Hey, TSL fam, producer Jeff here, and today we're actually rebroadcasting one of our most popular episodes ever, all about feature film Engine, or the fundamental mechanics of what makes a movie really work. We thought it was the perfect time to revisit this conversation because next week, we're actually joined by none other than Akiva Goldman, who's a true master of this craft. He's the Academy Award-winning writer of A Beautiful Mind, The Da Vinci Code, and so many more. At the top of the show, you'll also hear a quick plug for our premium community, and at the time we recorded this, we lived on Patreon, though we've since transitioned to an even better platform called Circle. It's linked in the description below if you're interested, and we'd love to meet you over there if you haven't joined yet. And without further ado, let's get into the show.

Hey everyone, welcome back to the screenwriting life. I'm Meg Lofoebe. And I'm Lori and McKenna. And before we get started with today's show, we want to talk about the live Q&As and story workshops. We do twice a month with our audience on a website called Patreon. So when we do the story workshops, we listen to your story ideas and we workshop them with you.

It's really... with our audience on a website called Patreon. So when we do the story workshops, we listen to your

story ideas and we workshop them with you. It's really inspiring to get to hear all of your

amazing ideas and getting to connect, connect, connect, correct, not correct. Connect. Not correct.

You're never correcting. We are working with you. We are not in the business of telling you what to do,

but maybe exploring ideas of how to do something business of telling you what to do, but maybe exploring

ideas of how to do something a little differently. Getting to do that is one of my favorite

things, Meg, I think it's one of yours too. Yeah, because we love the Facebook page and getting

to talk to you guys there, but getting to actually listen to your stories and help you and give

you feedback and ask you good questions. And I also think people

learn a lot from listening to other people and the questions we ask them. I know that even when we're doing it, I sometimes will be like, oh yeah, no, I need to ask myself that question. Same. I mean, it's just part of it. On one of them, you were like, I'm writing a catch a killer show. And I was like, oh that's what my show is.

It's a killer show.

Even though it's not a murder mystery, it is like, I'm writing a catch a killer show. And I was like, oh, that's what my show is.

It's a catch a killer show.

Even though it's not a murder mystery, it is like, and I was like, oh, okay, I need to look into that genre. So like, and we can also then like find out later what's going on. Did it help? Did you hit a wall? you know, so it's just a great way for us to give back to you guys more directly.

So we wanted to let you know about it. And you can find it on right now. You can find it on the Patreon site under the screenwriting life, right, Jeff? Yep, that's right. I will link it in the description below. That's patreon.com slash the screenwriting life. I want to meet you guys. Come sign up. And it's funny how like three people

will pitch and somehow at all because it's just random relatively and it's how they all kind

of line up. It's weird, the way it happens. So come on over. But one of the things that always

lines up is that whether we're listening to a TV show or a feature, story engine always seems to be the

thing that we end up talking about in some way. And, you know, I'm mostly right in TV, but I do

have a feature here and there. And story engine is always a thing that comes up. It's always like,

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