150 | How To Say Yes To Yourself as a Writer (ft. Showrunners Kat Likkel and John Hoberg)

As collaborators and showrunners, Kat Likkel and John Hoberg know that shutting down ideas is never helpful. This was only emphasized when they joined Pixar's Elemental team as writers. Today we discuss how to collaborate well with others (and ourselves), how to bring our personal experience into our work, and duckboat. Yes, you read that right: duckboat.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Meg: Hey everyone, welcome back to The Screenwriting Life. I'm Meg LeFauve.

Lorien: And I'm Lorien McKenna. And today we are thrilled to be welcoming writing partners, John Hoberg and Kat Likkel to discuss Disney and Pixar's Elemental as well as their impressive career as TV comedy writers and showrunners.

Meg: Kat and John's writing partnership spans over two decades, working on shows like Galavant, My Name is Earl, Better Off Ted, and Blackish.

Lorien: They're joining us today to talk about their career in TV, discuss the dynamics of working in a writing partnership, and of course their work on Elemental. But first,

Meg: Kat and John have agreed, because I've made them, to join our first segment, which is Adventures in Screenwriting, or what'd we do this week? So Lorien, you go first.

What'd you do this week?

Lorien: I have no idea. But what I'm working on is trying to notice the expectations I set on myself and, like, in terms of my goals or relationships or anything, really, all the things I have to do and notice it without judgment so that I can understand what my process is. So usually I'll be like, “Oh, my God, I ran out of time.”

Fill in. I'm X failure. And then it bottoms me out. And then the next day, I already feel like I'm in a deficit. But instead, I'm trying to work on noticing. Okay, I didn't plan that very effectively. Like yesterday, I got off an airplane from, you know, the Midwest. I was tired. My kid, take my kid to the doctor.

And then I realized, Well, she is going to her concert, she's going to need a new outfit, and she tween freaked out all over the mall. So by the time I got home at five o'clock, I was like, I'm not going to write for two hours today. That's not happening. I'm tween exhausted. So sort of noticing, why did I think I could do that?

Was I setting myself up for failure on purpose and then just sort of letting it go? Okay, what did I learn? On a travel day, I probably shouldn't schedule much. You'd think I would know this by now. But I didn't. I had bigger, I had some, I thought I was somebody else. So, You

Meg: and I always have bigger meals.

Yes. What is that phrase?

Lorien: My eyes are bigger than my –

Meg: – stomach. A plate is bigger. Something clever.

Lorien: So I'm trying to notice it without judgment, without immediately trying to fix or assess or analyze. Just like, okay, that happened. And then give myself a week to see what I'm actually doing in the course of a week, how much writing time I'm actually getting done, was my goal even realistic around my writing?

So it's really hard because, you know, I don't have anything due really. I am writing for myself right now. So it's it's confusing to not to judge myself. Like, I don't know what to do with all that extra space in my brain. Right. What? Wait, if I can't judge myself. Oh, and then I feel less awful.

It's so weird. Anyway, so that's what I'm working on. And the reason I'm working on this is because I have a group of writers I've brought together and I'm running an accountability workshop with them. And I realized the things that I'm teaching them are the things I have to be doing as well. So, you know, teaching always brings up all this stuff like, Oh, you got to do it too, dummy. So that's what I've been working on this week, trying not to feel awful.

Jeff: One thing I really like about that, Lorien quickly, because I feel like I'm taking away something about what you're saying is that's how we should approach our characters, right?

In a nonjudgmental kind of objective way, like, just let them speak to us and let their flaws feel meaningful on the page. And, you know, not always try to fix them. Because when we try to fix our characters too quickly, we prevent our stories from being interesting. So I love the like, kind of observational objectivity you're taking with yourself.

And I'm stealing that. I think that's really good.

Lorien: Well, it comes from my approach of working with my characters, because I think you have to love your characters no matter what. You have to get them to trust you so they show up for you so that you can tell their story. But it's so hard not to judge them.

And I thought, what if I applied that to myself? And I allowed myself to maybe, this is going to be really hard to say, loved myself no matter what. That's not real. That's impossible. That's not real. Sorry I said that. I feel deeply ashamed. Deeply ashamed. Lock me in the cupboard. Anyway, so yes. And then maybe I could apply that to other people too.

Oh God, I'm evolving. I don't like it. Okay. Someone else go. Someone else

Meg: go. Kat and John, how was your week?

John: Do you want me to start? Yeah, go ahead. It's actually a really fun week. We we've been working on a stage musical for a little bit and the producers flew us out to New York to work with our lyricist and the producers for a week and we've got like a downtown like space where you can hear other people like practicing for musicals and things and we have fun.

It's so, it's showbiz. It feels like showbiz, like people with leg warmers walking around.

Kat: I expect Gene Kelly to come in and,

Lorien: How many jazz hands do you see a day? A lot.

John: And I'm going to get back tomorrow, I think, just so I feel like I'm really in the moment. It's really cool. It's something we got bit by the musical bug when we worked on that show Galavant.

And this has been kind of a dream is to do a stage musical. And we're working with Glenn Slater, who's the lyricist from You know, he did School of Rock, he's Alan Menken's lyricist, and he just knows what he's talking about. And what is exciting and also really hard is, it's a different style of writing, and Lynn is an expert, and we're new at it, and so it's a lot of fun.

learning again. And it's kind of, it's scary and fun. Like having lunch, we turned in the first act and you know, you try to read between the lines on the emails you get beforehand. And so we went into lunch with the producer and, you know, and they were really happy with it, but you can tell it's like, yeah, it's a great first draft.

