July 8, 2026 • 16 mins
Today’s Industry 101 Podcast episode comes from a writing workshop with John Wells recorded on April 17, 1993.
John discusses why he became a writer, humanistic writing, and gives his advice on writing characters, and the role of the writer’s thematic point of view when working on a script.
He is a producer, writer, and director who has produced over twelve thousand hours of television across his 30+ year career in entertainment.
John’s work includes series such as ER, The West Wing, Shameless, Maid, and The Pitt and films including August: Osage County, Burnt, and The Company Men.
His shows have received over 300 Emmy nominations with 60 Emmy wins and 5 Peabody Awards. He has been nominated for 7 Humanitas Prizes, and won in 2006 for an episode of The West Wing.
John previously served as President of the Writers Guild of America, West from 1999 to 2001 and from 2009 to 2011.
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Learn more about Humanitas’ Industry 101 event series on our website, humanitasprize.org.
Link to the full Humanitas Industry 101 resource collection here: www.humanitasprize.org/101-resource-page.
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Credits:
Host/Writer-Producer: Michelle Franke
Featuring: John Wells
Audio Editor-Producer: Campbell Moore
Writer-Producer: Daniel Plagens
Mixing/Mastering: Jeff Schoeny at Voxstop
Music: "We Don't Stop" and "Got to Be" by Mooveka
Music Licensing: Artlist.io
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Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:08):
Welcome to Humanitas’s Industry 101 Podcast.
I'm MichelleFranke, executive director of Humanitas
Industry 101 is a conversationseries that introduces topics foundational
to understanding and launchingtelevision and film writing careers.
Humanitas has a long historyof presenting conversations
and workshops for writersexploring craft and career issues.
(00:32):
Industry101 is a continuation of that work.
It includes our online event series,in-person events,
and this podcast,which will present both new episodes
and conversations from our archiveshighlighting our history.
Today's industry 101 podcastepisode comes from a writing workshop
with John Wells,recorded on April 17th, 1993.
(00:57):
He is a producer, writer and directorwho has produced over 12,000 hours
of television across his 30plus year career in entertainment.
John's work includes series such as E.R.,The West Wing, Shameless, Maid
and The Pit, and films including AugustOsage County, Burnt and The Company Men.
His shows have received over 300Emmy nominations,
(01:19):
with 60 Emmy wins and five Peabody Awards.
He has been nominated for seven HumanitasPrizes,
and won in 2006for an episode of The West Wing.
John previously served as presidentof the Writers Guild of America
West from 1999 to 2001, and again
from 2009 to 2011.
(01:41):
John discusseswhy he became a writer, humanistic writing,
and gives us his adviceon writing characters
and the role of the writers thematicpoint of view when working on a script.
Stick around for a brief writing promptat the end of the episode,
inspired by the advice shared.
And now here's John.
(02:03):
One of the things we were askedto talk about, which probably is a good
starting place, is sort ofwhy we decided to become writers.
I never decided to become a writer.
Actually.
There was never a moment where I decided it.I had,
I came out of the theaterand I actually started writing
because I was trying to raise moneyfor shows all the time, and it took so
(02:24):
long to convince my relatives and friendswho hadn't already contributed
to plays in lost Moneywith me to to contribute new money.
So in those periods of time,I started doing some writing
and, and discovered
that it was the first thingthat I ever tried to do, that I that
that I realized I would never be ableto do really well, that no matter
(02:47):
how long I did it, that it would never beas good as it was in my head.
And the idea that I could,
that I'd actually found somethingthat I could work on my entire life.
And I believed I would never writewhat I considered to be the perfect piece
of writing, where I had actually gotteneverything to come together actually
challenged me to the point that I thought,this is something that I could spend
(03:07):
my entire life getting better at,that there was never a point
where I would stop learning. So I've
actually got
my degree in directing and design
and have never really returnedto any of that since.
Since writing.
And people often ask me
if I'm not planning, particularly peoplewho know me for a long time to direct.
