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Scriptnotes Podcast

699 - How to Talk About Yourself

Scriptnotes Podcast

John August

Screenwriter, Tv & Film, Writing, John, Screenwriting, August, Craig, Screenplay, Mazin

4.8 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 12 August 2025

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Every writer has to pitch themselves, but how do you do it without sounding like a tool? John welcomes back Pamela Ribon (Nimona, My Year of Dicks) for a big talk about small talk and general meetings. They offer practical tips on what to expect, how to get people to open up, navigating NDAs, staying true to yourself, and organically moving the conversation away from the weather and towards your work.

We also look at a pernicious effect of underemployment (starting with a prompt from Ryan Knighton,) and answer listener questions on alternating POV, reusing adjectives, and giving your story beats cause and effect.

In our bonus segment for premium members, we get meta as we discuss the modern podcast landscape and next era of Scriptnotes.

Links:

Email us at [email protected]

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, and you're listening to Episode 699 of Script Notes.

0:07.2

It's a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

0:10.8

Today in the show, before you begin pitching a project, you need to be able to pitch yourself.

0:15.1

But how do you do it without sounding like an egotistical jerk?

0:18.6

We somehow spent nearly 700 episodes without really digging into this topic. Luckily, it was brought to us by one of our favorite returning guests, the wonderful Pamela Ribbon. Welcome back, Pamela. Hey, thanks. It's always nice to be back. Yay. Now, for folks who don't have their cheat sheets open, let's remind them of the projects you've written on, including Moana, Nimona, and your Academy-nominated short film,

0:40.2

and one cool thing many times, my year of dicks.

0:44.4

Let's also talk about underemployment,

0:46.6

because this is something a lot of our listeners are in Canada right now,

0:49.6

especially our writer listeners.

0:50.9

So my friend Ryan suggests we discuss some of the pernicious effects that

0:54.7

not working has on our choices, but also the opportunities that are presented by the times

0:59.3

that you're not working, especially if you know you're not working for a certain period of time,

1:03.8

that can actually be kind of liberty. So we'll dig into that. We have listener questions.

1:08.3

And since I have you, in our bonus segment for premium members,

1:11.0

I want to talk a little meta-conversation about podcasts because you are a podcaster yourself.

1:15.5

I am looking at your podcast set up here on the Zoom, and I'm so happy to see it.

1:20.1

But as we approach episode 700, we're talking about making some changes around here, and I would love your thoughts on that.

1:26.8

We have stream notes episode 700 coming up next week and we're going to do a live show on

1:32.1

YouTube.

1:33.2

So it's happening tomorrow Wednesday, August 13th, the 10 a.m. Pacific Standard.

1:38.3

If you want to watch this live on YouTube, just subscribe to the Script Notes podcast and

1:42.1

you'll get an alert when it's happening.

...

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