It's like, wait a minute, it's

Jeff: done.

John: So anyways, it's been really exciting. Yeah. Yeah.

Kat: For me, my writing week, aside from this, I'm not going to duplicate what he said. I got my first big set of notes on the book I just wrote. And so I'm walking around our hotel room, like, venting. The F word is coming out a lot.

Talking things. I'm talking about how dumb they are. Hi, if you're listening, you're not really dumb, but it's like, yeah. So I'm just like, I right now, as soon as this computer closes and we're doing something else, I'm going to go right back to talking about how dumb you're not done. They are not

Meg: so you're in the first stage of getting notes, which is fuck you.

Kat: Yeah, well, I mean, I thought it was beyond that because this is like the second rewrite. I've gotten, you know, a couple of sets of notes from them already. So for me, this was, I thought this was a polish. I thought this was like, Hey, now we're going to all be on the same page. And I just got like,

John: so.

It's like we're two separate Muppets and I'm like, New York, and the cat's like raging.

Jeff: It's a really weird energy.

Kat: I need a scotch.

Meg: Well, that just tells me that writing is writing. Could be a novel. Could be a musical. It could be a script. Could be it doesn't matter because you're going to get those notes.

And either appreciate them and sing New York, or you're going to rage and need a scotch, right?

Lorien: I think that's so valuable to hear, because sometimes I think, what if I just wrote a book? And I imagine this, like, easy version of writing, right? I get to write a whole book. And or what if I go back to playwriting?

I just write a play, you know, but I forget that writing is writing. And there's always somebody who's going to give me notes. And it's always going to make me mad and then make me sad and then make me figure it out. So It it's all the same. There is no glamorous alternative. We just pick and execute.

John: It's, we're making the sausage and it's ugly when you make the

Kat: sausage. The best part of writing is when you're sitting alone in your room and you're just focused and you're doing it and you feel like you're flowing and it's just like, nothing can touch me, this is great, I feel like I'm on a magic carpet ride.

And then you crash. Yes.

Lorien: Or suddenly there's no carpet anymore and you're just falling through space.

Kat: There was never a carpet. There was never a

Lorien: carpet.

Meg: Never a carpet in the first place. You were in a sewer. You didn't even know it.

Lorien: Exactly. The matrix cord gets pulled out and you're just in the pod. Yeah.

Meg: But you guys have had a very long experience with writing that the magic carpet does come back, don't you think? I mean, it is a constant shift between magic carpet ride, no, we're in the sewer, magic carpet ride, sewer, until finally. You're like, oh my god, like I would think and you guys tell me as showrunners, you know, there's the show and we like it Like does that happen you the carpet comes back,

John: right?

I think we trust that it comes back now. I mean, a hundred percent trust that it will, you know, it will come back. I mean, the good thing about running a show and stuff is there's no time to worry because you're, there's, it's, you're so busy. It's so insanely busy and there is no. Well, I don't feel like writing today that you don't have time to kind of get caught up and worrying about it.

You just kind of have to do it. Actually, that's what I liked about and hated about the job. Yeah. Is that it took away any of that sort of, what do I think? What should I do? And it's like, you just got to act which. And you just got to trust that what you think in that moment is right. Hopefully, you know, more often than not, it is.

Yeah. And sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's terrible. Sometimes you get in the edit and like, wow, what was I thinking? But luckily, right? So you can fix it in the edit. I haven't

Meg: run a show, but I've had that experience at Pixar where you're like, This is totally, we know. No, yeah, no, that doesn't work at all.

Lorien: What happened to me in post is I was for sure we got a shot. So I spent like a lot of time digging through the edit, digging through all the dailies. We know we have that shot because that shot will fix all of this. And we never got that shot. Like I must have made it up on that day on set or something and when I don't know what happened to it, but it was there.

We got that shot.

Kat: And on set, anything can happen. It could be like you were getting ready to tell somebody about to get that shot and then somebody came up behind you, went. We have an actor who won't come out of their dressing room, you know, it's like and then you're Every all your plans are at the window.

Yes.

John: What's the thing? I love this thing. I'm probably gonna get it wrong there's the movie you plan to shoot the movie You thought you shot and then you're left with the movie you actually shot Yeah, that was always the thing that was a little shocking, when running a show And it was a thing that would keep you up every night like after you've, you wrapped, it's like, what did we actually shoot?

Sometimes you shot what you thought, but usually you didn't a hundred percent.

Lorien: And surprisingly at Pixar, even though we had absolute control over every single shot, it's still, there were moments when that would still happen. Be like, why didn't that? We literally can control anything we see and hear, and yet it's still not the thing I thought we did.

Great. I'm sure you both had that experience. All three of you had that experience.

John: So. That was such a unique experience. I mean, it really was. I'm so glad we did it.

Meg: Well, I'll just quickly do my week and we'll jump into it and well, first I listened to this amazing episode of the hidden brain all about our pleasure, dopamine addiction in our brain because of our current modern world and how pleasure and pain is a seesaw in your brain.

And if the higher the pleasure goes, the little kind of neuron gremlins will jump on the pain part. And try to get you back even and and how you can't literally think you're going to have a life of pleasure all the time because your brain literally will not let you do that. It has to balance out with some kind of quote unquote pain.

I exercise for me or whatever, like you don't want to get out of bed or whatever that pain could be. It doesn't have to be physical pain. It could be existential pain, whatever, and I was like, oh, well, and then they were talking about how. To have this in your life. So, you know, make, you know, do exercise in the morning.

