Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast

Final Draft
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Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast Podcast

Designed to help you navigate the screenwriting industry, Final Draft, interviews working screenwriters, agents, managers, and producers to show you how successful executives and writers make a living writing and working with screenplays, and how you can use their knowledge to break into the industry. Subscribe today to catch every episode!

  1. 16 SEPT

    Write On: 'Pachinko' Showrunner Soo Hugh

    “Sometimes I think [the show Pachinko] is almost too personal. I feel like every show, you look at it and say, ‘How much of myself is in this show?’ I did a show [The Whispers] about children who were communicating with an invisible alien force and somehow, I had to figure out how to make it part of me as well. We try to put ourselves in as much of our work as possible. But with this show, the tipping point almost fell in the other direction, where I felt so personally invested. I felt very much like this is my family’s story, as well. That responsibility sometimes felt burdensome. So many of the cast and crew have said that there's a responsibility with this show that almost feels too much. But at the end of the day I think it's a thing that made us work harder. I think the show is as good as it is because people cared,” says Pachinko showrunner and creator Soo Hugh about making the story personal to her. In this episode, we speak to Hugh about the challenges of writing a show where characters speak in three languages, making the characters relatable to an American audience, and the responsibility of telling the stories of strong women over generations. “In Korean families, we always have these jokes that everyone knows who’s running the house – your mother! I think it's the strength of Korean women that have just carried us through,” she says. We even ask Hugh about her work on one of my favorite shows The Terror, and what she thinks really happened to the real-life British crew on the Terror and Erebus ships that got stuck in the Artic ice. Her answer may surprise you. To hear more, listen to the podcast.

    32 min

  2. 10 SEPT

    Write On: 'Beetlejuice Beetlejuice' Writers Al Gough & Miles Millar

    “I think what Tim [Burton] does is he's always trying to simplify. That’s the essence of a classic filmmaker. People think he's wild and crazy and does all these things. His movies are brilliantly composed frames and he's always looking for simplicity. All of his big movies, they're really family dramas dressed up in whatever genre he's in. That's really what they are. And I think people think he’s always strange and weird and likes dark thing, but no! It's a classic story with good drama. And then he brings his sensibility to it,” says about the biggest lesson Al Gough has learned working with director Tim Burton on both the TV show Wednesday and the new film Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. In this episode, we speak with writing team Al Gough and Miles Millar about creating the hit Netflix show Wednesday, how they cultivated a relationship with director Tim Burton and how that led to the sequel to Beetlejuice after more than 15 sequel scripts have surfaced over the last 36 years. Gough and Miles talk about crafting a mother/daughter love story for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and delving into grief, something that all families face at some point or another. The writers also share their insight into adding new characters in the mix and creating the strange yet rewarding musical numbers for the movie that includes one totally bonkers song.  Miles Millar also shares this career advice about staying in your lane when it comes to genre: “If you write a spec or a script that sells, and it's a romantic comedy, then you should really stay in the romantic comedy world and arena for a while. We always jumped around which I think hurt us initially. We did an action movie, we did a comedy, we did this, we did that. We did a fantasy. So, pick a lane. I think successful writers usually pick a lane and get known to do one thing – which can be constricting and suffocating, but I think it's something that's important in terms of a career.” Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is out now in theaters.

