Paul Chitlik is appearing on StoryBeat for the third time. Paul is a truly gifted storyteller and teacher who has written screenplays, novels, and non-fiction, including writing for all the major networks and studios in both English and in Spanish.   

Paul’s been a story editor, director, and producer in both TV and features. He was nominated for a Writers Guild of America award for “The Twilight Zone” and a GLAAD Media Award nomination for Telemundo’s “Los Beltrán.”  And he won a Genesis Award for a Showtime Family movie. 

He also happens to be one of the best screenwriting teachers in the world.  He’s taught in various MFA programs around the world, including: UCLA and Loyola Marymount in L.A., and in Barcelona, Cuba, Chile, Venezuela, Mexico, and Sweden.  

His highly regarded book, Rewrite, is one of the essential, must-read books for anyone interested in writing screenplays, teleplays, plays, and even novels. 

I’ve read his latest screenwriting book, The Screenwriting Sensei, which I thoroughly enjoyed because it took me straight back to Graduate School at UCLA when I was one of Paul’s numerous students. Paul’s teachings have remained exceptionally influential on me for both my own writing and in my subsequent years as a college professor of screenwriting. I highly urge anyone interested in writing for the screen to check out The Screenwriting Sensei. 

WEBSITES:

• Instagram: @paulchitlik
• Website – paulchitlik.com

OTHER APPEARANCES OF PAUL ON STORYBEAT:

• Paul Chitlik, Writer-Producer-Director-Teacher-Episode #312
• Paul Chitlik, Novelist and Writer of The Twilight Zone (1985) #5

IF YOU LIKE THIS EPISODE, YOU MAY ALSO ENJOY:

• Tom Ruegger, Animator-Producer-Writer-Episode #369
• Steven L. Sears, Screenwriter-Producer-Author-Episode #351
• Drew Brody, Writer-Producer-Episode #345
• Hal Ackerman, Screenwriter-Novelist-UCLA Professor-Session 2-Episode #333
• R.J. Stewart, Producer, Xena: Warrior Princess-Episode #329
• Richard Walter, Author-Legendary Teacher-Session 2-Episode #323
• Okema T. Moore, Film Producer-Episode #314
• Paul Chitlik, Writer-Producer-Director-Teacher-Episode #312
• Max Kinnings, Novelist and Screenwriter-Episode #308
• David Stenn, Screenwriter-Producer-Director-Episode #303
• Joey Hartstone, Screenwriter-Novelist-Episode #302
• Rob Marshall, Director-Producer-Choreographer-Episode #299
• Amanda Raymond, Writer-Director-Producer-Episode #222
• Charlie Peters, Writer-Director-Episode #221
• Karen Leigh Hopkins, Writer-Director-Producer-Episode #207
• Kit Steinkellner, Writer-Producer-Episode #115
• Bob Goodman, TV Writer-Producer-Episode #105
• Todd Robinson, Writer-Director-Episode #89
• Howard Suber, Film Educator-Episode #47

Steve Cuden: On today's Story Beat,

Paul Chitlik: What fulfills me about writing is getting stuff out. I want to say something. I want to tell people something. I want to tell a story that amuses people, that engages people and that teaches people something about themselves and something about the world and makes people think to show how a person can change at any time in his life.

Announcer: This is Story Beat with Steve Cuden A podcast for the creative mind. Story Beat explores how masters of creativity develop and produce brilliant works that people everywhere love and admire. So join us as we discover how talented creators find success in the worlds of imagination and entertainment. Here now is your host, Steve Cuden

Steve Cuden: Thanks for joining us on Story Beat. We're coming to you from the Steel City, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Well, I'm delighted that my guest today, Paul Chitlik, is appearing on Story Beat for the third time. Paul is a truly gifted storyteller and teacher who's written screenplays, novels and nonfiction, including writing for all the major networks and studios in both English and in Spanish. Paul's been a story editor, director and producer in both TV and features. He was nominated for a Writer's Guild Award for the Twilight Zone and a GLAAD Media Award nomination for Telemundo's Los Beltran. And he won a Genesis Award for a, Showtime family movie. He also happens to be one of the best screenwriting teachers in the world. He's taught in various MFA programs around the globe, including UCLA and Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles, as well as in Barcelona, Cuba, Chile, Venezuela, Mexico and Sweden. Paul's highly regarded book Rewrite is one of the essential must read books for anyone interested in writing screenplays, teleplays, plays, and even novels. I've read his latest screenwriting book, the Screenwriting Sensei, which I thoroughly enjoy because it took me straight back to graduate school at UCLA when I was one of Paul's numerous students. Paul's teachings have remained exceptionally influential on me for both my own writing and in my subsequent years as a college professor of screenwriting. I highly urge anyone interested in writing for the screen to check out the Screenwriting Sensei. So for all those reasons and many more, it's a real joy for me to welcome back to Story Beat today the prolific writer, producer, director and teacher, my friend, Paul Chitlik. Paul, it's so great to have you on the show for the third time.

Paul Chitlik: Steve, thank you so much for having me. And I'm blushing from that introduction.

Steve Cuden: Well, don't get carried away with yourself. So let me ask at this point in your life and Career. We've talked about your past twice before on this podcast. but I'm wondering, do you think of yourself now primarily as a screenwriter, a novelist, a nonfiction writer, simply a writer, a teacher, or, or some combination of all those?

Paul Chitlik: Well, I'm no longer teaching full time. as a matter of fact, I'm not teaching at all. I am consulting with some, writers and helping them out with their scripts. But, I think of myself mostly as a writer still. And as a writer, I've never put myself in a box. So it could be writing screenplays, could be writing novels. I think what I prefer to be writing now are novels and plays. Although I could write screenplays, I did recently, adapt my latest novel, which is called Lies, All Lies, which we.

Steve Cuden: Talked about on the last time you were on the show.

Paul Chitlik: Right. Yeah. And thank you for that. I've just adapted it as a one hour pilot. Nice for streamers. So we're now shopping. We've attached a director to it and we're now shopping it to some production company.

Steve Cuden: So I want to correct you on one thing you said a moment ago.

Paul Chitlik: Please.

Steve Cuden: You are still teaching. You've written these books that continue to teach people, and though you might not be in a classroom, you are continuing to teach.

Paul Chitlik: Well, I appreciate that. Yeah. and this book is written. Well, as you probably know already, it was a result of classes I taught for UCLA extension, which in the early 2000s, did not have Zoom or Skype, so they all had. All the lectures had to be written for their online program. So I combined all those lectures, updated them, and added some new material, so that it is basically a classroom in a book. It is.

