John welcomes back Drew Goddard (Project Hail Mary, High Potential) to ask, how do you turn the beats of your story into full scenes? Using Drew’s script for The Martian, we look at how he translates moments in a book into scenes in a movie, the freedom Drew finds in a beat sheet, how beats are approached in a TV writers room, and his advice to a staff writer struggling with a draft.
We also dig into Drew’s process for adapting Project Hail Mary, choosing what to cut, and his eloquent defense of double-spacing in a screenplay. He’s even kind enough to help answer listener questions on how to recharge your brain and how to indicate you wrote the most on a co-written script.
In our bonus segment for premium members, Drew shares his outlook on the current TV landscape, including the big mistake he sees young writers make in their spec pilots.
Links:
- Project Hail Mary | Trailer
- Drew Goddard on IMDb
- The Martian screenplay
- Twin Peaks: The Return – Part 8
- Noah Kalina on YouTube and Substack
- A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
- 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
- Subscribe to Scriptnotes on YouTube
- Scriptnotes on Instagram and TikTok
- John August on Bluesky and Instagram
- Outro by Nick Moore (send us yours!)
- Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli.
Email us at ask@dev.johnaugust.com
You can download the episode here.
UPDATE 3-18-25: The transcript for this episode can be found here.