Get it out of the way. Get a lot of gremlins on the one side of the seesaw and your brain will. Start to balance out the other side. And I was like, well, we're writers. So, like, we do, that's all we do all day long is gremlin jumping on both sides of the cinema. We have a lifetime

Lorien: gremlin tea party.

Right? It's like,

Meg: come on in. It literally is like, carpet, I'm on a magic carpet. No, I'm in a sewer. This is terrible. Pain. Carpet. I mean, I mean, I just think we have a very special seesaw in our head because we work it out so much as writers. But it's a great episode if you guys, anybody wants to listen.

And then just in terms of the writing process, my husband and I are writing together a passion project. And we just had, which I thought speaks to you guys because you guys are collaborators as well. Like, we had this weird conversation. It's not an argument, but kind of... Talk about wires crossed where we were talking about the same character and yet somehow we weren't and why Are we disagreeing?

Are we together? No, he would do that, but he would do that. I would be like he's a supporting character why would we spend all that time doing that blah blah blah blah and finally I was like, wait a minute Who's in your head? And he was like, somebody, I can't remember, it was like Cary Elwes. And I was like no, it's Kyle Chandler.

Like, it was just the guy from, like, we had completely this assumption in our head of who this person was. And it really helps to just pick an actor or a face or something so that as a team... We're not even actually disagreeing on in a bad way, it's like, oh, wait we, it was so clarifying for this supporting character, and maybe it's because it's a supporting character, you don't ever think about it, but they're gonna, they're supporting, they have to actually impact the plot, so it was important so that was just an interesting kind of collaboration moment in writing, which I'm really excited to talk to you guys about collaboration

John: It's just don't collaborate with a spouse, that's all I would

Meg: say.

No, which I'm doing, thank you. I know why

Kat: I, why

Meg: literally Joe said to me, man, we're spending a lot of time together.

Jeff: Yeah, I've been married 24

John: years. I feel like we should get credit for 50 years. Like we've spent so much time together. I don't think we're ever further than like 15 feet from each other.

Usually

Well,

Lorien: I've been married for 23 years and I still feel like I should get credit for 50 even though we don't write together. That's a long fucking time.

Meg: It is, it's like dog years. I mean, I love being married,

Lorien: but. Yeah, same. But at the same time, always. Always, you know, so we all get credit. But yes, you guys have a particularly odd for me.

I can't imagine working with my husband. Like he, he worked at Pixar for a little bit while I work there too. And I would see him and I'd be like, just pretend we don't know each other walking. This is my space. You showed up. Great. You're here. I love it. I love that you're happy, but like stay over there. I got stuff to do.

Meg: I think that still happens. I mean, we're writing together, but there's moments I'm like, you know what? I just need my space. I just need to leave and go write this. And does that not happen for you guys?

Jeff: Yeah, we have our separate space.

John: Like we, I know a lot of couples are like, well, we have to have dinner together every night.

And there's sort of this because they've been at work apart from each other, but we're very good at I'm having our own space and like we have a second place that we go to. And sometimes one of us will just be like, you know what, I'm going to go up and I'm going to go to Solvang for, you know, a couple of days.

And, you know, or do you want to come? And if the other person doesn't want to, we're fine with that. I think it's because we banked those 50 years that, but it, you know, it really works to have that time alone. And we actually, this is kind of going to sound strange, but we drive separately everywhere.

Like if we go to meetings, even going to Solvang, if we're going for the same time, we always drive separately. And I think it's just giving us that little bit of, you know, our own place. And

Kat: you have a getaway option. Yeah, I think every couple needs their own private mental space that they can go to that they don't have to constantly be sharing it, particularly when you're writing together, you're so enmeshed in each other's thoughts and that you've got to have that time to break away.

Otherwise you will just, you'll go mad,

John: you know, well, we had a rule when we first started, the rule was, yeah. Because we would, you know, we would talk, you know, you talk about work, you know, with people you work with, we would just talk shop all the time. And we finally had a rule when we started working on shows, it's like we couldn't talk about work anymore once we got out of the car.

And we'd sit in the car sometimes for two hours talking about work. We really held to it because it, otherwise it just sort of, there were no boundaries anymore.

Kat: It bleeds over and takes over your entire life. Yeah. I feel like

Lorien: that's such a great idea, like with parenting, like with any sort of collaborative project you have, even with friends, you know, Meg and I have written projects together too.

And like there comes a part or even with this podcast, right? Like sometimes we have to go spend time together just as friends. We're not going to talk about writing. We're not going to talk about the podcast. We're just going to go hang out. And I just think in any relationships, it's so important to do that so that you remember your friendship, your partnership, whatever, isn't just all about.

The one thing. This is great. I'm getting all this marriage advice. The biggest thing I've got, though, is that I need a place in solving that I can just say, Hey, do you want to come? I hope not. I'm going to go. Okay. Bye. And just take off for three days. Like, that sounds dreamy

John: for three weeks. What's going on

Kat: right?

Give us a call. We'll give you the key to the guest house. I

Lorien: love it. I'm great. I seriously am calling you out for this.

Meg: Like, hi. I do have a question. Do you guys literally write? Like, do you put a page up and write together on the page? Or do you block it out? And then he, you know, somebody takes a piece of it and somebody takes a piece of it.

And then you come back together. How do you actually collaborate as writers?

John: We've tried it all and there were lots of fights early on when we tried to write like the actual script together, the first draft of it. And what we finally came to is we would outline like very detailed outlines even where you might have an exchange that says, she says this, he says this, but we would agree on the outline and.