Steve Cuden: And in fact, I think that it's very reminiscent of, you know, I said it took me back to my graduate school days because you were teaching all the same things in the book that you were teaching in class in graduate school. So I think that it's very, very valuable and widespread. It's widespread knowledge that, you have gathered in your own world for a long time. How long did it take you to get to a point where you thought, I could teach this way back in the day, and then I could actually write about teaching it. How long did it take you to gather all that information?

Paul Chitlik: Well, I worked in television, let's see, from the time about the mid-80s to the 2000s or early 2000s. So I think it took me almost all that time to be confident enough to teach other people what I was learning. And it came about by accident, actually. Somebody I knew was a friend of somebody that was teaching in the professional program at ucla, and he had to drop out because he was going to be running a show in Toronto, and they couldn't be teaching in Los Angeles. And he asked his friend, can you teach for me? Because she was a television writer. And she said, well, I don't know anything about writing features, but I have a friend that does. And she talked to me, and I said, well, I guess I can. I'd written several features by that time, and I'd written, I don't know, literally hundreds of television shows. So I knew something about structure and something about writing. And so I thought, well, I'll take a chance. And fortunately, the director of the program at the time, Stephanie Moore, believed the person that recommended me that was, Neil Kush. I can't remember his last name.

Steve Cuden: Neil Landau.

Paul Chitlik: Neil Landau, that's right. Thank you. You know Neil.

Steve Cuden: I do know Neil.

Paul Chitlik: Yeah. And, so he recommended me, and I got the job. And once I did that, I had to do some reading, actually, because I had no formal education in structure of screenplays. I knew how to structure a screenplay according to me. So I wanted to see, was there somebody else that knew how to structure a screenplay and had it in.

Steve Cuden: So who'd you read? Syd Field or.

Paul Chitlik: I read Sid Field right away, and I thought, okay, that makes sense. But I think there's more to it. And that's when I started to develop my own, approach to it. Sid was a good basis to start. Can't argue with that. I can't argue with Save the Cat, although it's not a. Neither one of those books tells you how to write a screenplay. They just tell you what's in a screenplay.

Steve Cuden: Right?

Paul Chitlik: Exactly. That's not the same thing. Exactly.

Steve Cuden: Well, yes, you're all about the act of being a screenwriter versus what's in a story.

Paul Chitlik: Exactly. Exactly. Although you need to know what's in a story. And I focus on story early on, but I focus on the process.

Steve Cuden: Who are your screenwriting heroes? Who, when you think of these are great screenwriters, who do you think of?

Paul Chitlik: Well, the first person that comes to mind is Aaron Sorkin, then William Goldman. And those two guys are so important in my research and my enjoyment of screenplays. The that when I teach classes that are a little larger than eight, and I did this in, Budapest, and I've done it in, Loyola Marymount when I have a class that's a little larger, I divide them into two groups. And I call one group the Goldmans and the other group the Sorkins.

Steve Cuden: And does it work out that way that I think of the Goldmans would have to be a little more action oriented and maybe a little higher on comedy. And Sorkin would be a little more on politics and, and on, dialogue. Dialogue, for sure.

Paul Chitlik: Yeah. Very major in the dialogue.

Steve Cuden: Well, Goldman was pretty good with dialogue himself.

Paul Chitlik: He was great in dialogue, but yeah, he had a lot of action.

Steve Cuden: You know, you get the Princess Bride and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Those are two pretty good examples of dialogue.

Paul Chitlik: Exactly. So I use those. Those are my two best. Although right now I'm rereading Casablanca and it's amazing. It really is. Truly amazing. It's a great film.

Steve Cuden: it is a great film. And there's so many quotable lines in that movie.

Paul Chitlik: Exactly.

Steve Cuden: And so much subtext in that movie.

Paul Chitlik: Oh, a ton of subtext in that movie. And I use one of those scenes, one of the scenes in the movie to show people examples of subtext. The scene when they're talking about. Oh, no, wait, is it in that movie in Casablanca? No, it's not in Casablanca. It's in another movie with Lauren Bacall.

Steve Cuden: To have and to have not.

Paul Chitlik: No, it's in the, in the Maltese Falcon.

Steve Cuden: Oh, well, she's not in the Maltese Falcon.

Paul Chitlik: What is the film that she's in that they're talking about Horse racing.

Steve Cuden: Oh, you talk about horse racing? Yeah, I, that might be into having to have. Not.

Paul Chitlik: I don't think so. Well, you know, I'm going to have to look that up. I've, I've got thousands of movies in my head, of course, and sometimes it's hard to remember which movies the dialogue comes from.

Steve Cuden: You and me both. And I think it's the rare person who can actually keep them all nice and neatly ordered in their head. so when you're thinking about writing a unique story of your own, not when you're working for someone else's show, when you're coming up with something new for you, what kind of stories do you tend to gravitate toward? Is it comedy? Is it drama? Is it action? Is it. What do you, what do you tend to gravitate to?

Paul Chitlik: I tend to gravitate towards drama with humor. Although I have a wide range of scripts. It's drama with humor sometimes. one of my favorite scripts was based on a book and it's called Resist and it is about a 13 year old boy who became an underground, fighter in The Ukraine during World War II.

Steve Cuden: Oh, wow.

Paul Chitlik: So that's not something that comes to mind right away. But. And it's very serious and it has a lot of drama, it has a lot of action, has a lot of, firepower, but it also has a 13 year old boy. And so I wanted to put some humor in it because the 13 year old boy has humor. You have to live with some humor.

Steve Cuden: Well, and a 13 year old boy would not have enough of the gravitas of, of a 50 year old man.

Paul Chitlik: Correct.

Steve Cuden: So there would be humor in there. There'd be a little light in that story.

Paul Chitlik: Yeah, he does things that are funny. and I think that everything that I write has a touch of humor. I'm reading some plays that I wrote several years ago right now because we're presenting them here in Chapel Hill with a new project that I've created with, a friend of mine. It's called Southern Village Readers Theater. And what we're going to do, instead of presenting a whole play, we're going to be on, on stage, but reading the play, like radio play. And I'm rereading these plays that I wrote a while ago, and they're very serious, they deal with family problems. Is a good way to characterize them. But there's humor. I think humor is in daily life. It has to be in your film and it has to be in your movies, your tv.

Steve Cuden: Well, obviously there are, there are lots of very, very serious movies with no humor in them or limited humor. But I do think that humor elevates everything.

Paul Chitlik: I agree with you. And it makes it easier for people to absorb some of what you're trying to say. I don't want to say message, but there is. You're trying to say something. Every time you write, you're trying to say something important.

Steve Cuden: Well, okay, so why do we tell each other stories? What is storytelling about? Why do we do this?

Paul Chitlik: Okay, now you're going to get deep with me. All right. Yeah.

Steve Cuden: Well, here we go.

