Screenwriting in the Age of Tech with Guy Goldstein

Welcome to On Production today I'm joined by Guy Goldstein, the founder and CEO of Writer Duet, which is a cutting edge screenwriting software designed to enhance the creative process for screenwriters across the globe. From its inception in 2013, Writer Duet has changed how scripts are written, allowing seamless collaboration across various platforms. Guy, it's fantastic to have you with us to share your insights on technology's role in storytelling.

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0:48  

Also, thanks so much for having me. Yeah. So

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0:50  

guy, can you start by sharing what initially inspired you to create Writerduet and how your background in computer science really influenced its development?

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0:59  

Yeah, I've been a programmer since I was like a pretty small child. And then I've been a actors since even before that, since I was like, very, very young. My sister is a writer, and I still always in theater and love that and then I started getting screenwriting a little before 2013. And just was using the tools available to everyone at the time. There are a couple big software companies, I'm still around, I was using their stuff. And the collaboration aspect was the most obvious deficiency back then it was right around the time like Google Docs was coming up and stuff like that existed. And it was obvious that screenwriters deserve something to help them, especially if they were co writing. But even the ubiquity of well, you know, phones, you could write there, you could write different computers within your office one at home, there's a lot of different ways collaboration becomes both with other people and with yourself. And I wanted to make something that made it just so seamless that you didn't think about it. And that kind of extended always, writers use technology to try to make it as much of a creative process and as little as a of a technical burden, as you could have on just everything that as me as a screenwriter and all the screenwriters started using right to say anything that annoyed them about the process where it was taking them away from focus on the idea and the words and, you know, hopefully something that is really fun and compelling to the audience. Super

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2:13  

cool. I'm gonna ask you a few more questions about collaboration in a minute, because it does seem like a really particular branch that that you and the team at writer Duet has really been focused on. But you know, your system and software, you know, it caters to various formats. So theater novels, video games, sort of beyond traditional screenplays. What challenges did you face in creating a versatile tool that meets these different sort of storytelling needs? What are the unique feature sets or elements of a tool like Greta duet that is differentiated than Google Docs? Like? Why does it exist?

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2:50  

Yeah, so ask you if it is definitely our core, and everything we do is is either very specific to screenwriting, or very specific to a thing that screenwriting has that other things also have. And so starting with a very obvious one of the blocks, right like that a character is a type like a line type, and there's a block that has a character line, and then directly underneath that, there is probably a dialogue line or a parenthetical line, and the sort of rules about not only how they're formatted, but how the writer is going to change between them really quickly and efficiently, and how they mean something that has like a semantic meaning that controls you know, what the most likely thing to happen next is in different ways, like how can you use the semantics of blocks that exists 100% of screenplays and to a degree and other writing formats to improve the writing process, if it's just every line means the exact same thing, they all mean, whatever the text means, then like like as traditional book or just normal document, blocks don't really matter as much. But that was sort of the sort of foundational thing, we'll make something a little unique. And then the way just production works is unique, like revision tracking, and things like that. That's very different than you in your, you know, editor on a book going back and forth. So we targeted everything towards screenplays, in that way, like pagination is very specific how it has to work. And then with extending to other formats, the one that relates the most like theaters, similar theater has similar rules, it's more freeform because there isn't the same kind of level of production and collaboration at the production level. Like it's just very different how theaters are done. So it matters a little less there. But certainly, there's still value to it, especially the efficiency of writing, like the ability to like press enter and tab and just move between things and have autocomplete your character name and autocomplete, or location you've used before. That's just helpful. But the other form is going to think of as like graphic novels, where they actually very structured as well. They have pages and panels on each page and dialogue, which looks a certain way and that one was the most natural. Oh, there's something that needs to be done here that that works. So everything we do is really surrounded around semantic meaning of text. And how can we use this semantics to make the writers life better because they in their head, they know Oh, the character is gonna say this. But if they have to write, John says, and then quote this thing close quick, that's really an efficient way of just communicating J tab for the rest of John, Enter. And then the thing John says, Enter, Tab and knows the characters most likely to respond is Shannon, because she was in the scene with genre before enter the media without even typing the s, like just ways of efficiently creating. And I kind of, personally, I think obsessed a little bit with like, how can we make it really efficient, not because it's saving time, but it's saving distraction. And every time you stop, and you think about, I need to type these letters that I already know what they are, so you're not doing anything creative anymore. For me, at least, I lose where I was focused, I lose the creative impulse that I had. And I want to reduce the time it takes collaboration being a side thing, but even the time it takes for my co writer to see my brilliant idea and have their own brilliant idea on top of it, because they create sparks within yourself with other people with other people on your team. And that's like, to me the Magic of Not to screenwriting, but all this stuff is the connection between things, how quickly you can move to the next thing that your brain is thinking about instead of stopping and then losing your train of thought,

