that's why they did it. And I'm like, oh God, yes.

I mean, yes, I'm taking that. I'm sealing it. We'll tie it in. You brought up Tony Soprano. And in the pilot of the Sopranos, he gets really excited when ducks show up in his pool. And he like runs out and walks into the pool in his full clothes. And I'm like, ah, it can't be that bad.

He likes ducks. I don't, he can kill whoever he wants. He's what a sweetie. I'll follow him forever. Yeah. It's, uh, yeah.

And in a lot of ways, this is making me think writing is really easy. It is. It's super easy. It's very easy to you. When you get a note that's big like that, where it's like the characters aren't relatable and you have to be you're haunted by that and you're like i gotta start from scratch like we gotta rebuild this character you don't you have like one scene when i was talking to the producer about this guy like oh this main character he's got to like

want something and i was like starting to think like oh fuck this is, this is going to be, I need to like start from scratch. And we were just throwing things out. And it was like, what if he wants a promotion? Yeah, anything. Who cares? Oh, all right. Yeah, I'll write that in. Great.

A lot of times it's also the sillier thing that they want, the better. I mean, it really helps that it's it's so minute and small like or that like they're going about it completely the wrong way um but you're you still want it for them they're just they're not good at this uh yeah i don't know a community is a show where it's the whole point of the show is let's get these very different characters in a room together being funny and having fun with each other all the time but that show doesn't get made if you don't start with here's this guy jeff winger he's not allowed to be a lawyer anymore he is only at the school so he could be a lawyer the objective of this show is for jeff to get his law degree trying to work as little hard as

possible and that's suddenly like oh cool a show about a lawyer in community college that is a good idea it doesn't matter that that's not what the show is about that needs to be the thing that like gets the show made and gets people to buy into the premise because if you try to tell people the show is about five weirdos from various age groups sitting together and talking and sometimes doing high concept episodes that sounds like a big time investment that a lot of people won't be ready to make but if it's like what if this smooth talking lawyer had to go to community college yeah i could see why that's funny because i'm stupid

i mean that's look at american dad american dad was pitched originally as this conservative dad with a very liberal daughter and like the contention that they would have with one another like you've got this really kind of self-righteous girl who's into current causes and then you've got this dad who's works for the cia and is very conservative and like oh they're gonna butt heads a lot i bet nah turns out Sometimes, every once in a while. They fight occasionally, I guess. But usually they're pretty much on the same page. Yeah.

There's a movie, I don't know if you ever saw this. It was called Run, Fat Boy, Run with Simon Pegg. No, that was directed by Michael Ian Black or written by him? David Schwimmer. David Schwimmer. It's possible that Michael Ian Black wrote it. Huh? No, yeah, Michael Ian Black and Simon Pegg wrote it together.

Huh, okay. That's good. I'm only half wrong. You didn't fucking know what the movie was, but the minute I started talking about it, you already knew who wrote it. Yeah. This is your curse, Dan.

Anyway, this is a movie that really drove home for me when I was young, thinking about how to be a good writer and how to make a good story. And the premise is so simple. And it's this guy who wants to win back his ex, and he thinks the way to do that is running a marathon. It's so misguided and weird, but there's something very charming about how wrong it is. it'll work, man. And how you, you don't need anything else from this guy. And you, you and I've talked before about how like love is, is an easy thing to put in a story in terms of like, you don't need any other reason why that drives a person. Whereas like if somebody wants money, it's like, well, why do they need money? When somebody wants love, everybody wants love. You can just use that. There's a shorthand to it. And so he wants love again, wants love from somebody who he lost. And now how's he going to do it?

He's going to try and run 23 miles. You're like, oh, okay. You don't need to know that he's a good guy anymore. You're already on his team. You're like, oh, that poor dude. I hope it works. 23.6. 23.6.

26.2. 26.2. Sorry. Oh, really? Yeah. 23.6 26.2 26.2 sorry oh really yeah half marathon 13.1 full marathon 26.2 i wonder if you even did you do a marathon i don't think i would correct you if i hadn't done a marathon i think if you would mention that number like that's anyone in a marathon yeah everyone in our audience who's run a marathon before started typing, and then they started typing faster when I said 23.2, and then they calmed down when I said 26.2. Do you feel those last three? Or is it just a drop in the bucket?