Paul Chitlik: Let's do that. well, we tell stories. I think there's two reasons to tell stories. First reason is to entertain, to give people a break from daily life. And the second reason is to convey a message. And I say that with all sincerity. That, Louis B. Meyer said, if you want to send a message, use, a telegram. He said, use Western Union. Well, I say the writers write for a reason. And we want to change the world. And I think that if you want to change the world as a writer, you have to write something that's dramatic, something that's comedic, something that grabs people, but at the same time tells them something that, that they would benefit from. Something they can learn about, but hopefully.

Steve Cuden: Not bash them over the head with it.

Paul Chitlik: Exactly. Well, does Shakespeare bash you over the head with love conquers all, even death? No, no, no, no. So, does Titanic bash you over the head with love conquers all, even death? No, no. All those things about that phrase, love, love conquers all, even death. That's what the writer wants to tell you, but he tells you that in a three hour movie about somebody on a ship that sinks. So you wouldn't think that. But that is what that story is all about. And I think every story should have a premise that tells something important.

Steve Cuden: It absolutely should. And even though it sometimes feels like there is nothing there, if something is there.

Paul Chitlik: Well, they used to say that about the Seinfeld show, that there was nothing there, but there was always something there.

Steve Cuden: Absolutely.

Paul Chitlik: even though it was the same thing sometimes over and over again. Doesn't matter.

Steve Cuden: So when you write screenplays, when you write novels, when you write, what is it about it that brings you to that? What. What fulfills you about that? Is it the telling of the message under the story or what? What fulfills you? Wow, sorry to put you on the spot.

Paul Chitlik: Yeah, you did. You know, that's not a bad thing. What fulfills me about writing is getting stuff out. I want to say something, I want to tell people something. I want to tell a story that amuses people, that engages people and that teaches people something about themselves and something about the world and makes people think. So what I'm writing, for example, in Lies, All Lies, and we had a long discussion about this. What I was after there was to show how a person can change at any time in his life or her life. And that, they can change for the better. And I think every person can do that every single day. And you can be a better person every single day, if you think about it, if you try to be a better person. And that's what that book is all about. It's about being a better person. Now, not everything I write is about being a better person. Sometimes it's about being, it's about learning how to deal with people. It's about how to be friendly, it's about how to be humorous. It's about how to enjoy life. Everything I write is about something. And when I'm writing, I, I don't always know what it's about at first. Sometimes I don't discover what my premise is, until midway through what I'm writing. Even though I started off with a premise, I might change my premise at the midpoint or even after the first draft or the second draft, think, oh, that's not really what I'm after here. What I'm really after is something else. And then I'll go back and revise my story or revise my dialogue to fulfill that premise.

Steve Cuden: You know, our mutual friend Hal Ackerman, who taught for years at ucla, always taught that he put it up on the board, on the whiteboard, he put up the word theme, and then he'd draw a circle around it and he'd draw a line through it, and he'd say, I don't want you to think about your theme until you've written one draft, at least one draft, because I want you to think about. And then he'd write the word desire. And so you should write your story about what this character, what your character, your protagonist wants, what do they desire? And then when you figure out what the theme is from writing that story of desire, then you go back to the beginning and make sure that the theme is represented all the way through.

Paul Chitlik: Exactly. I agree with that. But, you know, there are a lot of ways to start writing a film, and one way is to start with a theme and then you're stuck. Like, who's about, who's in this film? there's another way to start a film, and that's to write about a character. You've met a character at a bar, you've met a character at a wedding, you met a character as, your neighbor, you met a character as your wife or your child, your uncle, your father, whatever. You've met a character that you want to write about, you can write about that character. maybe you've thought about a situation, something happens. maybe somebody attacks the World Trade center, maybe somebody gets, killed in a assassinated, at a speech, at a university. You want to write about those things. Those are the three ways to start a movie. You can write a premise, a character, a situation, but you have to have all three eventually, by the time you finish your movie, 100%.

Steve Cuden: Right?

Paul Chitlik: Yeah. So, you can go back, you can start writing about your character and what your character wants. And as Hal said, eventually you should think about the theme that you want to get across. You can write about a situation, but eventually you're going to have to find the characters that fit that situation. M. If you can write about the characters, eventually you're Going to have to figure out what they're going to do, what the situation is, what's happened to them and how they're going to deal with that, because that's what story is. So let me get to the definition, as long as we're here. Sure.

Steve Cuden: Let's go right for it.

Paul Chitlik: Let's go to the definition of story.

Steve Cuden: Absolutely.

Paul Chitlik: It's a very easy definition. There's a person, the person wants something. There's a wall between that person and that something. And he has to go over, under, around or through the wall to get to that something. So that is the first starting place of writing a movie. We're directing that character towards the goal. There are barriers to the goal. He has to deal with those barriers, in every scene. And until he gets to that. To that goal, then he realizes at the midpoint. Here we go. Then he realizes at the midpoint that he doesn't really need that goal. He only wants that goal. But what he really needs is something else. Now he's got to go over or under, around and through another wall to get to what he actually needs.

Steve Cuden: So is that what the essence of the screenwriting sensei is about? Is that the entire thematic purpose of the book?

Paul Chitlik: I guess you could say that, yeah. I think people should think about story in terms of want and need. And if you think about that and the barriers to those wants and those needs, then you have story, and then you develop the characters that come out of that. Because how do we know who a character is? By their dealing with conflict, how they deal with life is how we know people, who people are.

Steve Cuden: Well, that want going to need is basically what defines a character arc.

Paul Chitlik: Exactly. That is a character arc. And this is how we understand people, in general. We understand them by how they deal with the barriers in their life, the things that happen to them and how they deal with them. And this is how we like, or note like people.

Steve Cuden: Do you think that all of your years of teaching this, let alone having been a professional writer for a long time, but your years of teaching it is what gave you the confidence to know. I hope you know this, that the book would be effective.

Paul Chitlik: yes. I think the book is. If you read that book from COVID to cover, you're going to know how to approach a screenplay and follow the.

Steve Cuden: Lessons that are in it.

Paul Chitlik: Right. Well, that's the weird thing about this book. That's what's unusual about this book. It's not just, here's what a screenplay is and here's how to do it. There are exercises at the end of every chapter that you should do as a writer. And it just as it's homework, just like homework if you're in school, if you're at, some MFA program someplace, you're, you're going to have homework, you're going to write pages. Now the only difference between this and, a regular class is you don't get the feedback from other writers or from the professor.

Steve Cuden: Right.

Paul Chitlik: And that's something I can't provide in a book. There's no way you can give feedback to somebody else's writing.

Steve Cuden: No. And there is tremendous value of being in that classroom with a teacher and your fellow writers.