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6:16  

I think that's a really interesting way to think about this. So using the technology to sort of reduce the latency of the conversation you're having in your mind as you're expressing these ideas into a written format. But then there's this. So there's actually an idea of a collaborative benefit of the software just for an individual expressing an idea or ideas. But then there's also a collaboration. On top of that whereby other people can be within your software executing this producing feedback or writing themselves. Can you kind of explain how real time collaboration features enhance the screen writing process? And what impact you feel like this has had on the industry? So I think you talked about it singularly. As a writer sort of getting out of their way letting the tool do that. You talked about collaboration against different sort of devices. But how about multiple creatives in one space, executing a vision? Yeah,

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7:23  

the number one thing that I think writers really get frustrated by without the tools like this is waiting, like, they have a nice draft that they're excited about, they send it to a co writer or director or someone they want to work with a friend, they want to read it. And it's just so frustrating to have the wait time. The second part that's really challenging is the changes appear in one version, but not another. Like those are both really important problems with collaboration. So reducing the wait time to not be Did you get my email, I have to like call you and say if you did, and I don't know if you've looked at it yet. Or if you've seen the version, or I typed the new thing as three games versioning problem, I type something new, since I told you to look at it, did you see that new thing that I just did. So I guess I'll focus more on the second problem of our people on the exact same draft as you expect them to be on the same page literally, with you. And especially if you're co writing, it is I think devastating for people, when they spend a lot of time working on something and they find out someone else didn't see those changes. So they made choices, or they made other changes. And now you have to spend all the time resolving the conflicts, right, and your thought process or your actual text. So reducing that to essentially never happen. It's really important to not have to think about am I on the right version? And are the changes that I'm making irrelevant because of something else someone else did. That's a big part of it. And then the other sort of aspect of that, can you see what was changed really effectively? So obviously, there's traditional blue color revisions and things like that if you're in production, but even at a more granular level. Can you just ask, What did my co writer change since 4am? When I went to sleep after a rough night writing? Can you see what those changes were so you can quickly jump to those. And so that's another thing ready to add does is it tracks not only you know what the changes are, but who made the changes when they were made. And at any individual line basis or time basis, you can just quickly see that like, oh, this line is different than I remember why click on a button and see what the iterations of that line have been and say, Okay, well, that's terrible. I go back to the old version or whatever, really quickly, or this brilliant and I can send my co writer a love note. That's awesome.

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9:32  

I'm curious guy. Can you discuss any significant updates or features that you are particularly excited about that might be on the horizon for WriterDuet?