    39 min

  3. 30 AUG

    Write On: 'Sunny' Co-Creator & Showrunner Katie Robbins

    “I think that Sunny [the robot], as a character, is kind of emblematic of this conundrum we have with A.I. In one scene she is cute and warm and is serving Suzie's [Rashida Jones] emotional needs and is brimming with potential. And that's really enticing. And then in the next scene, she is diabolical, and is going to like, cut a bitch! That is A.I. There are so many great things it can do, and there's so many terrible scary things that it can do. At the end of the day, it's up to us as society to figure out how we're going to use it,” says Katie Robbins, showrunner and creator of the AppleTV+ show Sunny.   In this episode of the Final Draft’s Write On Podcast, we talk with Katie Robbins about delving into artificial intelligence, Japanese culture and making a robot appealing (and frightening) to audiences in her show Sunny. Based on the book, The Dark Manual, by Irish writer Colin O’Sullivan, Robbins says she made changes to the story to allow for exploring isolation and the importance of female friendships.   “I was excited about the idea of giving [Suzie] a couple of female friends. So one is in the body of a robot and then the other is this aspiring mixologist who she meets in the pilot, Mixxy [Annie the Clumsy]… and telling the story of a friendship like love triangle. Mixxy is a little jealous of Sunny's relationship with Suzie and Sunny is really jealous of Mixxy's relationship with Suzie. The film The Favourite was a big influence for a lot of their relationship dynamics. And it was really fun exploring what that is if one of the friends is an A.I.” she says.   To hear more about the show Sunny that’s currently streaming on AppleTV+, and hear Robbins’s advice on writing TV pilots, listen to the podcast.

    37 min

  4. 15 AUG

    Write On: 'Fallout' Co-Creator & Showrunner Graham Wagner

    Almost all the characters [in Fallout, the TV show] are brand new… We really took the world of Fallout that had been built up and iterated upon by other video game writers over the years and we wanted to do our own version of it rather than retell any version that someone else has already done. Our attitude was like, ‘Okay, let's say this is a new Fallout game. What would it be?’ So, we took the world, the background, the themes of the games and the tone. It's a new story. New people,” says Graham Wagner, co-creator and showrunner of Fallout on Amazon Prime.   In this episode of the Final Draft’s Write On Podcast, we talk with Graham Wagner about Fallout, a show based on the beloved videogame, that’s earned 17 Emmy nominations including Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series. Wagner talks about taking the structure and tone from Sergio Leone’s Western, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, and focusing on three central figures: Lucy (Ella Purnell), The Ghoul (Walton Goggins) and Maximus (Aaron Moten), and intertwining their disparate storylines.   “We made an intentional collision of genres because Walton Goggins' character is very much of the wasteland of the Western genre, which is sort of apocalyptic in its own way, depending on your perspective. There isn't the infrastructure and people are trying to build civilization on the ashes of the civilization that has been eradicated before them. You know there's a lot of parallels there,” says Wagner.   To learn more about the show Fallout and hear Wagner’s advice for writing TV pilots, listen to the podcast.

    35 min

  5. 18 JUL

    Write On: 'Cobra Kai' Showrunners Jon Hurwitz, Josh Heald and Hayden Schlossberg

    “We were all six or seven years old when [the first Karate Kid movie] came out. So all of us saw it in the theater and I think for all of us, it was probably the first time any of us had seen a movie where there was such an amazing twist that happened. The whole time, we’re thinking that Daniel LaRusso's not learning [karate], that he's doing all these chores for this guy and then suddenly it's, ‘Wait! He's been learning karate the whole time!’ So anyone who watched the movie was blown away by that moment, but when you're six or seven it's a formative memory. So it was a movie that was meaningful to all of us,” says Jon Hurwitz, showrunner and executive producer of the Netflix show Cobra Kai. In this episode, I speak to all three showrunners of Cobra Kai, Jon Hurwitz, Josh Heald and Hayden Schlossberg about what the show means to them now that we’re in the sixth and final season. We discuss why they thought it was imperative to tell the story from the character Johnny Lawrence’s (William Zabka), point of view and they hint at the possibility of a new spinoff show – perhaps about a young Mr. Miyagi – coming soon. They also shared their advice for writing a spec script. “It's really tough to stand out. And that's what you have to figure out. In our early scripts, it was that first page – it was being R-rated and provocative and saying something that gets you noticed and stands out in the marketplace. Because if you're just writing a genre story, it's just like why?” says Josh Heald. To hear more about the sixth season of the show and their great advice for writing spec scripts, listen to the podcast.