And my answer is no, because I feel as ifat whatever time I decided to do that,
(03:33):
that would be less time that I would haveto try and and be a better writer.
And it seems to methat no matter how long I do it,
it's just never going to be as goodas I want it to be.
One of the misconceptionsis that humanistic writing is somehow
something that you dowhen you're not necessarily attempting
to be financiallyor commercially successful,
(03:55):
and the idea that this sort of writingis a noble calling,
like following the grail of some sort,that it's not really
where the industry is goingor what people want to see.
I couldn't disagree with that more.
And what we're going to try and showtoday is
the idea that good writingis humanistic writing.
And if you go backand you look at 20 years worth of Academy
(04:17):
nominated pictures, you're going to seethat that a huge majority of them
have all of these kinds of values, humanemotions, complexities in them.
And and if you look at the televisionshows
that I think we all admire,the movies of the week that we admire,
and those writers are making very goodlivings.
(04:38):
The writers who I respect,this is the kind of work they're doing.
And and I believe that the awards and theand the money
and the prestige follows doing thiskind of writing, the terror for me always.
And I expect other people share this.
My terror is that what interests mewill interest only me and not, you know,
(04:59):
I mean,
the first thing I ever wrote
for television,I've been doing the theater
where we had like 60 people showed upat an equity waiver theater.
It was like a great night.
And I walked into the officeand somebody said,
show didn’t do to well, last night.And I said, oh, really?
And they said, yeah, numbers were bad.
And I said, well, you know what wasand they told me the numbers.
And I said, well, what does that mean?I mean, how many people watching this?
16, 17 million.
(05:21):
So theidea that sort of what you're writing
will be acceptedas a universal experience by
so many other people is something thatI have to just trust in. The difference
The difference, to me between a script that'swell written and a script that's not well
written has to do with all of the valuesthat we're going to talk about,
because those human values are, to me,what makes material worth watching.
(05:43):
It is those things which touch the peoplethat you're trying to touch,
the people who are watching it.
And we're going to talk a little bitabout individual moments
where you can make a choicein whatever script
you're working on, whether it be an actionscript or a or dramatic script,
a comedy where you make small choiceswhich touch on these human moments.
And my experience has been thatthose are actually the things
(06:03):
that when people stop me laterto comment on something that I've done,
those little momentsare the things that people always mention.
They oftentimes won't come up to meand say, I love the entire show.
They'll say, I can't get that image orthat moment or that line out of my head.
Any show that you're writing,
whether whether it be a televisionshow, a half hour an hour show,
(06:24):
whether it be a filmor a movie of the week,
you have the opportunity at each momentto add things,
little bits and pieces about human beingswhich can touch other people.
I tend to write rough draftsthat are really tough,
and then I will put them downfor a few days or a week or whatever,
you know, depending on how much timeI have to be able to put it down.
(06:46):
I would suggest thatif you watch television
shows that really move youand that you really care about,
you can find those detailsare the things that make the difference,
and it makes a difference to me.
When I read a script, I want to see howsomebody connects all those moments,
whether they're just in a hurryto get from plot point to plot point.
Plot is necessary.
It's the spine of your show, and it's whatyou're going to hang things on.
(07:07):
But as far as I'm concerned, it is,
It's literally the spine and every singlelittle detail that you add on to
or hang on tothat spine is what makes your writing
and your scriptspecial, valuable, different.
After you've written a scene,I go back and say,
is there something in this scenethat compels me to care
(07:28):
about the characters, whatever it is?
What's a half hour scriptor an hour script
or a movie of the week, or a feature.
You know the plot’s
great, and we're telling a story,but I'm interested in the people,
so every scene to me has to advanceone of the characters.
It doesn't mean that
it has to advance them in some way,that it reveals some extraordinary amount.
I think it's much more interestingto do with the opposite way, which is a
(07:51):
script is a huge jigsaw puzzle or a puzzlefor the viewer, and they're looking
for all of those little piecesof the characters puzzle to put in.
So I go to scenes and I don't say,do I need this for plot?