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9:42  

Yeah, I think it was broadly as a company because rarely do I like screenwriting software. I will never say it's done evolving by any stretch of imagination. But there are a lot of things that are just so entrenched in how people work. And you don't want to mess with us too much. Like think of the early days I had a lot of impulses to say, well, what are all the things I could do differently? better. And some of that work, some of it just turned out to be not the right approach. And I think now, the screenwriting aspect, like the pure, putting the words on the page is very standardized and good the way it is, I don't think huge number of improvements have to happen there. I think the collaboration aspect pretty similarly, kind of figured out how that should work. But there are always ways you can incrementally improve it. But as a fundamental level, I think it's the right direction. I think the areas that are really interesting are on the book ends of it and the brainstorming outlining phase. I think there isn't a template for how, you know, not only should you format the outline template, but how should you think about the process of outlining it. And brainstorming is something that's completely open. And on the other end, how to scripts get reviewed, like you've written something that you're excited about, especially if you're an amateur, and you don't maybe have representation, you don't really have an audience for your work. screenplays are not really built to be read. They're built to be produced. And so what did you do once you've written that first draft, that's something that you just want to know if people like it to know, if you're going in a direction that's going to get you somewhere. So those are the two areas that we're really mostly focused on. Think of this sort of review side, there's a lot of like services out there that read your script for money traditionally, and there's a lot of flaws to that process. There's some good things about it. But it can be really expensive and daunting and depressing, because you put something out that you have some reason you really like and it doesn't get a good review, or it does, but they missed something that you felt was important about it. And you're not really sure if they understood what you were going for. And so my biggest focus there is not to say you shouldn't have those services because they have value. But you should triangulate around what's going to help you improve as a writer, rather than just getting random person on the internet, trade money for ideas. Like that's not really what I think is most beneficial. So focusing on how do we get analysis of your work that helps you both interpret it yourself? But also, can there be a different representation, your screenplay that is more conducive to another person's experiencing it? So very abstract, but to make it more concrete on that one, which is, I don't think it's screenplays are not meant to be read largely, they are meant to be produced. And there are formats that are much more interesting to consume. And then screenplays, so for example, video. And so there's all this stuff with the AI side, where you can generate really interesting content from a screenplay directly. And that's one of things we're focused on is can we make the screenplays more interesting to engage with audience. So for example, we do text to speech, we're using different labs and different voices out there to create really high quality table read, including visuals that like create AI image backgrounds for the setting. So it changes. For example, even a single scene, they'll say, Okay, well establishing shot of where the scene is. And then it'll notice we're focused on a computer screen. So I'll zoom in on the computer screen, and they'll zoom back out. And you can see a picture of the characters currently talking and you can hear their voice talking. And it's just a more dynamic, interesting way for people who aren't really screenplay readers to experience your story. And and that just opens up the audience to a lot wider range of people who can say, I'm excited by this, I'm bored by this, I'm confused by this, like, there's a really interesting feedback to get that I think writers need to get. So that's one side he concrete is the let's call production of the screenplays. And another is the analysis where some of the traditional flaws I see in writers and this is at all levels like amateurs to professionals will take characters and they'll all sound the kind of the same, they'll sound like one voice. And that can be good. There's reasons that works really well sometimes, but often, it's just a limitation of the writer, that they don't know how to write different voices, they don't realize they're doing it, they think these two characters are styled really differently. Because, look, this one is mad, and this one's happy. Well, of course, they're different characters. But in practice, they're the same people just experiencing a different emotion, which obviously all humans should people to do. And so we do a lot of analysis to try to help you see your characters see like who they really are, and look at them before a sort of objective perspective, that it's almost like a reader. Because right now, if you want to know, I know, are my characters coming across the way intended you have to give your script to a reader? And then consistently prod them say, no, no, but did you understand this about my character? Did this come across whatever. And it's very fine grained details that a human isn't really good at doing, necessarily. But on the AI side, it's actually extremely good at analyzing your work. I think I'm I obviously here because I'm very obsessed with it in this context. But I'm kind of concerned that AI is often used as a boogeyman in the screenwriting industry of look, it's here to replace you. And instead, I'm thinking about how can it be an ally to your creative process not to write for you, but to construct summaries and descriptions and things that you're seeing that are often left to a reader who isn't actually as good as it there's an AI so it's

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14:44  

a fascinating, fascinating train of thought. And I think, you know, I want to get to the future of screenwriting from your view as somebody that builds these tools for screenwriters in just a moment but before we do I want to know guy like, from what you've seen, I mean writer too. It's been around a long time, you have wonderful clients all over the world who are using the tool. These scripts are being produced, they're being shared people are really using the tool to collaborate creatively in cinema, ultimately, which is powerful. And you've been, you know, a leading figure in kind of this digital transformation of the screenwriting side. I'm just curious, like, have you seen the tool even before talking about machine learning or AI? How even just sort of like the collaborative software space has kind of influenced the creative storytelling process to date. I'm curious, like what you've seen happen. And then, and then definitely, I want to keep double clicking on sort of the future based off of advances in generative software's in the