Then the rule was you're not allowed to freelance at all when we go to script and we'd split up scenes and it might just be like, I have, I like this scene. I like this scene. But what we discovered is you can't then just go on a flight of fancy. And it's like, if you do that, you start to get invested on your flight of fancy.

And now you've brought it back. And then we would fight. So the idea would be you bring back this draft that is the outline exactly. And then now you can both put it on the screen and be like, man, this outline was terrible, but it's no longer us anymore. It's that outline was terrible. And then we go through and rewrite this terrible outline that somebody wrote into a script.

And that seems to work best. Yeah. And

Kat: then, and by the way, I used to be the flight of fancy person. John's being very, I would go off and then I would like have an idea and just run with it. And it's like, I work in I kind of tend to work in thought bubbles, like, Oh, you know, and then it goes down. And so I would put all this time into the section I was writing and then I would hand it in to John and he, yeah.

It would just be, it would have affected stuff that he was writing, you know, and so we had to make a hard and fast rule. But then when we team up together, we could talk about those thought bubbles. You know, those extra... Were

Meg: you writing your thought bubbles like on a different document or something so that you could keep track of it?

Or did you have the brain that you were just keeping track of it?

Kat: I will, I would, now I'll make a note. I'll make a note of it and, you know, and keep it. And you know, so that we can talk about it later, but it's like, those two things have to be very separate because once it's written on the page that we're like, eventually going to be turning in, it's like, no that's in there.

Now that's just, it's, I'm sorry. It's down there. There's no backspace,

John: but I feel like you need to play. You have to play. And I think What it was is we were playing separately until we made this rule and now we're playing together like so It's probably a terrible boring draft now We get to run off on these crazy little flights of fancy But we're doing it together because we're both finding that part fun And so now it's like all bets are off we can run anywhere we want because it's us as a team doing it But there's something so daunting about sitting there with a blank page and then trying to argue over how to phrase the slug

Meg: line.

Yeah, no. That's horrible to me.

Lorien: When you write individually on your own stuff, do you all, do you do that too? Do you outline, write the boring draft or the brilliant draft, whatever it is, and then go from there? Or do you do, how do you guys differently approach it when you're writing by yourselves?

What's writing by

John: yourself? Ah,

Lorien: okay. I don't understand. Answered.

John: I do, I think I love an outline. I love an outline. And then just working off of that. But

Kat: what I do like what I did with my book is I how do I do this? Came up with my idea and then I spend a lot of time cleaning house.

Going to get coffee and just having little things come to my head that I write down and sometimes it would be a page or a couple of pages. Sometimes it would just be a paragraph. Sometimes it would be a note. Hey, think about this. And then eventually I'll compile all those things together. I was like, for my book, I probably, the book is, I don't know, 200 and It's 20 pages long.

I think I probably have 500 pages in my computer and a lot of it is just stream of consciousness kind of whatever that eventually I picked I plucked this out of it. I plucked that out of it. I plucked that out of it. Those were the good thoughts and the rest of it was just the stuff that got me to those thoughts.

So I'll spend a lot of time writing all that stuff down. This is the long way of saying I spent a lot of time writing that stuff down and then winnow it down. And then that's what like he'll see, or that's what will go into my draft. One,

Meg: a couple other questions on collaboration before we jump over to elemental. So if you're in a. A writer's room and you're show running, how does that teamwork now? Because is it the same thing? It's, you're getting to outline and how do you, if you have disagreements in front of other people or do you have any rules in terms of being in that room?

John: You know,

Jeff: what

John: We learned from a lot of the best showrunners in comedy between Victor Fresco, Greg Garcia, Dan Fogelman, and we would kind of pick up some of the things that they would do. And Dan Fogelman, we really learned a lot from because he would sort of sit there and let the room talk out.

Stuff a lot of times and see where it wanted to go. And then he would be there and he would always throw in ideas and we always throw in ideas. But part of your job is like, you have an idea of where you want it to go, but now you just let the room pitch on it. Cause they may come up with something even better.

But you also have to be pretty decisive about where you want the room to go. Otherwise it just bleeds out. And so we would usually start every morning, just the two of us. And we learned this from these showrunners. Coming in with a really clear plan of here's what we're going to do. Here's what we want and let the room know that we want to get through breaking the first half by lunch.

And so now we're on the same page and we probably already talked out what we think it should be in some form. And so we kind of have a path of what makes the most sense. So that way it's like you're getting, I think you're getting the most out of your staff because a staff that doesn't know what you're looking for is that's your problem.

And it's not going to be a very helpful staff. Well, and

Kat: once they know what you're looking for, they can also they'll, you know, you get them focused to pitch on those kinds of things, but also. Always listen for that off idea, that thing that you that off piece thing and we've tried. I used to me particularly, I would come into the room with like, it's going to be this.

It's going to be this. It's going to be this because this is what it is in my head. And and, and I've learned, I learned a lot more to listen to the offbeat idea, which I should know because I'm the one in the writer's room when I'm not running it. I'm the one in the writer's room who's pulling stuff in from left field.

Usually that's something that may not end up in the script, but maybe spark something else. But when I was sitting in the driver's seat or in the cop chair, I I would shut that down and other people. And so I had to learn to. Let all of that run and let people let your team talk stuff out you and take from them and harvest from them the things that really work.

Harvest, I know it sounds, I'm a user. Your room sounds

Lorien: exciting.