I ask, do I need this for the character?
Am I finding anything newabout the character?
One of the things that I use to gauge,not only in my own work,
(08:13):
but other people's work, is whether I can,whether it comes back into my head
the next day.A lot of times I'll read someone's script,
and if the next day I'm driving in my carand I realize
that I'm thinking about their script,there's something in that
that has bypassed my conscious abilityto judge a script
and gone to the communal human experience.
(08:37):
That's what you haveto get into your writing somewhere.
That feeling, that somewhereand anything that you write,
the commonality of the experienceto every human being
that can be in the most straightforwardthree beat comedy,
you know, half hour comedythat you write or the most serious
(08:58):
motion picture that you write.
If you don't find those momentsin which your viewer
and your reader who's going to readyour script finds himself
lost in that common human experience,I don't believe it'll get made.
And when you see moviesthat have been made
or television shows have been madewithout that, you know it.
(09:19):
Because when the credits come up,I can't remember what the show was about.
I have no recollection.
It's completely out of my mind,and it's completely out of my mind
because it doesn't connectto something more important.
I think there's a truth to it.
There's a truth to the actionor the moment of the situation.
And if, if, if that truth doesn't ring
(09:41):
true, you'll know it and you'll feel itif it does.
And a lot of times, the best place to enda scene is before it's over.
You want it.
You write the entire scene,see if you can back up 4
or 5 lines and get out of the scene,because it's a lot more interesting.
You don't want to tieeverything up all the time.
I thinkthat the problem with a lot of television
(10:02):
is that it's created and presentedin such a way that you have no option
but to agreewith the point of view of the writer.
And in this case, it's almostalways exclusively our responsibility.
That I think completely underminesyour case, particularly
if you're trying to make people thinkthose people who agree with you.
(10:23):
You're just preaching to the choir,and those people who don't
you haven't given them anything to changetheir opinion, because you've presented
in such a way that leaves no roomfor their point of view.
So the things that I enjoyhearing the most about my work
is that people argued about somethingthat I wrote afterwards,
(10:44):
that people had completely differentinterpretations of something that I wrote.
You know, I've actually
said this happensusually with my own family, where,
you know, they'll bring up somethingthat they saw of mine at a dinner.
And and my father,who tends to pontificate a little bit,
will say, well, I thought it was wonderfulthat you did that.
And my mother will say, well, that'snot what he was talking about at all!
(11:07):
And then that's great,because then you've left enough room
in your work for the opinionsof various people to get in.
You're not trying to force peopleinto your point of view.
You're trying to present an attitude
and an idea that you can agree withor disagree with the idea.
But you have to believeand care about the character.
(11:30):
If you care about the characterin the scene,
whether you agreewith the specific choices
that that character makes,you understand their point of view.
Then you have enlargedthe experience of the viewer,
and you've also letsomeone come into the other life
and into that life of that characterthat you've presented.
I think we haveadditional responsibilities
(11:51):
when we have those opportunitiesto ask questions, questions
that can't be answered,put them out, things
that people don't talk about thatyou're uncomfortable talking about.
The scene is artificialbecause it's not something that I think
the really ultimately,those characters would be comfortable
getting into that conversationover a long period of time.
They would at some point drop out of it.
I've sort of forced them togetherto have that conversation for a long time
(12:11):
intentionally,because we don't hear it enough.
And until the language gets into, oh boy,
I'm getting on my soapbox now,
but until the language gets out, it'sthe old Lenny Bruce argument.
Until you desensitize words and situationsby talking about them,
by by exchanging informationand hearing somebody else's point of view.
(12:33):
And when we're talkingabout evaluating your own work,
one of the things that I alwaysfind myself doing when I go back
through a script after I've writtenit is enlarging the viewpoint,
enlarging, giving more roomfor other opinions and attitudes.
Because when I write it, it is one thing
in my head. I know where I'm goingand that's what I write.
(12:56):
When I reread it,I then have to ask myself,
how are other peoplegoing to get into this story or script?
