Write Your Screenplay Podcast

How do you reinvent a TV series without breaking its engine? Jacob Krueger breaks down Beef Season 2 to explore one of the most difficult balancing acts in screenwriting: evolving a show's engine without alienating your audience. At first, the second season of Beef appears to deliver the same escalating conflict that powered Season 1 — a small, petty squabble spiraling toward violence. Yet episode by episode, creator Lee Sung Jin subtly shifts the rules of the game until the show operates on entirely new terms, feeling less like a repeat of Beef than the inspired love child of Beef and The White Lotus. Along the way, Jacob explains how metaphor can function as a creative North Star, and why your narrative becomes stronger when you stack the deck against your central argument rather than in support of it.

How do you make a devastating story feel funny—without losing its truth? In this episode of the podcast, Jacob Krueger explores Dying for Sex, the extraordinary limited series created by Elizabeth Meriwether and Kim Rosenstock, to break down one of the most elusive tools in screenwriting: tone. Focusing on a single scene from episode 5, Jake shows how the writers take one of the darkest confrontations imaginable—a daughter facing her mother about trauma—and shape it into something that is simultaneously heartbreaking and hilarious. Along the way, he explores three key ideas: how juxtaposing tones can deepen emotional impact, why tone is something you layer over your script in rewrites, and how tone is central to a television series engine—helping a show feel both the same and different across episodes. Drawing inspiration from Falstaff’s tragicomic end in Henry IV, Part 2, Tony Soprano’s fractured family, and his own early playwriting misadventures, Jake reveals a powerful truth: Tone isn’t a single instrument you play. It’s something you shape—note by note—until the whole piece sings.

What happens when you take the structure of a movie you love—and try to breathe new life into it? In this episode of the podcast, Jacob Krueger explores In the Blink of an Eye, the ambitious sci-fi drama written by Colby Day that premiered at Sundance and is now streaming on Hulu. Deeply influenced by Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain, the film unfolds across three timelines connected by shared questions about death, evolution, and the fragile miracle of human life. Comparing the two films as a case study, Jake explores three deceptively simple craft lessons: how writers can repurpose the structure of the movies that inspire them toward new ends; why theme only lands when the writer is genuinely wrestling with it; and what you can learn about good dialogue from a family of grunting neanderthals. Along the way, he shows how even strong films with beautiful performances can lose their emotional punch the moment a writer stops trusting the audience.

What does it actually mean to adapt a story- and how can radically different adaptations emerge from the same source material? In this episode, Jacob Krueger looks at the novel and film versions of Hamnet and the ’90s award darling Shakespeare in Love to show how finding the location of your adaptation shapes character, structure, tone, and theme—and why successful adaptations are defined less by fidelity to source material than by the clarity of your intentions

What if raising the stakes in your screenplay has nothing to do with explosions, danger, or bigger plot events? In this rerelease of a classic episode, Jake takes on one of the most misunderstood producer notes—raise the stakes—and reframes it from the ground up. Stakes, he explains, don’t begin with what happens on screen. They begin with empathy: our connection to a character, what they want, and how hard it is for them to get it.

What happens when a classic modern “Western” like First Blood is reimagined for a world where moral clarity has collapsed? In this episode, Jacob Krueger analyzes Ari Aster’s Eddington in comparison to First Blood to reveal how theme drives character, action, dialogue, and structure when adapting within a genre.

With the LA Screenwriting Weekend approaching, Jake sits down with writer and teacher Steven Bagatourian to explore the balance between fire, craft, and voice. Together they dig into why instinct needs structure, why structure needs heat, and how the voice you’re seeking often emerges in the friction between the two.

Many writers rush to the inciting incident around page 10-12, weakening their script’s foundation. Jake Krueger shows how slowing down and embracing presence can transform your writing and creative journey.

Jacob Krueger and Christian Lybrook discuss some of the most exciting independent movies premiering at Sundance and what screenwriters can learn from them. If you liked this Podcast, join us for Thursday Night Writes! Our Happy Hour of Writing Exercises with Jake every Thursday night at 7:00 pm ET, RSVP: https://www.writeyourscreenplay.com/free-writing-classes-thursday-night-writes/ Learn more about our programs: https://www.writeyourscreenplay.com

Keeping your New Year’s resolutions as a writer begins with learning to think a little more like your characters. The person you are today is not going to be the person you are at the end of the screenplay.

Jake Krueger and Ron McCants discuss how to create the balance between thinking about your TV Drama pilot as an engineer, and getting your voice and the thing you need to say on the page.

Jacob Krueger interviews actor/director/writer and JKS alum Jenna Laurenzo about her smash hit film Lez Bomb and the spiritual side of screenwriting.

Jacob Krueger analyzes the pilot of Ozark and shows the link between theme, hook, engine and secondary structure.