Paul Chitlik: Oh, I agree, tremendously. Which is why I encourage people that read this book and that start writing a screenplay to develop a core group of writers, to find a group if they don't know people, but to find a group or develop a group of writers that they can share their work with and they can do this class.

Steve Cuden: Well, the book itself applies to screenwriters. It applies to TV writers. I think you can use the principles in the book to write novels.

Paul Chitlik: I think so.

Steve Cuden: I think you can use the principles to write plays. Although some plays maybe not, but most plays I think you can. I think that in movies that the story must thrust forward at all times, but a play can go vertical without, ever moving forward very much. that's the difference, I think, between a play and a screenplay. But aside from length, what would you say are the. Without getting into the weeds on it. But, what would you say are the distinctions, aside from length, between writing a feature length screenplay and a television play, teleplay? Are there differences?

Paul Chitlik: yeah, well, there are. I think television has, is, is wordier. Television is less action.

Steve Cuden: It's more like a play.

Paul Chitlik: It's more like a play. Television, is close up. Mostly we have faces on television. sometimes there's. It depends on the show. I mean, there's such a wide variety of television that it's hard to define that unfortunately there are certain, conventions in television, especially in sitcom writing, where there's, you can have a two act or a three act, but it still follows the same kind of structure and still follows the same kind of meaning. And unfortunately there are very few premises in half hour writing. The two main premises are you got to be yourself. And the other premise is everything's okay as long as we're together in the end. And if you watch sitcoms, you'll see that that's probably the two major Premises, you're absolutely right. but if you watch one hours and especially if you watch streamers, you will see that there are a lot more premises in the way they work. and there are a lot more approaches to the way that you can write them. But still the most important things are the characters, the conflict and the premise.

Steve Cuden: It's still storytelling any way you cut it. And there is a difference in certain TV series in the way that they're structured because they're structured around commercial breaks on the network television. But if you're in a streamer, if you're on HBO or Showtime or something like that, it's much more like writing a feature. There are no breaks in it, right?

Paul Chitlik: There are no breaks. And so the three act structure or the seven point structure that I use in my book are very closely followed. Even though it's a one hour, it'll still have three acts. It'll still have the seven points.

Steve Cuden: Well, we're going to get into that in just a moment. We're going to talk about plot pointing and all that. so I'm wondering what were the challenges in conceiving and writing the book aside from you had to go back and look at your, I assume you went back to look at all your notes.

Paul Chitlik: Oh yeah.

Steve Cuden: Did you go back and look at outlines? Not outlines, but syllabi and stuff like that?

Paul Chitlik: Yes, well, I looked at everything. One of the challenges was Those were written 20 years ago so I had to update them in a lot of ways. Not just in updating in the movies, but also updating in the way I told things. And I changed some of my approaches to writing in that 20 year period.

Steve Cuden: What would you say that it was?

Paul Chitlik: That it became, let's see, it was closer to a very traditional three act structure. Very close to Syd Fields, the way he wrote at the beginning. And as I was teaching more and analyzing more movies and analyzing my students work and my own work, then I realized that there are other points besides A, B and C. There's many points in between those points. And that that, and that scenes also had a structure that no one ever talked about. Scenes have a seven point structure as well. And that groups of scenes also have a structure. And that if you have a group of scenes they will have a beginning, a middle and an end within the group. And that each scene within that group will, will have a scene, will have a seven point structure.

Steve Cuden: I contend that even most lines have a seven point structure. Now that's getting A little, little finite in there.

Paul Chitlik: Well, that's possible. You know, if you talk to a comedy writer, even, a stand up comedian, they'll tell you the same thing.

Steve Cuden: Well, the joke has a structure.

Paul Chitlik: Joke has a structure. Definitely has a structure.

Steve Cuden: So structure is pretty much everything in terms of building the story, correct?

Paul Chitlik: Well, you need to have the structure because. Well, there's a lot of reasons. First of all, it works. And second of all, people expect this, structure.

Steve Cuden: Why does it work?

Paul Chitlik: Why does it work? It works because we are used to receiving information in a certain way. And if we don't receive that information in a certain way, we're confused. And if we're confused, it's hard for us to decipher what we're seeing, what we're listening to, what we're hearing. anything and no one will give.

Steve Cuden: You money for it.

Paul Chitlik: Exactly, exactly. Because people, the people that buy this, the first people that buy this are the producers, the production companies, the studios. And if they don't understand what you're saying, they're not going to buy it. Now unless there's something like 824, they might buy it anyway. the people that did, everything everywhere, all at once, they bought something that was not traditionally structured. But that's rare. That's rare.

Steve Cuden: I still contend that that movie has seven plot points.

Paul Chitlik: Oh, it does, it does.

Steve Cuden: But it does have, it follows a plot point structure. But what you're saying is the structure of it being going back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and all over the place is a little unique, right?

Paul Chitlik: Well, like Memento. You remember Memento?

Steve Cuden: I do.

Paul Chitlik: Memento is told backwards, but it has seven points. If you turn it around, the seven points are there. Not only does it have seven points in the backward structure, but it's got a forward structure when they're in the asylum. And that has seven points. So they're all there.

Steve Cuden: So let's talk about the seven points since we're talking about them. The infamous seven plot points in. In Save the Cat, Blake Snyder has 15 beats, but it's really essentially the seven plot points with eight other beats added in between.

Paul Chitlik: Right.

Steve Cuden: so the seven plot point structure elements are there. What are? Because I love the way that you tell it. Because I've learned to tell it the way you told it or tell it. What are the seven plot points?

Paul Chitlik: Okay, well, this is the way that I view a movie.

Steve Cuden: And by the way, I have to stop you. When you first taught us this when I was. I'D already been a writer for almost 30 years, and when you taught it, my mind blew off the top of my neck because I went, holy mackerel. How do you wear, huh? so tell us the seven plot points.