How are other peoplegoing to find their way into it?
Because I don't know what yourexperience is, but when I watch something
and the writer has been so specificin only giving me one option
for an opinion,I have no interest in it whatsoever.
(13:19):
I get very uninvolved.
I believe that if you take the positionas the writer that you actually have an answer,
you've immediatelyput off the viewer.
You're putting yourself into a positionwhere
the other person's point of viewis suddenly not valid.
By saying,
this is the only direction that I thinkthat in those situations, your entire job
is to figure out what the point of view isand make certain that at the end of it,
(13:43):
whatever the outcome, that we understandwhat that is and that goes for.
That goes for stories in particular, goesfor stories
about things which seem as if there can'tpossibly be another point of view.
I think you can only write itif you can actually understand
and have some compassiondoesn't mean you're forgiving the person.
(14:05):
It doesn't mean that you'rethat you're accepting the behavior.
It means that that vilifying somebody elsewithout understanding who they are
as a human being on some basic level,
removes it from,I think, from being something of value.
You don't really have to agreewith everything that you're writing about,
(14:26):
nor do you have to presenta single point of view.
You can show a lot of different things.
And the second thing that you don'thave to have moments at the end
which resolve everything to feelas if there's a possibility of hope
or of something happening.
You only need those gestures at whichpeople attempt to cross the distance.
They don't have to cross it, andit's a lot more interesting if they don't.
(14:53):
Thanks again for
listening to Humanitas’s Industry 101 Podcast.
At the end of each episode,we ask writers to apply
the lessons learned to their own writingthrough a writing exercise.
Today's exercise was writtenby Daniel Plagens, our Program Manager.
You'll need a scriptyou've written yourself, or a script
you've studied endlessly.
(15:13):
Flip through the script and find a scene.
You'll want something meatywhere two people are interacting.
Now read it thoroughly.
Identify its protagonist,the person proactively
pursuing a goal, and applyJohn's questions.
What in the scenecompels me to care about the character?
Do we need this moment for the character?
Why is it necessary?
(15:34):
If you think it's unnecessary,why is that?
Am I learning anythingnew about the character?
What is it?
Is it duplicative and escalation or anevolution of something that's come before?
Think deeply about these questionsand write the answers down.
Evaluate them.
It's okay to answer yes or no.
It's the critical thinkingthat you're doing that's most important.
(15:56):
And with that, thank you for listening
to Humanitas Industry 101 podcast,which is made possible
with support from our seriessponsor, Sony Pictures Entertainment.
If you'd like to learn more
about Humanitas and the work we do, pleasevisit our website at Humanitas Prize dot org.
Until our next episode,
be well and be writing.
Welcome to Humanitas’s Industry 101 Podcast.
I'm MichelleFranke, executive director of Humanitas
Industry 101 is a conversationseries that introduces topics foundational
to understanding and launchingtelevision and film writing careers.
Humanitas has a long historyof presenting conversations
and workshops for writersexploring craft and career issues.
(00:32):
Industry101 is a continuation of that work.
It includes our online event series,in-person events,
and this podcast,which will present both new episodes
and conversations from our archiveshighlighting our history.
Today's industry 101 podcastepisode comes from a writing workshop
with John Wells,recorded on April 17th, 1993.
(00:57):
He is a producer, writer and directorwho has produced over 12,000 hours
of television across his 30plus year career in entertainment.
John's work includes series such as E.R.,The West Wing, Shameless, Maid
and The Pit, and films including AugustOsage County, Burnt and The Company Men.
His shows have received over 300Emmy nominations,
(01:19):
with 60 Emmy wins and five Peabody Awards.
He has been nominated for seven HumanitasPrizes,
and won in 2006for an episode of The West Wing.
John previously served as presidentof the Writers Guild of America
West from 1999 to 2001, and again
from 2009 to 2011.
(01:41):
John discusseswhy he became a writer, humanistic writing,
and gives us his adviceon writing characters
and the role of the writers thematicpoint of view when working on a script.
