“Raising the Stakes” video series

The entire four-season series of screenwriting videos from Black List screenwriter Jonathan Stokes.

Jonathan W. Stokes is a screenwriter with a unique credit to his name: Five of his original screenplays have been named to the annual Black List. That alone should get your attention, but there’s also this: Over the last few years, he has produced an excellent video series called Raising the Stakes.

I have been so taken by the quality of the videos and relevance of the content, I decided to feature all twenty videos on my blog with additional commentary. Here are links to all of those articles.

Season 1

Episode 1: The Objective Correlative
Episode 2: Breaking Suture
Episode 3: Nuking the Fridge
Episode 4: 10 Ways to Invest Your Audience in Your Hero
Episode 5: Heightening

Season 2

Episode 1: Theme Shown
Episode 2: Raising the Stakes on the Call to Adventure
Episode 3: 7 Ways To Do Bad Exposition
Episode 4: 9 Rules For Good Exposition
Episode 5: Magic Flight

Season 3

Episode 1: The Act One Break
Episode 2: Atonement with the Father
Episode 3: Seven Set Pieces
Episode 4: The Midpoint
Episode 5: Anaphora and Epistrophe

Season 4

Episode 1: What is subtext?
Episode 2: The Christ Symbol
Episode 3: Why “We’re Not So Very Different, You And I”
Episode 4: MacGuffins Aren’t MacGuffins
Episode 5: Prosody: The Secret to Memorable Writing

I share these videos with my undergraduate and graduate students. You are well advised to check them out yourself for your own screenwriting edification.

For more background on Jonathan W. Stokes, you can go here.

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You may read my interview with Jonathan here.