729 - Endings Compendium, Part II
Scriptnotes Podcast
John August
4.8 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 24 March 2026
⏱️ 64 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In our first sequel compendium, John and Craig revisit four of their best segments dedicated to crafting a satisfying and emotional ending to your story.
They look at rooting your ending in character, the function of the denouement, what makes a memorable farewell, how and why our endings can change, and how to bring everything full-circle.
In our bonus segment for premium members, John and producer Drew continue a discussion that Drew Goddard started on character sides and the process of casting minor characters.
Links:
- Our first endings compendium, Episode 524 – The Home Stretch
- A video essay of our farewell scenes discussion with Aline Brosh McKenna
- Episodes 44 – Endings for beginners, 366 – Tying Things Up, 648 – Farewell Scenes, and 392 – The Final Moment
- Dan Harmon story circle
- Get your copy of the Scriptnotes book!
- Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
- Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
- Become a Scriptnotes Premium member, or gift a subscription
- Subscribe to Scriptnotes on YouTube
- Scriptnotes on Instagram and TikTok
- John August on Bluesky and Instagram
- Outro by Eric Pearson (send us yours!)
- Segments originally produced by Stuart Friedel, Megan McDonnell, Drew Marquardt and Megana Rao. Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt 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, and you are listening to Episode 729 of Script Notes. |
| 0:07.6 | It's a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. |
| 0:11.8 | This week, Craig and I are off on different adventures, so producer Drew Markwart has assembled a compendium episode. |
| 0:18.6 | Drew, what do you have for us? |
| 0:19.6 | We're doing endings. Endings, but we've done endings before. We have done endings before. I didn't realize we've done endings before, but Magna did a wonderful episode 524 is our first endings compendium. But I am going to use a few different episodes, so hopefully you can listen to them both. Enlist Compendium Part 2. Part 2-ish. |
| 0:38.6 | Okay. |
| 0:38.8 | There's a few bits from the previous episode. |
| 0:41.6 | But I figured we'd start with episode 44, which is endings for beginners. |
| 0:45.0 | That's just a good overview of how endings work. |
| 0:47.5 | Episode 44, wow. |
| 0:48.6 | Region way back there. |
| 0:49.4 | Way back. |
| 0:50.1 | Yeah. |
| 0:50.7 | And then we'll go to 366 on denouements and how that works and, you know, the last moment of your film. |
| 0:58.3 | Then we're going to go to episode 648, which is farewell scenes. |
| 1:01.2 | It's just you and Aline. |
| 1:02.2 | But it's one of my favorite episodes we've done. |
| 1:04.7 | Great. |
| 1:05.2 | I love it. |
| 1:05.9 | And then we'll end on episode 392, which is about how and why endings change and how to communicate it at different |
| 1:13.7 | stages of production from your first idea all the way through to the end. Well, this all sounds |
| 1:18.0 | great. I remember going through the endings chapter, the script notes book, and these were the |
... |
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.