Stick around for a brief writing promptat the end of the episode,
inspired by the advice shared.
And now here's John.
(02:03):
One of the things we were askedto talk about, which probably is a good
starting place, is sort ofwhy we decided to become writers.
I never decided to become a writer.
Actually.
There was never a moment where I decided it.I had,
I came out of the theaterand I actually started writing
because I was trying to raise moneyfor shows all the time, and it took so
(02:24):
long to convince my relatives and friendswho hadn't already contributed
to plays in lost Moneywith me to to contribute new money.
So in those periods of time,I started doing some writing
and, and discovered
that it was the first thingthat I ever tried to do, that I that
that I realized I would never be ableto do really well, that no matter
(02:47):
how long I did it, that it would never beas good as it was in my head.
And the idea that I could,
that I'd actually found somethingthat I could work on my entire life.
And I believed I would never writewhat I considered to be the perfect piece
of writing, where I had actually gotteneverything to come together actually
challenged me to the point that I thought,this is something that I could spend
(03:07):
my entire life getting better at,that there was never a point
where I would stop learning. So I've
actually got
my degree in directing and design
and have never really returnedto any of that since.
Since writing.
And people often ask me
if I'm not planning, particularly peoplewho know me for a long time to direct.
And my answer is no, because I feel as ifat whatever time I decided to do that,
(03:33):
that would be less time that I would haveto try and and be a better writer.
And it seems to methat no matter how long I do it,
it's just never going to be as goodas I want it to be.
One of the misconceptionsis that humanistic writing is somehow
something that you dowhen you're not necessarily attempting
to be financiallyor commercially successful,
(03:55):
and the idea that this sort of writingis a noble calling,
like following the grail of some sort,that it's not really
where the industry is goingor what people want to see.
I couldn't disagree with that more.
And what we're going to try and showtoday is
the idea that good writingis humanistic writing.
And if you go backand you look at 20 years worth of Academy
(04:17):
nominated pictures, you're going to seethat that a huge majority of them
have all of these kinds of values, humanemotions, complexities in them.
And and if you look at the televisionshows
that I think we all admire,the movies of the week that we admire,
and those writers are making very goodlivings.
(04:38):
The writers who I respect,this is the kind of work they're doing.
And and I believe that the awards and theand the money
and the prestige follows doing thiskind of writing, the terror for me always.
And I expect other people share this.
My terror is that what interests mewill interest only me and not, you know,
(04:59):
I mean,
the first thing I ever wrote
for television,I've been doing the theater
where we had like 60 people showed upat an equity waiver theater.
It was like a great night.
And I walked into the officeand somebody said,
show didn’t do to well, last night.And I said, oh, really?
And they said, yeah, numbers were bad.
And I said, well, you know what wasand they told me the numbers.
And I said, well, what does that mean?I mean, how many people watching this?
16, 17 million.
(05:21):
So theidea that sort of what you're writing
will be acceptedas a universal experience by
so many other people is something thatI have to just trust in. The difference
The difference, to me between a script that'swell written and a script that's not well
written has to do with all of the valuesthat we're going to talk about,
because those human values are, to me,what makes material worth watching.
(05:43):
It is those things which touch the peoplethat you're trying to touch,
the people who are watching it.
And we're going to talk a little bitabout individual moments
where you can make a choicein whatever script
you're working on, whether it be an actionscript or a or dramatic script,
a comedy where you make small choiceswhich touch on these human moments.
And my experience has been thatthose are actually the things
(06:03):
that when people stop me laterto comment on something that I've done,
those little momentsare the things that people always mention.
They oftentimes won't come up to meand say, I love the entire show.
They'll say, I can't get that image orthat moment or that line out of my head.
Any show that you're writing,
whether whether it be a televisionshow, a half hour an hour show,
(06:24):
whether it be a filmor a movie of the week,
you have the opportunity at each momentto add things,
little bits and pieces about human beingswhich can touch other people.