Paul Chitlik: Okay, well, this is the way I view a movie. Every movie. Not movies made in Hungary, not movies made in Germany, not movies made in India. they have their own way to look at things, but this is the way I look at it. And the first point is the ordinary life of your central character. And this is where we learn who your central character is, what his flaw is, and why he needs to change to have a perfect life. Then the next point is the inciting incident. This comes from outside the central character. It's not that he wakes up one morning and says, you know what I need to change, you know what? I need a new job. It's something comes from outside that presents him with a dilemma. For example, he loses his job, his wife leaves him, he gets in a car accident, he gets stopped in traffic. I mean, something happens that comes from the outside that he's going to have to make a decision about. He's going to have to take some action. And that's what happens at the end of the first act or the third point, which is the time when he decides on what his goal is, what his want is. Excuse me, what his want is, and he decides to go after it. So that's the end of, act one and the beginning of act two. He's aiming towards his goal. So each scene in the first part of Act 2 is aiming towards something until he gets to the midpoint. This is the fourth point where something happens again from the outside that makes him stop and realize, well, maybe I'm not doing the right thing here. Maybe I'm not aiming towards the right goal. And maybe there's something wrong with me that's preventing me from reaching my goal. And that's when he realizes he understands what his flaw is, what his personality flaw is. If it's greed or it's self centeredness or whatever it is, could be ADD or ACHD or one of those initial things. Whatever it is, he realizes, what his flaw is. And he also realizes that maybe he didn't really need what he's going after, he just wanted it. What he really needs is something else. And that's what the second part of act two is all about, is trying to find that something else, what he really needs instead of what he really wants. He realizes, for example, he had been going for he'd been searching for a treasure. That's what he wanted. But at the midpoint, he realized what he really needs is his family. So he's trying to reunite his family, even though he might not abandon his search for his treasure. So at the end of Act 2, which is the fifth point, things fall apart. It looks like he's never going to reach his goal, partly because of his flaw. His flaw resurfaces and gets in his way. And, also the antagonist gets in his way. It looks like the antagonist is going to beat him. He's never going to reach his goal, whatever his goal is. So he goes through what Hal calls the dark night of his soul. And that's a good way to look at it. This is when he thinks, I'm never going to reach it. I might as well just give up. The world is terrible. It's impossible for me to do anything. But then somebody comes around and reminds him of his goal, reminds him how important it is. And this somebody doesn't have to be an actual person. It could be a picture of his girlfriend. It could be a picture of his daughter. It could be a, movie that he sees. It could be somebody. His best friend says, joe, you got to do this, because otherwise your wife is going to die, or we're all going to die, or the world's going to end, or whatever it is that his need is. And so he regroups himself and he aims towards the final challenge, which is the sixth point, the final challenge, which sometimes is called the climax to a movie. This is the biggest scene in the movie. This is where your central character overcomes the biggest barrier that he's had to face in the movie, and he achieves his goal, whatever his goal is. And then the seventh point is the return to now change forever normal life, where your central character is able to appreciate what he's done and to live his normal life and now is completely different than what it was at the beginning, because now he's overcome not only what he has overcome on the outside, but he's overcome, the problems on the inside. And he's a different person now. So the person has changed. That's the character arc now. The person has changed and is able to live a better life.

Steve Cuden: All right, so you have just explained how story works in the most, I guess, overview way, without getting into the true nitty gritty of it, which is great. one thing that you did is you pointed out a singular central character. One character who we call a protagonist or the Hero or whatever you want to call them in him or her. why does a movie or why does a story need one character instead of many characters who we're following?

Paul Chitlik: Okay, that's a good. That's a really. No one's ever asked me that, but that's a good question.

Steve Cuden: I win. I won a prize.

Paul Chitlik: There you go. I, think because we need to identify with somebody in the movie, and we can't identify with many people. We can only identify with one. One person, and we can follow that person's story. I think that there are several other movies that purport to be about several people, more than one person. Even Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid has what seem to be two central.

Steve Cuden: Characters, but there's really one protagonist.

Paul Chitlik: There's really only one protagonist.

Steve Cuden: Same with Thelma and louise. Same with 48 hours. All those movies.

Paul Chitlik: Exactly. Or same with the Big The. Not the Big Sleep. what is. I'm thinking of the Big Chill. The Big Chill. Thank you. the Big Chill is about five or six different people, but it really is only about one, the person that needs to figure out how to deal with this.

Steve Cuden: My favorite way to describe it for people is most people know the musical A Chorus Line, and it's this chorus line. everybody gets a song. Everybody's in the spotlight. But is there a protagonist? And I always say to people, who's the protagonist? And they always know who it is. It's always Cassie. So I say, why do you know that? Why do you know it's Cassie? Because she's the one who has the change. She has the arc.

Paul Chitlik: It's the person that. Exactly. It's the person that has to go through all that, that they have to face to reach their goal, and then they have to change on the way to do that. So it tells people that it's possible to change. we started this conversation by that. I'm writing to tell people that they can change every day. They can have a better life if they do just a little bit of something to change themselves in the course.

Steve Cuden: Of doing this show, which I've been doing now for eight years, and I think you're my 373rd or fourth guest.

Paul Chitlik: Something like that.

Steve Cuden: I have spoken to a huge number of storytellers, and they come at it from different perspectives, which is what I find fascinating. And every one of them has had success in some way because everyone who comes on this show has proven themselves in some way, and I am fascinated. You taught me teach the term outline or beat outline. Or premise, however you want to teach it. a beat sheet. I've talked to plenty of writers who don't bother with it. They just go. And I don't know how to do that because I believe in the way that you teach it. Why should a writer outline or beat sheet or whatever you want to call it, or what's the difference between a beat sheet and outline? And why should we go through that?

Paul Chitlik: Okay. There's a lot to unpack there. Okay. and I believe in writing a movie since movies are so tightly structured that you really need to know all the stages. And the way to build a movie is very similar to the way you build a house. First you have to build a foundation, and the foundation is your seven points. You have to figure out where your character is going to and why your character's going there. And then you have to fill in those points because there's a lot of actions between each of those points. And I think that if you write at least a line about each scene that fills in all those points, like building the framing of a house, you get an idea what the house is going to look like. And then when you write your treatment, which is the prose description of your story, and this is the first, product that you actually sell, that you actually get paid for. You don't get paid for writing the seven points. You don't get paid for writing a beat sheet. You don't get paid for writing character studies. You get paid for writing the treatment, which is also called the story in the writer's, ah, guild, schedule of minimums. Then you write a prose description of everything. Then you. And that is like filling in all the walls and putting in the drywall. Now you're going to put in all the wallpaper and the paint and the toilets and the sinks and everything else. That is the screenplay where you fill in all the details.

Steve Cuden: I can tell you many screenwriters are good at putting in toilets.

Paul Chitlik: Yeah. And what comes out of toilets is what you get. it just makes it easier to write and it's easier to control. And I can tell you this from personal experience because when I first started out, I, very roughly outlined. And I didn't really know where I was going. But when I last wrote a novel, I went back to that. Even worse than that, I had a general idea where I was going, but only a general idea, because I wrote the first chapter without knowing where I was going at all. And I wrote myself into a corner. And then I thought, you know what? That's an Interesting way to go. And so I did it, as a game with myself, to write myself into a corner with every chapter and then to write myself out of that corner at the beginning of the next chapter.

Steve Cuden: Well, you also had decades of experience as a professional writer in both the screen world as well as in novels.

Paul Chitlik: So you.

Steve Cuden: You knew what you were doing, largely.