The last.2? The ones that I shorted you just now. Yeah, I know. I gave you, I took away through the last three. Oh, the last three two the ones that i shorted you just now yeah i know i gave you i took away oh the last three miles yeah yeah uh i would say the last 6.2 miles are all the same brand new torture for me oh i mean the way the way they the way they the running gods recommend that you train is short regular runs during the week a few times that you're doing for speed and your big run on the weekend or you know once a week you do your big run and it's like if it's your first marathon you'll build a mile at a time on your big run you know you're going to run eight miles next week nine then maybe ten then maybe back down to eight

again then maybe eleven then back down again up and up and up back and forth in your big mileage and then the last big run you do is 20 they never recommend that you like practice run a full marathon or even practice running 22 or 24 they all just say stop at 20 and then you like time it so your next big run will be your marathon and by the time i had run 20 miles as my big run i was like this is it takes a long time but this is fucking awesome and if i can run 20 i could definitely run 26.2 because six miles has already happened so many times within 20 i just have to do the thing i did again and And that last 6.2 fucking destroyed me. Not so much so that I, I, I didn't finish.

I was finished. But yeah, I'd imagine that that's, I mean, six miles in general, if you're not thinking about, if it's divorced from the idea of a marathon, six miles is like, oh, that's a pretty big run. I'm about to do today. I got around six miles. That's a long one. That's a, that's a pretty big run i'm about to do today i gotta run six miles that's a long one that's a that's like a 10k in training it doesn't feel like if you've been training six doesn't feel like a lot of mileage uh and that's why it tricks you in the

marathon because you get to mile 20 and mile 20 feels so momentous and it feels like it's just now it's just this last victory lap that's just gonna gonna just joyfully carry me like i'm over the biggest hump there's no other mile that i'm gonna pass that is gonna feel as significant as 20 in this thing and they don't feel significant and that's the problem they just all feel terrible it's like driving long distance where you think like yeah you got to that big city that you know is before your destination you're like and now it's all downhill like i don't have to put my hands on the steering wheel this is just like this is just for fun here and then you're like how is it this long how did i forget that this takes this long um yeah driving from north carolina to jersey and i get to baltimore i'm like baltimore that

only means three more hours and then i'm looking at the the the clock it's like how there's no way it's two and a half more hours i've driven so much it's got to be done now i don't want to anymore yeah that means i've done it what is this road doing to me? I'm ready to be home now. Well, Dan, we didn't ever even get to a question of yours. I'm sorry. That's pretty okay. I'm pleased that we got in. We got a little something for everybody.

The people who were really enjoying this show up until this point, they got a little gym talk. They got some running stuff in. But the people who maybe were like why don't these motherfuckers ever talk about the one thing that they do this was helpful uh our show is quick question but you knew that you can find daniel on twitter at dob underscore inc you can follow me soren underscore ltd it's just a fun little thing we do fun little thing

that we decided to do when we thought twitter was going to last six months uh you can follow me, Soren underscore LTD. It's just a fun little thing we do. Fun little thing that we decided to do when we thought Twitter was going to last six months. You can follow, quick question, at QQ underscore Soren and Dan, or you can email us at QQ with Soren and Daniel at gmail.com. We have a great producer, sound engineer, and editor in Gabe Harder.

And if you liked our theme song, that's from the incomparable Merex. And you can find Merex's music at me rex.bandcamp.com soren i had a great time talking with you today i had a really nice time this has actually made me feel better i genuinely feel good i'm glad i get really self-conscious talking about writing and i'm sure i'm gonna regret i don't think so openly but uh yeah you're probably right i don't really think about the show when it's when it's airing or when i'm doing it it is embarrassing to let other people know how the sausage is made but yeah because the process is always like a very vulnerable thing

i don't know i think it's helpful though for other people to hear it i think it's other people who are struggling with it. It just feels nice. Reading on writing by Stephen King was so nice because I was like, oh, this motherfucker was, he, he was terrified.

Yeah. I'm really curious to, I want to see our numbers for how many people stop listening. When we get to the point where I say full disclosure, I'm not going to talk about last week tonight. I'm going to talk about agents are correct. They're like, well, at some point,

yeah, let's really do like a rundown of how our jobs work. And, and like, here's how the, this is the process. This is when we do our rewrites. This is how we punch jokes.

I think actually that would be valuable. I just would be bored by it because it's something I have to do every day. Yeah. All right, dude. All right. Hey. Later. Talk to you.

Bye. Yeah. I've got a quick, quick question for you, alright The answer's not important, I'm just glad that we could talk tonight So what's your favourite? Who did you get? When will I be remembered? What's it out there? Where did all the bad weeks end? Oh, forget it I saw a movie, Daniel O'Brien Two best friends and comedy writers If there's an answer answer they're gonna find it

I think you'll have a great time here I think you'll have a great time here