I tend to write rough draftsthat are really tough,
and then I will put them downfor a few days or a week or whatever,
you know, depending on how much timeI have to be able to put it down.
(06:46):
I would suggest thatif you watch television
shows that really move youand that you really care about,
you can find those detailsare the things that make the difference,
and it makes a difference to me.
When I read a script, I want to see howsomebody connects all those moments,
whether they're just in a hurryto get from plot point to plot point.
Plot is necessary.
It's the spine of your show, and it's whatyou're going to hang things on.
(07:07):
But as far as I'm concerned, it is,
It's literally the spine and every singlelittle detail that you add on to
or hang on tothat spine is what makes your writing
and your scriptspecial, valuable, different.
After you've written a scene,I go back and say,
is there something in this scenethat compels me to care
(07:28):
about the characters, whatever it is?
What's a half hour scriptor an hour script
or a movie of the week, or a feature.
You know the plot’s
great, and we're telling a story,but I'm interested in the people,
so every scene to me has to advanceone of the characters.
It doesn't mean that
it has to advance them in some way,that it reveals some extraordinary amount.
I think it's much more interestingto do with the opposite way, which is a
(07:51):
script is a huge jigsaw puzzle or a puzzlefor the viewer, and they're looking
for all of those little piecesof the characters puzzle to put in.
So I go to scenes and I don't say,do I need this for plot?
I ask, do I need this for the character?
Am I finding anything newabout the character?
One of the things that I use to gauge,not only in my own work,
(08:13):
but other people's work, is whether I can,whether it comes back into my head
the next day.A lot of times I'll read someone's script,
and if the next day I'm driving in my carand I realize
that I'm thinking about their script,there's something in that
that has bypassed my conscious abilityto judge a script
and gone to the communal human experience.
(08:37):
That's what you haveto get into your writing somewhere.
That feeling, that somewhereand anything that you write,
the commonality of the experienceto every human being
that can be in the most straightforwardthree beat comedy,
you know, half hour comedythat you write or the most serious
(08:58):
motion picture that you write.
If you don't find those momentsin which your viewer
and your reader who's going to readyour script finds himself
lost in that common human experience,I don't believe it'll get made.
And when you see moviesthat have been made
or television shows have been madewithout that, you know it.
(09:19):
Because when the credits come up,I can't remember what the show was about.
I have no recollection.
It's completely out of my mind,and it's completely out of my mind
because it doesn't connectto something more important.
I think there's a truth to it.
There's a truth to the actionor the moment of the situation.
And if, if, if that truth doesn't ring
(09:41):
true, you'll know it and you'll feel itif it does.
And a lot of times, the best place to enda scene is before it's over.
You want it.
You write the entire scene,see if you can back up 4
or 5 lines and get out of the scene,because it's a lot more interesting.
You don't want to tieeverything up all the time.
I thinkthat the problem with a lot of television
(10:02):
is that it's created and presentedin such a way that you have no option
but to agreewith the point of view of the writer.
And in this case, it's almostalways exclusively our responsibility.
That I think completely underminesyour case, particularly
if you're trying to make people thinkthose people who agree with you.
(10:23):
You're just preaching to the choir,and those people who don't
you haven't given them anything to changetheir opinion, because you've presented
in such a way that leaves no roomfor their point of view.
So the things that I enjoyhearing the most about my work
is that people argued about somethingthat I wrote afterwards,
(10:44):
that people had completely differentinterpretations of something that I wrote.
You know, I've actually
said this happensusually with my own family, where,
you know, they'll bring up somethingthat they saw of mine at a dinner.
And and my father,who tends to pontificate a little bit,
will say, well, I thought it was wonderfulthat you did that.
And my mother will say, well, that'snot what he was talking about at all!
(11:07):
And then that's great,because then you've left enough room
in your work for the opinionsof various people to get in.
You're not trying to force peopleinto your point of view.
You're trying to present an attitude
and an idea that you can agree withor disagree with the idea.
But you have to believeand care about the character.