    38 min

  6. 10 JUL

    Write On: 'A Family Affair' Writer Carrie Solomon

    “I came up doing improv where failure is the golden standard. And in improv, if you're not failing, you're doing something wrong. I feel really lucky that that was one of my bridges into entertainment and creativity, to have such a loving relationship with failure because, boy! As a writer, your days are filled with it and rejection and killing your darlings. I think comedy and improv have taught me how wonderful failure can be and how much we can get out of it for sure,” says Carrie Solomon, writer of the new Netflix romantic comedy, A Family Affair starring Nicole Kidman and Zac Ephron.  In this episode, Carrie talks about working as an assistant when she first came to Hollywood, calling it a job that can be, “Thankless at times, certainly, but really rewarding in the amount of information that you can absorb.”  She also talks about bringing her own life experience – like being an assistant – to her storytelling.  “Thematically, I think a lot of lot of the arcs in this movie are certainly my own. It’s my own therapy coming to the screen, going to the page. I should probably send my therapist a Netflix., QR code to go check out the movie,” Carrie says.  Carrie also shares a lot of advice, including how to get your writing noticed. “For anyone who wants to make a splash or write something crazy or noticeable, write something that's crazy to you. Don't worry about what. If you yourself were entertained or wowed by an idea or you think, oh my god, that's absolutely like ass backwards crazy. Try it. I have a lot of friends that the minute they stop worrying about audiences or development execs or what people want to read, that's when they really found their voice and it clicked. I think being personal is one of the one of the quickest ways to find success.” To hear more about Carrie’s writing journey, listen to the podcast.

    39 min

  7. 14 JUN

    Write On: 'Inside Out 2' Co-Writer Dave Holstein

    In this episode, I talk with Dave Holstein, co-writer of the upcoming Disney/Pixar sequel Inside Out 2, which takes us back into the mind of a now teenage Riley as she navigates a whole new crop of personified emotions, including Envy, voiced by The Bear star Ayo Edebiri, and of course, Anxiety, voiced by Stranger Things’ Maya Hawke. Dave describes what it’s like working with a well-oiled storytelling powerhouse like Disney/Pixar, as well as co-writing with Inside Out franchise veteran Meg LeFauve to not only recapture some of the magic of the original film but to also create some of their own.

    29 min

  8. 5 JUN

    Write On: 'Late Night' Host Seth Meyers

    “Just a shout out to everybody who's listening who has ever written a movie. This is a true story – I was writing a movie. I had been paid to write a movie and I was writing a movie when I got Late Night. And when I got Late Night, my first thought wasn’t, 'Oh my god, I'm going to have my own talk show.’ My first thought was, ‘Oh my god, I don't have to finish that screenplay. I'm so happy!’” says Seth Meyers, adding, “Anybody who can finish a screenplay – I have so much respect for you. It's so much harder than anything else. And that's the thing, when I watch a terrible movie, I always think, ‘Shout out to whoever finished it. They got three acts. All the characters had names, they did it!’”. In this episode, I talk with Emmy-winning talk show host and former SNL head writer Seth Meyers. Seth talks about his origins of becoming a comedy writer and performer, his time on SNL, what he looks for in a TV writer, and how Late Night with Seth Meyers has grown over the years as he celebrates the show’s 10th anniversary. I also asked Seth about the best ways to get your voice as a writer to show through in your writing sample. He says it’s difficult considering the highly competitive environment, but it comes down to making fresh choices. “The hardest thing I would have to do when I was at SNL was we would receive say, 200 packets of sketch submissions and we'd split them up amongst four of us. It was a slog – not because they were bad sketches but because we'd spent our whole year reading sketches and so you could tell when somebody was aiming to write an SNL script. But then, every now and then, sometimes it was just one line in a sketch, sometimes it was even a character's name, there would be something that would just sort of break through the noise, and you'd look at it and say, ‘Oh, I don't think I've ever seen anybody make that choice before.’ So I just encourage people to try to do the thing that even you haven't seen,” says Seth. To hear more of what Seth Meyers has to say, listen to the podcast.

    30 min
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Designed to help you navigate the screenwriting industry, Final Draft, interviews working screenwriters, agents, managers, and producers to show you how successful executives and writers make a living writing and working with screenplays, and how you can use their knowledge to break into the industry. Subscribe today to catch every episode!

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