John: Yeah, everybody's tied to a chair and we harvest there. Yeah, there's like a

Lorien: ritual after where, you know, you

Meg: have to. But I think everything you're saying is kind of what's happens in all of our heads. Do you know what I mean? You could be a feature writer and your intellect brain comes in and goes, and today we're doing this and this is our outline.

And this little voice goes, but what about this? Like you had that idea in the shower and that's kind of cool. And you're like, no, we're not doing that. Like I do think it's just, it all just comes out of your head. And it's suddenly in the room was what it sounds like to me. At least in my

Kat: head. I

Jeff: don't know.

And

John: then the danger when you first start doing it, when you have to run a room, there's a moment of panic where it's like, this is like, we call it balloons where it's like you're holding a bunch of balloons and all of a sudden like you let go and balloons are floating away everywhere. And you're like trying to grab the balloon.

Kat: I had a story. We had a story. I know we did.

Jeff: And you want to be like, stop off

John: roading. Let's get back on the path. But then that's insecurity, you know? And it's like, okay, you know what? We knew what the path was at the beginning that we liked. You got to just chill out and let it kind of roll.

Meg: And what's your advice to emerging writers who want to get in that room and be a writer at that table?

Like, in terms of writers that you think, you know, mistakes you've seen or you've done or good

John: things. You know, I think the job of every writer on a staff, from staff writer to co executive producer is to help the showrunner try to row in the direction they're wanting to row and try to help them find that direction.

The upper level writers should be... saying, well, here's what I think. And they can push back a little bit more. They've got the experience, but for, I think emerging writers in your first few jobs, but I really do think it goes all the way up until it's your own show, you want to be the one to help the show runner find what they want.

Like if the show runner comes in and it's like, I want this to be an underwater ballet this week and everyone in the room, it's easy. Anybody could say that's, that doesn't make any sense. This isn't an underwater show. There's no music. Be the person who tries to figure out how to make that work. And if you're that, you will not get fired.

People want that around the person who tries to help you see your vision through. And that's what we started doing early. Like, and it's fun. It's actually fun to try to figure out how to make something work. That might not work.

Kat: Right. I had one moment where we were breaking it a story.

I'd been put in charge of a room and we're heading to, we had a bump towards the end of the story. Like it was a sitcom. So it was a bump in the final act and one of the writers and he was a younger guy who was not experienced in the room and he pitched a fix that meant going back to page one and rewriting the entire thing.

And I, he pitched it out and I was like, so you want us to go back to page five. And it's like, and I walked him through the whole thing and I was, I have to say I was probably a little harsher than I should have been because it was like four days of work. It was four days of work that he was just like unthreading.

And it was like, literally, really, you want us to go back to act one and do this. So that we now have to rewrite everything after that rather than let's work on this moment here because we know we can find a fix.

Lorien: Okay, but I have to ask you a question. That's what Pixar was. That's Pixar, right? I saw that

Meg: Over and over.

I'm saying the exact same thing. Like, we had somebody on Inside Out 1. Who is a genius and I think is amazing, but he would listen after and it was like six hours in the room and you're exhausted and you're like, we have something we have chiseled this out of our souls and worry and nothingness. And he would go, Are we in the mind and I'd be like no, don't you dare.

And then, but Pete really loved that he loved. allowing any curveball to come in because he just, you know, and because it's features, it's very different, right? You're not on a TV schedule, right? Bop. How was that for you guys? What's the Pixar process and how does it, that was your experience of it?

John: I remember on the first few days, because there's these rules, like, if you're a staff writer on television and you pitch problems without a positive solution, you can get, you know, you do that three times, they're not going to want you in the room anymore. And especially, like, support staff do not pull the legs out from underneath the story.

And I remember, like, on day three, it's that feeling where you have a piece of coal and a little bit of, like, like, straw and you're blowing on it, like what you're talking about, it's like, this is going to be a fire. And I remember one of the support staff just literally just stepped on it. It's like, that doesn't work because of this.

And our director was getting into the idea a little bit. And I just remember us like, what just happened? Like, that doesn't

Jeff: happen.

Kat: And then it killed

Jeff: it. Yeah. And it was like, wow. So that was different, but

John: we kind of adjust. I think we adjusted to it a little bit when we got the game, which is, okay, let's just try another path.

And but it was an adjustment, but I feel like television rooms. Kind of were the perfect I mean, we worked our way up from Staff Writer through every level, and so, we'd kind of seen it all before in different ways, and so I think that really helped. It was like we went through a training ground for

Meg: Pixar.

Yeah, I mean, I think that in any room, you're gonna get naysayers, or people who are really trying to help, and naysayers isn't even the right word. They're really trying to help by saying, I'm nervous, that doesn't work. Because I can see you're gonna walk into a wall, right? And I do think it takes, it just takes experience to have the solution, right?

Listen, Andrew Stanton was on this show, and he was like, Nobody tell me what doesn't work unless you have a solution! Like, this is part of any creative process that's a group process, right? So I don't think it's special to Pixar, even. So, you have said about Pixar development, how character based it is?

And that in television it can be more plot based. How did you guys find that? Did you love it? Did you find as writers you had to shift? Or was it what was the experience of moving so character? And I would assume thematically based.

John: Yeah.

Jeff: I feel like when we first got

John: there, the, you know, the movie was in a sort of that iterative stage where it I think the big struggle with Elemental was you know, there was this question early on and Meg, you were in a lot, so many of these meetings, is it a romantic comedy or is it a family story with whether it's trauma or whatever?

And it was like, How do you find those two things? So the movie started to feel like two different movies because it's like the first attempt at a solution where the first half is a romance and the second half becomes more about family. And I honestly, I think we came in with the attitude of this needs a little plot.