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15:46  

collaboration, I think, tools have gotten a lot better, and people haven't adapted to them as well as they could, I think there's still a lot of room to grow just out of how humans interact with technology, where I just listened to a podcast with skip deaths podcasts, with Craig Mazin, John August, and they were talking about how ultimately, people still just need to get in a room together to collaborate, that's not a bad thing. Like, obviously, human connection is really great. And having people talk things out, it's going to prove things a lot faster than going back and forth electronically. But I think there are still a lot of ways that technology is available to fill some gaps and isn't really used that way, because humans aren't used to it. And they're not necessarily optimizing their process, and there's still room to grow. That being said, just the simple example of seeing the same text you type it in, someone else sees it has immediately improved, the co writing looks like that one just got a lot better to know that you're always gonna see the most recent drafts, I think, not to go too much into production, cuz I'm certainly not as familiar with that. But I think there's a lot of tools out there that can make collaboration and production are better that do it in certain use cases, and then are still being missed opportunities either because the technology just isn't quite catching how people want to collaborate, or the people just aren't used to using it yet in that way. So I think, a little bit of a positive and a little bit of man, even with what we have now, we're still not where we should be in terms of people always seeing the exact right thing at the exact right time, I think is still missing.

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17:14  

Fascinating. Now again, so that's kind of the past and kind of creeping into the present. I'm curious in this present moment before speculation on AI and machine learning. Are there trends that you kind of believe are shaping the future of screenwriting? Obviously, AI will be one of them. But are there just any other trends that you kind of see influencing the craft? Um,

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17:37  

I think there are bad trends that I was asked to talk about. First, I'm worried about them. And these are sure I've been around forever, but I see them getting made even worse is people trusting authorities about what is good. And what we should do, I think is a scary thing, because creative expression is not only just so personal, but it's so different every time you're telling one story versus a different story. And great screenwriters have a voice in a way that they want to tell stories that is so personal, that if they're told you can't they'll do it anyway. I think amateur screenwriters and often early screeners are still finding that voice, get really down a rabbit hole of I'm supposed to do it this way, like this is the correct way to do things. And they're just mimicking some of the saw. They didn't really understand the deeper reason that thing worked, or, or even sillier. They don't care what the reason was. And I don't think that's actually true as often. But they're just like, No, I just want to be a screenwriter. So I'll make my beats that look like this. And I'll send it to this submission platform. And I'll just tell people, I'll make sure they check the box to say I am a real screenwriter. And that's really not good for creative process. I think because just granary has gotten so much more popular. The idea of writing screenplays is a fun idea. Sometimes people lose their reason you write a screenplay, which is to tell something unique and compelling that you see in the world. And I think even those people who are what's called going down what I consider not a great path, they still have an important story to tell. So I don't want to say oh, just write them off as irrelevant. I want to say, why did you write the story like asking the question why so that's the sort of negative trend I think I see as too many authorities. I think the ubiquity of the internet and making it so accessible is great, but that that's the way people have used the accessibility is a little unfortunate. Hollyfield positive direction. The positive direction is that it's so much easier to get your work out there. It's so much easier to be seen it kind of going too early conversation, honestly, is screen, play a good format to share. But if you have something worth sharing, you can get that in front of you know, 1000s to millions of people instantly if it's actually good. Like, I'm not gonna go say social media is the best thing. I don't spend my time on it. But I love that you can just put something there and immediately get feedback and get a reaction from people. And I think the clever writers absolutely take advantage of that. Like they know that How to make themselves a voice. Like they're putting out funny tweets, that's getting reactions, they're flooding out storylines that they think would be interesting. They're putting out sample pages, I hope in the future, good i speculating again over that. But I think putting out short form content is going to be the way that writers get seen. And I think there's a lot that can happen there. And I hope that writers go back to the basics of, I just want people to react to an idea I had, and a story that I really wanted to tell, maybe a feature film isn't the format that I can make accessible to everyone right now. But in 30 seconds, I can get them to feel something that I wanted them to feel.