Paul Chitlik: Yeah. Well, I. In the back of my mind, I was probably outlining it as I was going, not even knowing how I was doing that. Sure. And that's. And I don't recommend that, but I would never do that in a screenplay. I would never sit down to write a screenplay, and see if I can write myself into a corner and write myself out again. Because I know that if I do that, I'm going to end up with a piece of shit. And I really need to write something in a screenplay that makes sense to the reader and that's going to make sense to an audience.

Steve Cuden: So why does the outline or beat sheet or whatever you want to call it, why does that help you? What does that do for you?

Paul Chitlik: Well, that helps me know, what I have and what I'm missing. So if I can write out all the beats and all the scenes I can see, oh, I see. I need to have another scene here that helps this character make the leap to this other scene. Or I see, oh, I've got all these scenes here. I don't need all these scenes. I can take this one out and still tell my story. And that helps me Prevent having writing 150 or 200 pages of screenplay and figuring out then what do I have to take out, or then what I have to put in. This shortens the process. Now, that doesn't mean that once I've written my screenplay, I'm not going to take scenes out or I'm not going to put new scenes in. It just gives me a way to get to that point where I can then start polishing it. I, like to refer.

Steve Cuden: It's a roadmap. It's a roadmap.

Paul Chitlik: It's a roadmap. exactly. Do you know the sculpture of the Pieta? Sure. Okay. It's a beautiful sculpture. So somebody once asked Michelangelo, how did you do this beautiful piece of work? He said, I had a block of, marble, and I cut away everything that wasn't the Pieta exactly. Well, that's easy to say, but you've got to have the block of marble. You have to know where you're going. You have to have an idea in your mind. And then you can carve away. So this is what I do with, having the seven points, the beat sheet, the treatment, and then the screenplay. The screenplay is your block of. You end up with your block of marble. Now you can carve away stuff and make it perfect.

Steve Cuden: So I always think of the first draft as the craft of writing. And I think of the subsequent revisions as the art of writing.

Paul Chitlik: Well, that's a good way to look at it. That's how I think it. The opposite. I think the first draft is the. The art before you get the craft.

Steve Cuden: Well, the way that. Why I say that is. So you just described the pieta coming from a block of marble. And I think of writing the first draft as creating the lump of clay from which you're then going to carve.

Paul Chitlik: I think you're right. I think you're right. I'm not going to. Yeah, I'm going to agree with you now. You're right.

Steve Cuden: That's just how I've thought of it over the years, is putting the first draft together. It can be artistic, but it's not necessarily the art of, it. It's that sculpting and molding that takes place after the fact.

Paul Chitlik: Well, this is why you write the beat sheet. This is why you write the seven points. You write the beat sheet, you write the treatment, you write the script. Because this is the craft that gets you to the marble.

Steve Cuden: Right? That's exactly right. You have to create the marble or the clay or whatever you're sculpting.

Paul Chitlik: Right.

Steve Cuden: And you have to create it. It doesn't exist until you have a draft. Right, Right.

Paul Chitlik: Right. you don't have shit until you have a draft. You're not a writer until you have a first draft.

Steve Cuden: Even at the beat sheet level, you don't have anything yet. You just have thoughts and ideas.

Paul Chitlik: And you can make a movie out of a beat sheet.

Steve Cuden: No, you can't. So are you able to then? Well, let me ask. What's the value of putting in subplots? What is a subplot?

Paul Chitlik: Okay. Well, first of all, there have to be subplots.

Steve Cuden: Why does there have to be?

Paul Chitlik: Well, because we want to have some depth to the story. We want to have some depth to the character. And the first subplot is the character's development. It's not just what's going on. It's not just the goal and the barrier. It's how the character is going to be developing. So the character understanding what his or her flaw is and developing a way to deal with that and understanding who he is or who she is, and then changing. That's one subplot. And then for us to really empathize with the character and to really believe in the character. And for the character to have more than one side, the character has to have a relationship with somebody. And that relationship could be a love interest. That relationship could be a friend. That could be a son, it could be a daughter, it could be a mother, it could be anybody. But the character has to develop a relationship or mend a relationship with somebody. So that we can really feel that character is human. And then there are other subplots that happen with other people in the story. For example, the antagonist is a subplot as well. The antagonist has a goal, and the antagonist has to be working towards that goal, which is antithetical to the goal of the protagonist. So we have to see that conflict presented in the goals of the antagonist. And then there are other subplots that can come around. the friend of your central character might have something going on, and that just is. Sometimes that's just a diversion. Sometimes that's just padding. But sometimes, it can lend authority to the main story. It could lend depth to the main story and depth to the central character. We always want to add depth to the central character. Make the character as real as possible, as deep as possible.

Steve Cuden: You write in the book about the central emotional relationship. Is that in the main plotter? Is it. Can it be in the subplot? What is a central emotional relationship?

Paul Chitlik: All right. Well, that is the question. That's what I was just talking about. The central character has to establish or re. Establish a relationship with somebody. That is the central emotional relationship. That's with the wife, the partner, the son, whoever it is, or the new person. For example, in a romantic comedy, that is the central story. the other stories are the subplots. If we look at, you've Got Mail, for example, the central plot is about the relationship, but the subplot is about establishing a series of stores. for the Tom Hanks character and maintaining the store for the other character. So that gives more kind of depth to the story, more importance to the story. And those things help us get into the story. That's m. It's more tension. There's always more tension. There's more conflict. So, that also tests those characters in those situations. So we understand who those characters are more. And we can empathize with those characters better.

Steve Cuden: So how do you do that in a movie? Like castaway where it's mostly one character alone on an island or in a movie like All Is Lost, where it's Robert Redford on a boat for the entire movie and there are no other characters. How, how does that work?

Paul Chitlik: Well, that's really tough. I've seen both those movies. I would say the character, the Tom Hanks character is establishing a relationship with the ball, with the, with the, with Wilson, the volleyball, with Wilson, the ball. Right. and Wilson stands in for everybody. And Wilson stands in for the audience as well. So he's establishing a relationship with the audience. He's establishing a relationship with all humankind by establishing a relationship with Wilson. Now, in, Was it Castaway? Not Castaway.

Steve Cuden: All Is Lost, which curiously, is a screenwriting term which you get at the, Just before the third act is all is Lost.

Paul Chitlik: Exactly. Well, it was not, an accident to use that title.

Steve Cuden: Of course not.

Paul Chitlik: it's a well written film. Really interesting. And you know, it's very short. the screenplay.

Steve Cuden: 39 pages.