It's, it doesn't have an I want that goes all the way to the very end. It has an I want that gets halfway through and then it becomes a new I want. Right? And so I, and we talked to Pete a lot about this in the beginning. Like, how do we. Is there a, we always call it the moonshot goal, that it's like, it's the big one that gets all the way to the end.

And I think for us, I think it was helpful to have a couple people who were used to you have the characters in television that are established and now you've got to find where I want and what's the obstacle. And so we kind of came in with a lot of that attitude I think at the beginning. And and I think it was helpful, but it also, you know, I mean, it can lead you slightly into directions where you aren't going after just character drive, which to me was the most exciting thing to start to learn.

I feel like we went to graduate school, by the way, in writing, at being at Pixar. It was spectacular. I say

Lorien: the same thing. Yeah. I went to, I got my MFA in playwriting, and then I showed up at Pixar, and I was like, Oh, structure.

John: Right, the structure is coming from the characters I want and the obstacles to that, versus it's a plot you're overlaying to put this character through.

And and I think that was, it was interesting to have that shift.

Jeff: I find that often in my feature writing that There is an I want that kind of deflates at the midpoint. Would you mind elaborating a little bit specifically on that? Because I think it's like really valuable and I see it happening in my own writing.

Meg: And I haven't It's very common too. It's very common to in early drafts. How did you guys, how do you deal with that? If it's happening or how do you try to make it not happen?

John: Well, can And can we speak specifically about Elemental? Is that helpful? I think the biggest thing with Elemental, finally finding it, was, because it was this constant balance of is it romantic comedy or is it, you know, and it was the I want, what's Ember's I want?

And there was an early version where she knew she wanted to leave the city. Almost like a Disney princess at the beginning, singing about I want to leave this town. And that felt very young. I remember Pete was like that's not, The experience that I had it, I didn't realize the burdens and things like that until I was in my mid twenties.

And so we started toying with like, I want to take over this shop. Right. But that's what we started to discover is that's a very intellectual want in a lot of ways.

Jeff: And so.

John: And it also kind of fizzled out because when you had this romantic comedy, it's like, okay, do I want the shop or not? And there's love.

And so we finally kind of landed on, I want to be a good daughter. Like, that's what I want. That's programmed into Ember at the very beginning of this thing. And I think the reason that Bao works at the end of that movie is because that's, she finally gets the, you're a good daughter moment at the end. So that's what I would say.

If it fizzles out in the middle, it's probably not a big enough goal or it's not a deep enough. Deep enough. It's not something it's almost like find the thing that they don't want to deal with and make it the hardest possible thing to pull out of them. And to us, it's always a sign like we're not digging deep enough if it feels solvable halfway through the thing.

Kat: And I think one of the ways we eventually got to that was because like John said, we did go through the. I want to take over the shop. You know, kind of is that was as John and I always call it the house number that sort of the simple goal that you're going for.

I'm looking for that house number. And and then it becomes discussions to, to, you've got to question. We started to question. And I think with, when you're looking at anybody's goal, it's like, why do they want that? What does that mean to them? What is the deeper drive behind it? It's not just, I want to be a good daughter.

It's all about how does she feel about herself? What does she feel? She owes her father, you know, all of those things. You've got to look at everything. You've got to always ask the question, why, when you think you found the simple goal. The next question is, but why that goal, and you got to keep you just got to keep on peeling it until you get to the center thing that.

Almost has no words. It's that thing that you feel so deeply that it almost doesn't have words. And I think for Ember, it was so deep in her and she didn't have the words for it. I want to be a good daughter. I want to be a good daughter to my dad. And I want to make him happy. And I want to fulfill that thing in him rather than fulfilling something in herself.

Jeff: Do you remember yeah. And it feels like

John: so many of those stories, it's like people have all these intellectual barriers they've put up their lives normal somehow. And then you're kind of, your job is to just rip them away from that person until it there's Ember at the end of that movie sitting on the bridge.

And Meg, I remember we discussed this and it's like, how do we get to the gorilla emotion of that, where there's no longer words, just want to scream and throw something. And if you're not there. Yet, then that's where you got to get, I think, is like to the point where you can do is scream because that is, it's so raw versus it's intellectual or it's something you've put up in front

Meg: of yourself.

And it's so the way you get down into the human condition. That's why the audiences can relate to it no matter where they are, how old they are. It doesn't matter because it's just about being human. And so much of what you're talking about, too, is trying to dig down to that so that. The audience can want it too, right?

Like, so many times, be it Pixar or wherever, you're like, she wants to be class president. She wants a shop. And you do those many drafts trying to make that emotional. But it's just not emotional. Because, like you said, what does that mean for her? What does being class president mean for this? person because that's going to be the kind of common human thing that we're all like, yeah, now I want you to be class president.

So I do. I totally agree. And it is so much of the work. And you're saying, right, that's also where then the plot comes out of that.

John: Yes. Yeah. I think that's, I don't know. I feel like it is that what do I want? You're trying to solve. You're trying to solve this deeper want and she, and you know, you may not, you know, you want to be a good daughter.

So now you're going to the extreme ends of the earth to try to preserve that. And in Ember's case, it's, I want to be a good daughter, but there's always that, but, and the, but is you know, to be a good daughter means take over the shop, but I have this temper. And then the temper around the midpoint is revealed to be actually, it's her telling her she doesn't want to run the shop.

So now it's become a deeper, more active. Obstacle, but it is why it's the plot because every bit of that plot is I want to be a good daughter in some form all the way, you know, to the end. Now, I know

Meg: that this was a very personal movie to Pete, so can you guys talk about coming in and like you said, you need to row in the direction the director is.

