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PODCAST

Write On: A Screenwriting 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!

tv & film

All Episodes

35:49

Write On: 'Hedda' Writer/Director Nia DaCosta

Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast ·

2025/10/30

"I love adaptations. The beauty of adaptation, especially a classic, like Shakespeare and Chekhov or Ibsen, they're such a gift because they give you this beautiful framework, and it's almost like they're begging you to take it and make it your own," says writer/director Nia DaCosta about adapting Henrik Ibsen's 1891 play Hedda Gabler into her new film Hedda. Set in the 1950s, the movie stars Tessa Thompson in the lead role, Imogen Poots as Thea, and reimagines the character Eilert Lovborg as a

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39:09

Write On: 'Splinter Cell: Deathwatch' Creator/Writer...

Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast ·

2025/10/20

“As you do draft after draft, it becomes shorter and rendered down. And [Keanu Reeves and I] would go through scenes going, ‘Can people say less? Can the action be tighter? Can the action sequence be shorter?’ The action is an extension of the hero’s journey and if you don’t give a sh*t about the character, it doesn’t matter how great your action is,” says Derek Kolstad about his writing process with actor Keanu Reeves when they worked on the script that would become John Wick and spark an entire

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37:35

Write On: 'After the Hunt' Writer Nora Garrett

Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast ·

2025/10/17

“People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election.” –Otto Von Bismarck “It's funny, because when I was writing After the Hunt, I definitely wasn't like, ‘Oh, I want to write about this current socio-political moment.’ I was really just invested in the characters and the story,” says screenwriter Nora Garrett about writing a screenplay that probes the dynamics of power, privilege and social accountability. She adds, “What I didn't even realize was something that was

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35:17

Write On: 'Anemone' Co-Writer/Director Ronan Day-Lewis

Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast ·

2025/10/03

“[My dad] really started to inhabit the characters, especially Ray, speaking as him during the writing process. That was when I realized this was going to be its own kind of special beast. Working with him taught me so much as a writer and storyteller; by the time we got to set, we had a shorthand for everything,” says director and co-writer Ronan Day-Lewis about writing the script Anemone with his father, Daniel Day-Lewis. The film Anemone, starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Sean Bean and Samantha

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39:09

Write On: 'All Of You' Writer/Director Will Bridges &...

Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast ·

2025/09/26

“You have to love all your characters. Even if you're writing a bad guy. You, the writer, have to write them with love and empathy, and treat each character, give each character, a full life and a full arc in your story, even if their screen time is small. Essentially, if you were following that character, they also have a full story, a full life,” says actor/writer Brett Goldstein about how he approaches writing characters in film and TV. On today’s episode, we chat with writer/director Will

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37:23

Write On: 'Mussolini: Son of the Century' Director...

Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast ·

2025/09/17

On today’s episode, we speak with director Joe Wright whose new limited TV series Mussolini: Son of the Century, explores fascism through the early political career of Italy’s Prime Minister Mussolini in the 1920s. The show is incredible storytelling from beginning to end, mixing opera and techno rave music while drawing chilling comparisons to the current rise of fascism around the world. “We all have a dark side. We all have the choice to be the best of ourselves, or the worst of ourselves and we

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40:59

Write On: 'The Toxic Avenger' Writer/Director Macon...

Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast ·

2025/08/28

“The thing that started it all off was me saying [the character Toxie] should be a guy in a suit. In other words, let’s not do a computer-generated creature, let’s have a person in a suit and have that handmade, hand-stitched kind of quality to it where you can sort of see the seams a little bit and have that be part of the fun. I also said let’s have it be rated R. Hopefully y’all are not interested in a family-friendly PG-13 version of this movie, because that’s not what the fans of the original

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40:05

Write On: 'Sirens' Creator/Showrunner Molly Smith...

Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast ·

2025/08/12

“Our goal in writing [Sirens] was to write something that makes you think, and offers the opportunity to re-examine your own assumptions that you made about these characters. And it's taxing. We ask some difficult questions. It's not The Perfect Couple. It's not a murder show. We're going after something thematically that’s really large and really ambitious, and that's why the Greek mythology came to mind. These are epic stories. These are about blood, and moms, and torture, and trauma, and pain

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44:27

Write On: 'The Home' Director/Co-Writer James...

Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast ·

2025/07/25

“Write your own anxieties. Get into your own psyche. I think if it scares you – like, I'm terrified of guns, and that's where The Purge came from. But here, there were various generational fears and whatnot that led to The Home, Adam's fears and my fears about getting older and our anxiety. So I would say if it's born from your fear, the majority of the audience probably has a similar fear. I think we are communal in that way. Fears are not singular, so I think you should work off your own fears,

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36:57

Write On: 'Abraham's Boys' Writer/Director Natasha...

Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast ·

2025/07/14

“Vampires hold incredible destructive power, and so we're very drawn to them, sort of like moths to a candle, right? I think that's sort of eternal, and that's the reason every culture, pretty much around the globe has some version of the vampire because it represents that very human conflict of what we desire which is so in tune with and aligned to things that can also destroy us. That just feels very honest and eternal, so I don't think [vampires] will ever go away. I think they will be an eternal

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37:54

Write On: 'Countdown' Creator/Writer Derek Haas

Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast ·

2025/06/30

“One thing I’ve found in the crime genre is that homicides are always interesting. When somebody’s killed, whatever that case may be, it’s usually compelling drama. So then it’s up to you as the writer to surprise the audience and do things that they didn’t think were coming. I’ve described it like this before: If you can hit the sweet spot of, ‘I didn’t see that coming! I should have seen it coming, but I didn’t see it coming,’ That, to me, is the best writing. It’s like, when you got to the end of

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40:03

Write On: 'Apple Cider Vinegar' Creator and...

Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast ·

2025/06/16

“In my mind, Belle is going through life, at least our version of Belle – I've never met the real Belle – she’s going through life with this hole inside, this overwhelming need for approval, that social media absolutely capitalizes on and she just keeps trying to feed the beast. She hasn't grown up with the healthiest of role models herself. She has learnt that being sick is a shortcut to being loved and to getting attention,” says Samantha Strauss, creator and showrunner for the Netflix limited

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37:59

Write On: 'Matlock' Creator & Showrunner Jennie...

Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast ·

2025/06/09

“The most important thing that I've learned as a storyteller is that I have to treat every character in the show as though they're the lead in the show, and they are never doing anything so that I can prompt a move from another character. They are doing things that are true to what they want and their motivation. So that's what makes that architecture hard, because you know you want things to happen, but they have to happen coming out of character, not coming out of what the room wants to see

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34:12

Write On: 'Running Point' Showrunner David Stassen

Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast ·

2025/05/23

“It’s not ripped from the headlines. We’re not using any of [the Buss family’s] real-life stories and putting them into our show. Because Mindy [Kaling], Ike [Barinholtz], and I have so many influences like Arrested Development, 30 Rock, The Office and Succession, we’re coming up with our own fun stories and fun situations to put this dysfunctional, very wealthy, successful family into a blender and then have them going back and forth and arguing and solving problems together and against each

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39:05

Write On: 'Hurry Up Tomorrow' Director/Co-Writer Trey...

Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast ·

2025/05/16

“It was a lot of empathizing. I would do long phone calls with Abel (Tesfaye, aka the Weeknd) after we had met, just basically talking to him and finding out more of his history, where he was at in different phases of his life, where he’s at today, and using those to create a character. And part of creating that character is I’ll find my own personal stuff to attach to it… Portions of his life I can relate to very much. And past all of that, I think this is the deepest I’ve gone with my therapy

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38:25

Write On: 'Nonnas' Screenwriter Liz Maccie and...

Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast ·

2025/05/14

“Sometimes it’s easier to find and access your truth through ‘pretend’ characters. So I had this embarrassment of riches of this true story but in my heart, I was like, ‘I totally get to tell my truth!’… So my advice is find a way to do it, and if you have to do a mind trick by saying, ‘I’m writing this pretend character’ that’s fine, but put all the stuff that’s real to you into that pretend character, because I find there is an immense amount of freedom in being able to write through these

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28:59

Write On: 'Shadow Force' Director/Co-Writer Joe...

Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast ·

2025/05/09

“For me, I don’t know how you could not make [a script] personal. I think drama allows you to hide how personal it is. I think that’s kind of what I like about writing in the genre space. On the outside looking in, it just looks like a big action movie. It doesn’t look like a personal story. But there are personal elements like my mom was a working mom as well. And so that’s why you have Kyra in the movie who has to come back to her son because she’s been working to protect him. That’s a very

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42:22

Write On: 2024 Big Break Short Film Winner Brandon...

Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast ·

2025/05/07

On today’s episode, we speak to writer Brandon Osterman, whose short script ‘The Naughty List’ won last year’s Final Draft Big Break Short Screenplay Category. As part of his prize package, he received a consultation with Sav Rodgers, Marketing Manager for Seed&Spark, the film industry’s most popular crowdfunding platform. Sav joins the conversation to tell us exactly what crowdfunding is and help all writers understand that funding for their project is possible to achieve. “Who is your audience

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43:22

Write On: 'Good American Family' Co-Showrunners Katie...

Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast ·

2025/05/07

“One of the things we talked a lot about in the room is that very rarely do people set about their day saying, ‘Okay, I’m going to go do some evil.’ But for most people, we’re all sort of the leads in our own stories and we’re all crafting the narrative of who we want the world to see us as. And we do start to believe that. You tell yourself these stories about yourself that you want to be true and you move through the world and you make decisions based on that narrative. And I think that one of the

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37:42

Write On: 'NCIS Origins' Showrunners David J. North...

Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast ·

2025/04/08

“If you can make the twists [in the story] hit your character in an emotional way and set up their emotional arc, then when the case twist intersects with them, if it's hitting them in the deepest way, in the most unexpected way, maybe – then you've done your job. So it's getting that emotional arc to really bounce off of the crime story in the most impactful way,” says Gina Lucita Monreal about the most powerful way to fuse together story and character. On today’s episode, we talk with David J

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