(11:30):
If you care about the characterin the scene,
whether you agreewith the specific choices
that that character makes,you understand their point of view.
Then you have enlargedthe experience of the viewer,
and you've also letsomeone come into the other life
and into that life of that characterthat you've presented.
I think we haveadditional responsibilities
(11:51):
when we have those opportunitiesto ask questions, questions
that can't be answered,put them out, things
that people don't talk about thatyou're uncomfortable talking about.
The scene is artificialbecause it's not something that I think
the really ultimately,those characters would be comfortable
getting into that conversationover a long period of time.
They would at some point drop out of it.
I've sort of forced them togetherto have that conversation for a long time
(12:11):
intentionally,because we don't hear it enough.
And until the language gets into, oh boy,
I'm getting on my soapbox now,
but until the language gets out, it'sthe old Lenny Bruce argument.
Until you desensitize words and situationsby talking about them,
by by exchanging informationand hearing somebody else's point of view.
(12:33):
And when we're talkingabout evaluating your own work,
one of the things that I alwaysfind myself doing when I go back
through a script after I've writtenit is enlarging the viewpoint,
enlarging, giving more roomfor other opinions and attitudes.
Because when I write it, it is one thing
in my head. I know where I'm goingand that's what I write.
(12:56):
When I reread it,I then have to ask myself,
how are other peoplegoing to get into this story or script?
How are other peoplegoing to find their way into it?
Because I don't know what yourexperience is, but when I watch something
and the writer has been so specificin only giving me one option
for an opinion,I have no interest in it whatsoever.
(13:19):
I get very uninvolved.
I believe that if you take the positionas the writer that you actually have an answer,
you've immediatelyput off the viewer.
You're putting yourself into a positionwhere
the other person's point of viewis suddenly not valid.
By saying,
this is the only direction that I thinkthat in those situations, your entire job
is to figure out what the point of view isand make certain that at the end of it,
(13:43):
whatever the outcome, that we understandwhat that is and that goes for.
That goes for stories in particular, goesfor stories
about things which seem as if there can'tpossibly be another point of view.
I think you can only write itif you can actually understand
and have some compassiondoesn't mean you're forgiving the person.
(14:05):
It doesn't mean that you'rethat you're accepting the behavior.
It means that that vilifying somebody elsewithout understanding who they are
as a human being on some basic level,
removes it from,I think, from being something of value.
You don't really have to agreewith everything that you're writing about,
(14:26):
nor do you have to presenta single point of view.
You can show a lot of different things.
And the second thing that you don'thave to have moments at the end
which resolve everything to feelas if there's a possibility of hope
or of something happening.
You only need those gestures at whichpeople attempt to cross the distance.
They don't have to cross it, andit's a lot more interesting if they don't.
(14:53):
Thanks again for
listening to Humanitas’s Industry 101 Podcast.
At the end of each episode,we ask writers to apply
the lessons learned to their own writingthrough a writing exercise.
Today's exercise was writtenby Daniel Plagens, our Program Manager.
You'll need a scriptyou've written yourself, or a script
you've studied endlessly.
(15:13):
Flip through the script and find a scene.
You'll want something meatywhere two people are interacting.
Now read it thoroughly.
Identify its protagonist,the person proactively
pursuing a goal, and applyJohn's questions.
What in the scenecompels me to care about the character?
Do we need this moment for the character?
Why is it necessary?
(15:34):
If you think it's unnecessary,why is that?
Am I learning anythingnew about the character?
What is it?
Is it duplicative and escalation or anevolution of something that's come before?
Think deeply about these questionsand write the answers down.
Evaluate them.
It's okay to answer yes or no.
It's the critical thinkingthat you're doing that's most important.
(15:56):
And with that, thank you for listening
to Humanitas Industry 101 podcast,which is made possible
with support from our seriessponsor, Sony Pictures Entertainment.
If you'd like to learn more
about Humanitas and the work we do, pleasevisit our website at Humanitas Prize dot org.
Until our next episode,
be well and be writing.
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