Paul Chitlik: Yeah, it's incredibly short. I think the central emotional relationship has to be with himself. He's learning about himself, who he really is in this thing. And so it's a very, very deep character study. It's about his struggle and about can he survive this? Does he know how to live with himself? Can he draw on himself to fight against the elements to stay alive? So he has to learn about who he really is to achieve that. So that deals with two things. That's the central emotional relationship is with himself and, and the barrier is with himself. It's not only the, the antagonist is not only the sea, it's himself. and actually in every movie, the protagonist has a battle with himself. You know, I, I, I've had students who, when I ask them who's the antagonist? And they'll say, well, it's himself. I said, well, in every movie, the antagonist is himself and another person or another thing to deal with. The central character always has to be fighting about something in himself.

Steve Cuden: You know, I'm somewhat well known for writing a character that was founded by Robert Louis Stevenson, but he is both the protagonist and the antagonist.

Paul Chitlik: Yeah, exactly.

Steve Cuden: Jekyll and I. Yeah. in, in All Is Lost, there's very limited dialogue. There's a little more dialogue in Castaway because he talks to the ball and talks to himself, actually talks out loud himself. There's a lot less dialogue and all is lost. But I'm curious. Most movies are dialog heavy in some way. Most, what makes great dialogue great Dialogue, what makes it work?

Paul Chitlik: Well, great dialogue is natural, but unnatural. we don't always talk in full sentences, and we shouldn't talk in full sentences in dialogue and movies necessarily, unless that is the nature of that character. Dialogue tells you who that character is by their accent, by their choice of words. All those things help you build your character. So dialogue is incredibly important in most movies. And that's how your people, that's how people communicate most of the time, is with dialogue. Sometimes we communicate without dialogue. And as you know, you can have a complete dialogue without words with somebody sitting on a bus. If you're sitting across from somebody on a bus and there's a third person there that's doing something crazy and you're exchanging glances with somebody across the way, you're having a dialogue with that person. And you can do that in a movie as well. And sometimes that's very effective. But sometimes you need the words. And words help, us understand who a person is. we learn about their education, we learn about their accent, we learn about their interests. We learn about everything from their dialogue. So what makes good dialogue? Usually, you want to write it as crisply as possible. If you can show it rather than tell it, that's even better than dialogue. Of course you hear that all the time. But how do you write good dialogue? You listen to people. And I always have my students, especially beginning students, I have them go to, Starbucks or some other cafe and eavesdrop and write down what people are saying and eavesdrop with different kinds of people. Eavesdrop with a couple of old people, eavesdrop with teenagers, eavesdrop with children of 5 and 6. Eavesdrop with 35 year olds talking about their business and listen to what they say and listen to how they say it and then write it down and edit it and take out the parts where they're repeating themselves. Because people repeat themselves over and over again. And unless you want to make that a characteristic of your character, you don't want them to repeat themselves. as I've just done, I'm going to tell you that people say things three times if they want you to understand something. And I've done that again. And if you do that in a movie, that's fine if once or twice, but you don't want to do it at all the time because that's just going to be cut out. You don't need that.

Steve Cuden: But great movie dialogue also has to have, I'm going to use this word carefully. It has to be elevated in Some way. Or it has to be some kind of poetry without being poetry. It has to be. It's natural. But it has to have something that's above what is normal. It has to have something else. Is that a wrong way to think of it?

Paul Chitlik: No, that's not a wrong way to think of it. Think about Shakespeare. Shakespeare didn't write what everybody was saying in the marketplace. And you're not going to write everything that's said in your. In the cafe, either. You want to bring dialogue that's impactful. It has to be more concise, and it has to be more interesting, and it has to be more humorous.

Steve Cuden: That's what I mean by elevated.

Paul Chitlik: Yes.

Steve Cuden: It has to have an elevation to it.

Paul Chitlik: I agree with you.

Steve Cuden: You know, we go back to Casablanca that we talked about earlier. You know, we'll always have Paris. Well, you know, that's. That's an amazing line because it says so much with just a couple of words. And that movie's full of those kinds of lines.

Paul Chitlik: This is the start of a beautiful friendship.

Steve Cuden: Exactly. It doesn't have to add up to a hill of beans in this. All those lines are just amazing. you know, what does, Louis say? He says, round up the usual suspects.

Paul Chitlik: Right?

Steve Cuden: I mean, all these lines are just amazing lines.

Paul Chitlik: And.

Steve Cuden: And it's just normal, ordinary, conversational dialogue. But it says something else. It has an elevation to it.

Paul Chitlik: Right. And it also says something, about the character. So it's a very cynical line to say, round up the usual suspects for a very specific thing, because who knows who those usual suspects are?

Steve Cuden: Exactly.

Paul Chitlik: It's a very cynical thing to say. Doesn't amount to a hill of beans. That's a. That's a way of talking that we wouldn't normally think about. it's the start of a beautiful friendship. Well, would you really say that, to most people? No, you wouldn't. But it's beautiful at that point because it says, he's changed. That person has changed.

Steve Cuden: My favorite, example that I like to use is, for subtext on a simple line, is, you're going to need a bigger boat from Jaws, because it says everything. He doesn't walk back in the cabin and say, hey, there's a shark out there. He says, you're gonna need a bigger boat. So it says all kinds of wonderful things. I want to talk very briefly for a moment. Within the book, you also talk about revision and the eight passes. And I don't want to get into too much detail here, because the book does such a Beautiful job of it. But there are eight passes that you recommend writers go through in revising their work.

Paul Chitlik: Work.

Steve Cuden: can you just briefly say what you're trying to say in those eight passes?

Paul Chitlik: I'm trying to say that first of all, your first draft, your second draft, your third draft is not perfect. And you have to recognize that. And so you have to first put down your draft for a week or two to let it cool off so that you're not so deeply involved in it that you don't really have an objective point of view. The second thing is you have to. When you write, you write furiously. I hope you write from the soul. You write fast. You're not always thinking of everything that you're supposed to be saying. So it's a good idea to go over things and make sure that things are right. it's like if you are building, if you're washing a car, you wash the car. And then when you're done with washing it and drying it, then you go over it and you make sure that you got every piece that was loose, make sure you got every drop of water that's behind the chrome that you don't want to rust. You know, you make sure that everything is done. You make sure that the windows are clean and you can see through them. So you want to do that with a script as well. So you want to go through it and make sure that the dialogue is right, that everybody, every character speaks in his or her own voice. They don't all sound the same. You want to make sure that there's conflict in every scene. You want to make sure that the story is moving forward. You want to make sure that everything that you've talked about is there. For example, you want to make sure that your premise is there, that you've proven your premise. you want to make sure that everything is in proportion. You don't want to have a very, very long first act and a short second act and a short third act. You want to have everything in proportion, because people will get bored if you have a very long first act because they're waiting for the action to happen. The action the real movie is in the second act. You want to get to that as fast as you possibly can, but you want to stay there for a certain amount of time until things happen so that you want to be in the third act, where you're going to have the conclusion, where you're going to have the climax, the final challenge. You want to get there. So you want to make sure Your structure is right. So you want to read through it and say, is there structure there? You want to read through it and make sure there's conflict in every scene. Because if there isn't conflict in every scene, there's not a scene, you might as well drop it.