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20:40  

I had a guest on here recently, who leads a platform specifically oriented towards mid form content. And that's, that's her thesis as well. But if you look at a number of sort of different sort of intellectual properties that became extremely valuable, and an engaging and exciting to consumers, they started as mid form content within variety shows, or short cartoons, and then that really just starts as an opportunity to then build larger, more complex narratives down the road. So that's super interesting. I think that is a really positive sort of trend. Okay, you mentioned some of these really exciting speculative things, you know, different sort of embodied personas of LLMs doing a table read for you. So you can understand your characters, text to videos, you can actually sort of do an animatic of what you're writing to see if there's something that's connecting with you. This is almost a further extension of what you were saying that these tools can do today, which is like just sort of gut check you, or you're adding in another collaborator, but instead of it being a writing partner in Milwaukee, it's your computer looking at, you know, patterns. And, you know, there's debate as to whether the LLM is have a world model, or if it's just an interesting interpretation of weights. But regardless of that, how do you see AI impacting screenwriting and creative expression in the coming years? You said that in the market today, some people see it as a boogeyman? You're not so sure, like, expand on that for me?

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22:16  

Yeah, there is a dystopian version that there is a non zero chance becomes true that creative expression gets converted to computer expression. That is bad. Like, I think we as humans just don't really want that where computers are telling us what stories to tell how to tell them how to write them actually writing them. I think that's a bad version for humanity.

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22:37  

Which, by the way, is what you're saying sort of a more amateurish writer maybe has a tendency to do anyways, which is just sort of cargo cult. And so maybe this is like a further expression of that to the most extreme, which is programmatic cargo holding. So you're saying we don't want that?

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22:54  

Yeah, exactly. And then your to your point, maybe the reason that we're afraid of it is what this what we're already seeing from humans, we're seeing humans doing that, too. Sometimes we're seeing Hollywood do that. So it might be somewhat realistic fear, based on knowing that people have this tendency to reduce things to the average and the most accessible thing possible, or the most standard thing possible. It's a bad thing that I think AI will make worse if we go that route. reason I'm not concerned about it. Or at least I'm not actively concerned, I will be progressively more concerned down the line is that isn't really where generative AI is showing its strength in terms of being a storyteller or dialogue writer, a writer, etc. It will get better, but I don't think that's what it's proven. It's extraordinarily good at right now, but I think it's proven it's extraordinary good, especially the LM side is a content understander I think it does extremely well and incredibly surprisingly nuanced ways. Now, if you just like throw your script into like, you know, attaching PTS product and say, Is my script good? It is meaningless what it says Like if it says, yes, you're the most brilliant writer ever. No, this is garbage. It means nothing. It has no actual opinion, it doesn't understand anything. If you ask it to write a synopsis of your screenplay, it'll have some level of accuracy, you'll get some things wrong, it'll focus on the wrong things. It'll say something meaningful-ish. But the more precise, you ask questions, and the more limited the scope of the information you're giving it, so that it has the right information, answer that question, the more remarkably intelligent I think it is. And so going back to the example of like, character analysis, or something like that, I think humans can feel when a character comes across as inauthentic. And they can tell when they're just not interested in that character, or two characters are saying the same thing just in different ways, or whatever. I think AI can tell you why. I think AI can kind of very precisely point out. The model that this character is following is the same as the model this other characters follow. They're very similar. They both are loyal and charismatic and brave, and they're both coming across this way. Just one is facing a different challenge than the other faces so that that makes them present differently, but they're kind of the same person. Or another thing I kind of obsess over in what I watch content is, are the characters real? Like would could this one character exists not only in the real world, but in the world you've constructed? Could they actually be a real person? Or are the automaton just there to serve the plot in a certain way? And I think AI can extremely well analyze. What motivations is this character showing what choices are they making intentionally? Or which ones are sort of just well, we needed someone to say, this exact thing right now to the character. So they learned the lesson, the main character, so like, I think AI pointing those things out? Is he here today? solution. And the reason I care so much about this, going back to the dystopian version, if we don't tell better stories, AI will get better and better at telling the same stories we are. And so if AI is that, you know, like, say a two on the human scale, we're at an average of eight or something like that? Well, yeah, it was good mentally two or three, I mentioned it before, and we're just sitting on a, like, we're just gonna eventually have AI as good or better as we are at the things we're doing now. But if we, I think use AI to superhuman ourselves, we'll figure out ways of going from an eight to a nine to nine to 10. And their scale goes through these 10 to 11. We'll just keep getting better at telling stories that are compelling and interesting, using the tools available to us. And so that's why I don't look at AI as a bad thing. I look at AI as having potential to be bad, but also potential to be good. And if we all, if all the sort of what's called writers are people who care about writers stay away from AI, the people who don't care about this, aren't gonna stay away from they're gonna keep working on AI, like AI is not suddenly, like, oh, you know what, yeah, we just don't like it for too long. It's a waste of time, it's our overhead. So they're gonna use it more and more. And if the people who really have a compelling story to tell aren't using it, they're gonna get left behind, versus if we try to inform them about how AI can be used. We tried to build tools that work really, really well for those use cases that we see as already beneficial to writers, then we make it accessible, so we get to develop AI with them. So that five years from now, when the traditional AI is at an eight for storytelling, the human is at a 12 because they're using all this AI to be incredible. And then, you know, at some point, there's changes to how story structure even happens. And that, you know, there's a lot of evolution to happen five years from now. But within the next few years, I think just using AI to be more efficient and tell better stories is going to make AI incredibly useful. I could just say a silly thing. People talk about how much they don't like AI. But in practice, I have seen almost everyone, not everyone, literally, but almost everyone who uses AI in an effective way be really excited by

