617 - Monsters and You
Scriptnotes Podcast
John August
4.8 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 31 October 2023
⏱️ 69 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Mad scientists John and Craig dissect monsters and how they function in the stories we tell. How do monsters differ from the average villain? What makes them tick? And how do you make them fascinating?
We also discuss how narratives are applied to real-life news, follow up on aphantasia and diabetes, and answer a listener question on characters in cosplay.
In our bonus segment for premium members, John and Craig fire up their dial-up modems to reminisce about the old internet.
Links:
- Aaron Sorkin on This Cultural Life from BBC Radio 4
- Serious Trouble podcast from Josh Barro and Ken White
- LEGO Titanic
- Internet Artifacts
- Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
- Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
- Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription or treat yourself to a premium subscription!
- Craig Mazin on Threads and Instagram
- John August on Threads, Instagram and Twitter
- John on Mastodon
- Outro by Matthew Chilelli (send us yours!)
- Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt with help from Chris Csont, and edited by Matthew Chilelli.
Email us at ask@johnaugust.com
You can download the episode here.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello, and welcome. My name is John August. |
| 0:04.0 | Oh, my name is Craig Mason. |
| 0:08.0 | And this is episode 617 of Script Notes, a podcast about screenwriting, |
| 0:12.0 | and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Craig, happy Halloween! |
| 0:16.0 | Yes, the spookiest day of spooky season has arrived. |
| 0:20.0 | Indeed. And really, as we were saying earlier, |
| 0:22.0 | this is the only spooky time you and I recognize today. |
| 0:26.0 | Yeah, Halloween. |
| 0:27.0 | Today is the day. |
| 0:29.0 | That's it. |
| 0:30.0 | I think it's good we have a Halloween. |
| 0:32.0 | I think we need a day of sort of fear and merriment. |
| 0:35.0 | I don't know, I'm glad this is persisted into our increasingly Christian world. |
| 0:40.0 | Well, all of our best holidays are pagan, including all the good Christian ones. |
| 0:44.0 | For instance, Christmas is definitely the winter solstice celebration with its tree. |
| 0:50.0 | And Easter is obviously the pagan spring fertility. |
| 0:55.0 | Holiday with its bunny rabbits and eggs. |
| 0:59.0 | Yeah, because obviously it fit so naturally into the story of Christ resurrection. |
| 1:04.0 | Jesus, we're talking about rabbits all the time. |
| 1:08.0 | All the time. |
| 1:09.0 | Yeah, so the pagans really gave us all of our good stuff. |
| 1:12.0 | And Halloween is purely pagan. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from John August, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of John August and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.