632 - Mystery and Suspense

John has the flu (or does he?) and Craig is missing, so we’re going back through the vaults to look at the mechanics of mystery and suspense. How do writers exploit the audience’s curiosity? What builds and breaks their trust? How do you use suspense across genres? And what do these techniques look like on the page?

But first, we look at the current agency shakeups and share our thoughts on OpenAI’s new engine, Sora.

In our bonus segment for premium members, John and Drew talk about their experience with the Apple Vision Pro.

Links:

• Scriptnotes 269 – Mystery vs. Confusion
• Scriptnotes 332 – Wait for It
• A3 Artists Agency Shuts Down by Aaron Couch and Rebecca Sun for The Hollywood Reporter
• Verve CEO and Co-Founder Bill Weinstein Leaves Agency After 14 Years by Cynthia Littleton for Variety
• A few thoughts on Sora by John August
• GOODY-2
• Meet the Pranksters Behind Goody-2, the World’s ‘Most Responsible’ AI Chatbot by Will Knight for Wired
• Claire Keegan
• Contextual computing with Vision Pro: My Writing Cabin by David Sparks
• 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 Eric Pearson (send us yours!)
• Segments originally produced by Godwin Jabangwe and Megan McDonnell. Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.