You know, put the boat, but I think as a writer, it also, you have to find what's personal to you about it, meaning that human thing in order to write it. How did you guys thread that needle in terms of writing this film for Pete and yet having to find what was meaningful to you guys?

John: So, okay. So this whole thing of am I a good daughter?

Right. I want to take over this thing. Bizarrely. I had a grandfather was a fighter pilot. I was expected to be the grandkid to go into the air force academy and all this other stuff. And then I became a hippie stoner at one point and then decided not to do that. And he forever, he lived to be 103. And we became really good friends later, but it was bad for about six years.

And even at a hundred he took a dig at me. He's like, I'd hate to go to my grave without flying a high performance fighter.

Jeff: But I

John: could really relate to this sense and it's as far

Jeff: from Pete's.

John: specifics as possible, but it's the exact same emotional thing to lock into, which is I let down someone that I greatly loved and admired because I wasn't that person.

And so for me, that's how I was able to lock in. Yeah.

Kat: Well, for me I'm in, I didn't have a fighter pilot grandfather. But my family is an immigrant family. I'm second generation American Dutch. Nobody, Dutch are not the glamorous sort of the glamorous immigrants. We came with wooden shoes and white bread.

But but it was a, there's a culture there that was very much, in my family at least cannot speak for all Dutch people across the world, but in my family, it was very much, you live a very practical life. You you look for that practical job that is going to support your family. You know, you make sure there's food on the table.

You make sure your bills are paid. You make sure, you know, all of these very, like for me, it felt like very in closing. Things and you weren't allowed

John: to read the color comic.

Kat: Yeah. Oh, yeah. And it was a very Dutch Christian reform. Is a kind of where that I grew up in is it is can be very beautiful.

Very conservative religion. So I was not allowed to read the colored comics on Sunday. I had to wait until Monday. The thought of being like actors were like that, there's something really sinful there. And it was like, you were just meant to stick to the practical goals. And there was a lot of stuff that was forbidden and I was very much, I remember in my Sunday school class, always asking the question, why.

to our pastor. It's like, why is this? Why is this? I became the why girl. It was like, very annoying to everybody. And and so it's like, I understand. Dude, I had a, I didn't understand what my own want was for a long time until I finally realized I had this creative thing inside of me and I thought I wanted to act.

And so that was where all my first stuff was. And I kept it really quiet because in my family actors, that's a sinful thing. It's like actors are like, you know, don't, you don't want an actor in the family. And so I never told anybody about it. And finally, I do remember one day in Sunday school our minister actually asked us all what we wanted to do.

And I very bravely, I was terrified. I finally said, I think I want to be an actor. And he paused for a second and he said, good, the world needs more Christian actors.

Meg: Okay. It's something that's something. Then

Lorien: there's a stone to lay down there. It was,

Kat: you know, but it was like Ember. I think that I want inside of me was very strong and it leads you, it, it leads you where you need to go. If you listen to

Jeff: it. I think a lot of it

John: was getting in hearing Pete's story and then finding those things you relate to and I think that's how you do.

That's how you do it on a television show, which is what is this person trying to say the leader of this and if it's a human story, it is a human being who has this desire. You can relate in some form, and it's finding that thing that you relate to and going all in on relating to it. I think that's where we really connected.

Yeah.

Lorien: So in the story, there isn't really a clear personified villain, right, which is usually what you get to in real life. We sort of butt up against that, like kind of what you guys are talking about. And so how did you navigate that story wise, plot wise, her emotional journey through? Right. I want to be a good daughter.

What's the villain to that?

John: You know, it's funny because we had in the first version we did, it was almost a Chinatown storyline. Meg, I think you saw it where it's like Wade's mother was a villain. Yeah. They were going to blast through Firetown with a water gun. I was

Lorien: expecting her to be the villain.

Right. When we were about to meet her, I was like, okay, Here it comes, you know, not because I wanted it or needed it just because that it was just felt set up that way a little bit. And I was really happy when it wasn't. I was like, Oh, delightful. You know, like, Oh, I loved it.

Jeff: I, you know, and I think one of the things also is there,

John: there's a place where Bernie and I think they tried it out a few times as they needed to, where Bernie was the antagonist and you've got to try that on and.

You know, and it was funny. I think we learned a lot from having the villain with Wade's mom, where it was like, this feels like it's a love story. And can we do Bernie? Cause he was a lovely guy in that version for the kind of the first time they were at Ember and Bernie Warren at each other's heads.

And we all found out, wow, we really like that. We like where Bernie is and attacking Ember or she, he's not the antagonist. And then there was this discussion of like, do we, what if we don't have that? Cause it feels like the simpler way to go is Bernie is going to be actively against her. And in some ways, I guess he's the antagonist because the expectations he's putting on her are what Are in the way, but he's almost like a benevolent jailer in some ways.

And I think that's, was a lot of work had to be done to make that actually feel like tension and feel compelling. Yeah, but it was, I think it was a lot of the tricks of the last three. Screenings was how do we make that work?

Lorien: Yeah, I love what you're saying about trying stuff on, right? You gotta go down that path and down that path.

Like what you said earlier about, well, that might not work, but let's go down a different path, right? So you have all these options

Meg: open. Well, you're trying to make one thing work and you realize, well, that doesn't, but we figured out this. And I just want our emerging writers to hear, that's why you're writing many drafts, you know?

It's not why you're, to have this expectation that you're just gonna write it is not real.

