John and Craig welcome back screenwriter Mike Makowsky (Death by Lightning, Bad Education) to ask, how do you dramatize a historical event that no one's heard of? They look at the dramatic engine behind the Garfield assassination, the long journey Death by Lightning had to getting made, and the importance of finding great stories in obscure history.

We investigate the peculiar habits and compulsions of our own writing practices, and see how personality typologies can help figure out what makes our characters tick. We also follow up on a certain orange book, breaking into Hollywood in your 30's, and offer our thoughts on the impending sale of Warner Bros.

In our bonus segment for premium members, which TV shows had the best "coaching trees"? We marvel at the writers' rooms that launched the most successful writers today.

Links:

• Death by Lightning on Netflix
• Mike Makowsky on IMDb and Instagram
• Episode 448 (The last time Mike was on the podcast)
• Which TV Show Has the Best Coaching Tree? Alan Sepinwall for The Ringer
• Size matters: a single representation underlies our perceptions of heaviness in the size-weight illusion
• New evidence for the sensorimotor mismatch theory of weight perception and the size-weight illusion
• Friedman Personnel Agency
• Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard
• The Ballad of Guiteau from Assassins
• The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin
• Writer's Guide to Character Traits by Linda Edelstein
• A Fentanyl Vaccine Is About to Get Its First Major Test by Emily Mullin for WIRED
• Heated Rivalry on HBO Max
• The Good Lord Bird
• Get your copy of the Scriptnotes book!
• Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
• Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
• Become a Scriptnotes Premium member, or gift a subscription (now with fewer emails!)
• Subscribe to Scriptnotes on YouTube
• Scriptnotes on Instagram
• John August on Bluesky and Instagram
• Outro by Luke Foster (send us yours!)
• Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.

(9:00) Scriptnotes: A Book About Screenwriting and Things That Are Interesting to Screenwriters (Unabridged)

John and Craig celebrate the release of the Scriptnotes Book with a sold-out show full of arguments, games and holiday cheer at Dynasty Typewriter in LA.

Slate's Julia Turner returns to interview John and Craig about the fifteen year journey towards creating the book, and challenges Craig's dismissal of critics. We also welcome back Ashley Nicole Black (Shrinking, Ted Lasso) to help us get through a fridgeful of leftover questions, and invite three lucky audience members to play our new game: "Somewhat strange lines from Christmas movies."

In our bonus segment for premium members, we invite our audience to ask us questions in a live Q&A.

Links:

• Get your copy of the Scriptnotes book!
• Julia Turner
• Ashley Nicole Black on Instagram
• Arlo Finch series
• Slate Culture Gabfest
• Episode 516 – 10 Year Anniversary
• Dynasty Typewriter
• Bad Monkey
• The Tom Cruise coconut cake from Doan's Bakery
• Letters to Santa
• @simonsits on Instagram
• Day of the Tentacle
• Chevalier's Books
• Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
• Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
• Become a Scriptnotes Premium member, or gift a subscription (now with fewer emails!)
• Subscribe to Scriptnotes on YouTube
• Scriptnotes on Instagram
• John August on Bluesky and Instagram
• Outro by Mathew Chilelli (send us yours!)
• Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.

(2:18) Scriptnotes: A Book About Screenwriting and Things That Are Interesting to Screenwriters (Unabridged)

John and Craig gather a congregation of writers in St. David's Episcopal Church for a live round of the Three Page Challenge. They look at three listener-submitted scripts to offer them their honest feedback, face-to-face.

They offer suggestions on world building in the apocalypse, making military characters specific, building mystery and suspense, and crafting con-artist logic.

In our bonus segment for premium members, we answer questions from our audience on how to know if a script looks correct, what we want to see in the first three pages, using actor names in character descriptions, what comedy requires, and how to direct a reader's attention on the page.

Links:

• Follow along with our Three Page Challenge Selections! ANCIENT GRAINS by Michael Warnecke, HIGH NORTH by Teddy Johnson, TALL POPPIES by Becca Hurd
• Austin Film Festival
• The Scriptnotes Book is here!
• Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
• Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
• Become a Scriptnotes Premium member, or gift a subscription (now with fewer emails!)
• Subscribe to Scriptnotes on YouTube
• Scriptnotes on Instagram
• John August on Bluesky and Instagram
• Outro by Mathew Chilelli (send us yours!)
• Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

(1:03) Scriptnotes: A Book About Screenwriting and Things That Are Interesting to Screenwriters (Unabridged)

You can download the episode here.