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27:41  

it. Do you have generative AI capabilities and writer do it today?

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27:47  

Yes, we avoid. Okay, I'll put this full story this right into it does not in the way that we're talking about it any generative AI, it has a little bit like text to speech and stuff like that. But ready to do it, I am leaving out of this equation until there's a reason to change that based on writers wants. We have a different platform. That's the one that we're specifically putting a lot of very high into the what is called screenplay IQ. And we recently launched that we've been developing it for over a year. But we really wanted to make sure it was useful before putting anything out. And that is the analysis script analysis platform that is focused on like the type of things we're talking about, like analyzing characters analyzing their journey, like why are they doing the things, and one of the things that I tried to do with it that we care a lot about is not being prescriptive, like it's not saying you don't fit into the 3x structures, or your script is not good. And this character is supposed to change. So it's bad that they did, it doesn't try to tell you good or bad, it just tries to tell you what interprets your writing apps. So if you want an objective sounding board, that's kind of what it's there for. Just to say, here are some things we've observed about your characters. If this is what you intended, it's not what you netted, then you can look at why we interpret it that way. And you can consider if you're just wrong as possible. Or if there's a reason, a different reader might interpret it same way, and you're gonna lose an audience that you could have actually told a really compelling story to if you just reframed it a little bit. So that's the sidewalk so we're keeping an eye out of the writer to a product still the right to do that company, because that's like even just one more time say like the writing process itself, I'm less convinced needs AI. There's areas where it's helpful, like research and things that are adjacent to that. But the scripted analysis side, I think it's really interesting. And then on the early side, like the early brainstorming, it's nice to have a friend and 2am friend who's willing to brainstorm with you. That's

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29:28  

fantastic. Finally, guy I'm curious for our listeners who are maybe thinking about or are aspiring screenwriters. Can you share any tips or advice on how to leverage these technologies to kind of better tell their stories? First

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29:43  

starting point is to use tools that make you more efficient, just whatever that is, whatever the thing you notice that you're being like, oh, you know, if you're writing a silly thing, but people do this, they still write in Word. Use a screenwriting software that will make your life just faster. I don't care which one I'd love it to be ready to do that. I'd love it to be I like to just not In a program that doesn't help you move faster, find peer writers who can work with you. That's not a technology problem, but some way it is because you're using social media using different things to find those people and get a lot of feedback. Another product we bill that I really like is read through.com. It's a clutter free platform made just for scripts, share it because you need ways of getting notes for a lot of people. And getting the notes all in one place, I think is really helpful. So you don't have to like say, Oh, I got an email from one friend, I got a call from another. I got you know, some random PDF written up with like notes for another. I want to get all my notes in one place. So we could we get a lot of platforms just to help these little efficiency things. So mostly, be creative and use tools like AI to beauty to help in the edges where you're struggling or you're slowing yourself down.

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30:47  

That's fantastic, Guy for listeners that want to kind of follow your work and find you on the internet. Where should they go? Follow

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30:53  

us here at WriterDuet on Twitter and Facebook and things like that. I don’t post enough. But I'd love to maybe I'll start because I missed it.

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30:59  

That's great Guy. Thanks for joining me on On Production.

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31:02  

Thanks so much for having me