Steve Cuden: And all these things are in separate passes, one pass at a time, not all at once, which is intimidating if you try to do it all at once. You can't. You can't do it all at once.

Paul Chitlik: Yeah, you need the focus there. And if you just focus. For example, I recommend doing a focus on just the central character's dialogue. And you follow that all through because you sometimes change his or her voice as you're writing it. You discover who that person is as you're writing that person. And, the voice at the end is not necessarily the voice at the beginning. And you have to make sure that the voice is consistent. And then you need to do that for other characters. You need to do that for your antagonist. You need to do that for the. For the supporting characters, to make sure their voices stand out, to make sure their voices are important. If it's the second policeman, he doesn't necessarily have to have a, specific voice, but if it's the central character's best friend who's advising him, that person needs to have this very specific voice. So you have to read through it for the supporting characters as well.

Steve Cuden: I think the key here again, though, Paul, is that it be multiple passes. Why you call it eight passes? That one at a time, you're focusing on one specific element or another.

Paul Chitlik: Right. This is, again, going back to craft. Part of it's the art, but now we're going back to craft to make sure that your art is there and you did it and it makes sense and it works. So you don't know when you're writing your first draft or your second draft. Did it really work? You want to go through each draft. At the beginning of the next draft, you want to reread your previous draft and make sure that you have everything that you need. Then you discover, oh, I need to do this, I need to do that. I need to do the other thing.

Steve Cuden: Well, the truism about Hollywood is that after you've written it to the point where you know it's really good and you have confidence in it and you manage to sell it, then people start really revising it.

Paul Chitlik: So true.

Steve Cuden: And the producers, the director, the actors, they all start to do their own thing to it. So, you know that the. At the end of the day. A screenplay in Hollywood is still a blueprint for a movie, right?

Paul Chitlik: It's the blueprint. And it's not finished.

Steve Cuden: It's not finished.

Paul Chitlik: You know, it's like if you have blueprints for a house, you know, it's not finished.

Steve Cuden: Well, the blueprint isn't the house. The blueprint is just the blueprint for the house. The house is the house. And you know that the contractor that comes along is going to change what's in the blueprint anyway. He's going to put nails in a certain place. He's going to put. Maybe the window isn't quite in the same location. so the contractor is going to change it. I always think of the writer as the architect and I think of the, the filmmakers combined as the contractors and that they build the house. And the house is not going to be exactly what you wrote. So you have to not worry about it too much.

Paul Chitlik: You're absolutely right. And then the owner of the house is going to make some other changes.

Steve Cuden: And of course, of course. And maybe many changes. It could be totally different. Well, I've been having just so much fun having this wonderful conversation about Paul Chitlik's, book, the Screenwriting Sensei, for just close to an hour now. And we're gonna wind the show down a little bit, Paul, and I'm wondering, in all of your experiences, are you able to share with us in this third time you've been with us, yet another story that's weird, quirky, offbeat, strange, or maybe just plain funny.

Paul Chitlik: Okay, I'll tell you about a student I had once who was writing about 16th century Spain, which happens to be something I know a lot about. I studied in Spain and I concentrated actually on, the history of Jews in Spain. So I knew a lot about 16th century Spain, 15th century, to be more exact. And this student was writing about a messenger that came to the door of a wealthy family, knocked on the door and said, I have a telegram. And I thought, wait a minute, are you sure you don't have an email? I mean.

Steve Cuden: Did they drive up in a car?

Paul Chitlik: Well, I asked her, you know, there weren't telegrams in the 16th century. She was a little surprised.

Steve Cuden: Someone didn't do their research.

Paul Chitlik: Yeah, research is important.

Steve Cuden: Research is really important.

Paul Chitlik: I'm surprised she even knew about a telegram because, We don't have telegrams anymore.

Steve Cuden: We don't have telegrams anymore. all right, so last question for you today. Clearly, this entire episode has been one long piece of advice and Tips throughout the whole story. But I'm wondering if you have yet one more piece of advice or tip that you like to give to those who are starting out or maybe they're in a little bit trying to get to the next level.

Paul Chitlik: All right. Well, I, you know, at the end of most of my classes, I talk about how to pitch. And this is a very important skill that many writers do not have at first. And so I try to encourage, them to pitch in a certain way. And one of the things I tell them about pitching and let me explain what pitching is, it's when you go in to tell your story to a, network executive or a production company, and you want to sell them what you've got, whatever it is, either your idea so that they can hire you to write a screenplay or your screenplay. Sometimes even though they've read your screenplay, they want you to be in there and pitch it to them again. So I tell them, don't just sit there and talk. Sometimes you need to get up and move around in the room. So one time I went, not one time, several times. Because I sold this project four or five times. I optioned. Never got made, but I optioned and I made money on it four or five times. It, was called Reason to Believe. And what I did in the. In the beginning of the story, I started telling the story about how a woman is talking to one of her patients. She's a psychiatrist talking to one of her patients. And suddenly she sees the mirror on the wall start to dissolve. So she gets up and walks over to the mirror. And as you can see, on video now, I'm getting up and I'm walking. And she puts her hand in the mirror and it goes all the way into her elbow. And she pulls it out and it's wet. So I encourage people. And I got using that pitch. People were fascinated. What's going to happen next? Getting up and moving around in the room really is a very effective way to draw attention to your story.

Steve Cuden: But you have to be judicious about that, don't you?

Paul Chitlik: Well, yeah, you're not going to be moving around all the time. Although I have heard stories about people that jump on the tables and act out their whole thing. I've seen that. I've also seen people. I've also seen, in a really good pitch, I've seen the person that is buying it reach across the table and say, I gotta have it. Wow. And that's really great when that happens. It's fantastic.

Steve Cuden: I still do that way, that's victory for sure.

Paul Chitlik: When that's done, you're happy.

Steve Cuden: You're a winner. At that point, you've won. Just because you're about to get paid, something is what's going to happen.

Paul Chitlik: Always good.

Steve Cuden: Always good. Paul Chitlik. This has been a fantastic hour. Plus on, Story Beat today, and as always, it was great to see you, and I cannot thank you enough.

Paul Chitlik: Thank you, Steve. You know, this was a great conversation. I really had fun.

Steve Cuden: And so we've come to the end of today's Story Beat. If you like this episode, won't you please take a moment to give us a comment, rating, or review on whatever app or platform you're listening to? Your support helps us bring more great Story Beat episodes to you. Story Beat is available on all major podcast apps and platforms, including Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and many others. Until next time, I'm Steve Kudin, and may all your stories be unforgettable.