2025 Zero Draft Thirty March Challenge: Day 11

One month. FADE IN to FADE OUT. Creativity meets Productivity.

Write an entire draft of a script in September — FADE IN. FADE OUT. Or any sort of creative goal you have in front of you.

Feature length movie screenplay. Original TV pilot. Rewrite a current project. Break a story in prep. Generate a month’s worth of story concepts.

Whatever you feel will ratchet your creative ambitions into overdrive…

DO THAT!

As for me, I will spend the month rewriting a feature film comedy spec script. I’m spending most of the month working out my revision plan, then heading off for an extended writer’s retreat to knock out this draft.

If you join the Challenge, I will be right there with you writing each and every day in March! Let’s do this together!

Download your very own Zero Draft Thirty calendar — designed and created by Steven Dudley — and track your daily progress!

Use this hashtag: #ZD30SCRIPT.

Join the Zero Draft Thirty Facebook Group: Here. 5,000+ members strong.

Today’s Writing Quote

“I don’t believe in rules for writing screenplays. What that gives you is formula, and the result will be formulaic.”

— Christopher Hampton

Today’s Inspirational Video

All of 19 years old, Coco Gauff won the U.S. Open women’s singles’ title in 2023. Here’s a quote from her speech to the crowd after the final’s match:

“Thank you to the people who didn’t believe in me. To those who thought they were putting water on my fire, you put gas on it.”

Here is the entire post-match interview:

What an inspiration Coco is! And great advice: Use the doubters to fuel your OWN creative fire!

Today’s Daily Dialogue Inspiration

I have dedicated the 2025 Zero Draft Thirty March Challenge to memorable movie dialogue. Today: Finding Nemo.

Just. Keep. Swimming. Or in our case …

Just. Keep. Writing.

Sometimes the best advice is the simplest advice.

Today’s Dalton Trumbo Award winner: Holly Soriano.

Over at the Zero Draft Thirty Facebook group, Holly posted this:

I confess I’ve never read Save the Cat. Being unfamiliar with “Dude with a Problem,” I looked it up. Here you go, straight from the STC website.

I can see why this approach might be popular because it echoes how Joseph Campbell frames the beginning of The Hero’s Journey. Here is how Campbell described it word for word from the wonderful interview series The Power of Myth.

Holly noted the “importance of integrating structure with emotion.” Where the Dude with a Problem approach is almost entirely about the plot, Campbell’s articulation of the beginning of the The Hero’s Journey does precisely what Holly describes: fusing plot and emotion.

The Hero is making do, but feels something missing, a sense of discomfort or tension.

The Hero needs to change, even if they are unaware of that need.

The call to adventure is about transformation and that’s terrifying.

The Hero has to confront fear.

Campbell takes the Dude with a Problem approach and turns it into this:

The Dude has a problem … in the physical realm of the outer journey … and the psychological realm of the character’s inner journey.

Campbell wrote that the outer journey (read: plot) is “incidental” to the inner journey (read: the Hero’s psychological transformation).

Indeed, for Campbell, the entire point of The Hero’s Journey is transformation.

So, thanks, Holly for bringing this subject to our attention. Your point of emphasis on the emotion of a story is absolutely critical. As Pixar filmmaker Andrew Stanton said in his excellent TED Talk — Clues to a Great Story:

The children’s television host Mr. Rogers always carried in his wallet a quote from a social worker that said, “Frankly there isn’t anyone you couldn’t learn to love once you know their story.” And the way I like to interpret that is probably the greatest story commandment, “Make me care.”

Please, emotionally, intellectually, aesthetically… make me care.

Or as Black List founder and CEO Franklin responded to this question: What are the biggest mistakes that people make when writing a script?

Focusing way too much on plot — and then this happens and then this happens — and not enough on how does this make the audience feel. We don’t go to the movies for plot. We don’t go to the movies for information. We go to the movies to feel something, whether it’s to laugh or to cry, or to feel awe or to feel scared. If you don’t deliver those emotional sensations, no one is remembering your movie.

For leading us into this important discussion, the recipient of today’s Dalton Trumbo Award is Holly Soriano!

Congratulations, Holly! And good luck with this microbudget film project!

To learn more about Dalton Trumbo and his fascinating career as a screenwriter, go here.

For your chance to win the Dalton Trumbo Award, post something inspiring, here on the blog or the Facebook group.

Zero Draft Thirty: Day 1
Zero Draft Thirty: Day 2
Zero Draft Thirty: Day 3
Zero Draft Thirty: Day 4
Zero Draft Thirty: Day 5
Zero Draft Thirty: Day 6
Zero Draft Thirty: Day 7
Zero Draft Thirty: Day 8
Zero Draft Thirty: Day 9
Zero Draft Thirty: Day 10

Now Zeronauts …

When you sit down to write today …

Go inside …

Your characters and your Self …

Find the emotional connection to the story you both have …

And when you write …

Don’t think … feel.