Kat: Well, in writing is free. It's like, honestly, sitting down and writing is free. We had a guy that we worked with who it's like you'd go down a pathway and he'd say or you'd pitch something. He's like, let's put on that sweater and see if it itches.

It was like, Oh, please.

Jeff: But it's a, it's not a bad saying. It's not a bad

Kat: saying, but it's like you've got to be willing to go down those pathways because those pathways will teach you something. Either give you be a very clear nope, noping out of this, or like, you know, that's not complete.

That brings me something, but not everything. What else do I need? Or like, boom, that's it. You know, you've got to be willing to try pathway after pathway before you find the right one. It's in

John: a way it's embracing failure, which is so hard to do. It's like, how do you embrace that? A lot of these paths are going to fail and that's part of it.

You learn more from failing than you learn from succeeding, you know, truly. And you know, it's funny. I remember pretty early in our career, we, Cat and I started playing. This song, the United President's United States of America song, We're Not Gonna Make It. Do you know that song? Before every pitch we would go into, we'd just sing it in the car at the top of our lungs.

And the lyrics are all about how we're gonna fail. We could never possibly make it as a band. And we had decided early on, this job is about taking chances and a lot of those chances will fail. And I think that is advice both for the career, just embrace it. It's part of it. It's why a lot of writers like baseball, because if you're batting 300, you're a great baseball player.

Like comedy writers. If you're hitting 300 in the comedy room, you're doing pretty good. Three out of 10 are hitting. And I think it's embracing failure on the page too. It's because you're going to learn more from that than you're going to learn from getting it right sometimes.

Lorien: So how do you manage that?

Writing is free, but there's also this constant urgency to get it done, to figure it out, right? You do have deadlines, you know, there's the screening coming up, or the pages are due for the session, you know, for the shoot tomorrow, and also as we age, as we get older. And so how do you, what tricks do you use to manage that, right?

Yes, this is probably not going to work, obviously, right? We're just, we're going to fail. We're going in for the big risk. We're going to fail so that you don't. I don't know if that's quite what you were saying, but that's what I say. I'm going to jump off the bridge. I might as well just jump off the bridge wearing a feather boa and pantaloons, you know, shooting water

Kat: guns.

John: I think when we jump off the bridge with pantaloons and water guns, we think it's the right direction.

Jeff: Well, obviously,

Lorien: I mean, why else wouldn't you do it? But they'd be like, and I'm going to add a hat. Yeah, but you know,

Kat: so

John: it's somewhat I feel like I heard Andrew Stanton say this is it's you're gonna make a lot of mistakes to get it done fast in some ways, as he said that.

And I think that's been our attitude also, which is we will do our draft. So if we're sent off on script to write, you know, on staff, we have an episode due. We'll write the first draft of that thing the day one and it will be horrible and it but we will get it through it and it's awful. And that allows us that little window of time.

So now that we can, you know, kind of try stuff. Yeah. Is that an answer?

Lorien: Yeah. And so for a writer who might be what they call writer's block, right, which is not something I. Like to agree with is a thing that exists, like I can't write. I don't want to write. I don't know. I'm afraid to write. Just sitting down and writing that thing sort of will save you time in the long run.

Whereas if you spend a week being afraid to sit down and write it for all the reasons, that's when you run out of

Meg: time. Yeah, absolutely. I just, my son's going through this right now on something he's supposed to write for school and I spoke to a young filmmaker who's been working on something for years and I was like, you just got to write this.

You just, and it's kind of both of them were like, but I don't know this. And I don't know this in the audience. And this person said this and this person said that, and this person said it needs to be this. And it's just like, just write it as badly as you can just literally just let it suck. And people just, it's such a block.

And I would assume that when you're in a TV room, I know at Pixar, sometimes tough shit, like it's do like, you don't get to do that. Like it does train your brain that you don't die when it's terrible. It doesn't feel great, but you don't die. What's your

John: experience? There is no, like, we couldn't think of anything if you're on staff.

There's no, like, oh, well, I just couldn't think of anything. It's like, think of something. It may be the

Jeff: worst thing in the world. Can

Lorien: you imagine? Can you imagine being in a room and saying, I couldn't come up with anything.

John: Like, great, we'll get someone who can. Thank you. Yeah,

Kat: exactly. I don't feel like it today.

There is no, I don't feel like it today. And, but I do think you just sometimes you have to sit down and say, I'm just going to write some shit. I'm just gonna write some shit and it's just like and it's gonna be shitty and but you usually find One sentence in there that you oh, did I just put those words together that's kind of cool Can I build on that or did it lead me somewhere?

I didn't expect to go that inspires me for something else or it's all just shit Now I've gotten that off my plate and now let me try this again.

John: There's this Neil Simon book, is that the one wake me when it's funny? I think maybe, but it's Neil Simon's and I remember he talks about writer's block and he says writer's block isn't having no ideas.

It's having too many ideas and no confidence to choose one of them. And so I guess what we're saying is that's your problem. If you're not writing is there's too many ideas and you don't have the confidence. So start whittling them away. Just grab one, try it. And then now, you know, that's not it. Throw it out.

And it's a way of kind of breaking through that. I think.

Meg: And I'm having that, I've had that experience with my husband collaborating on this project where, even just yesterday, he was like, What if we did this? And I was like no! But I know he's gonna pitch it for the rest of the day. And I, and it's gonna be quicker just to, you know, move the outline page over here and be like okay, if we did this crazy thing, Which is crazy.

What would it be? And we just started banging it out. Bang. And yes, it didn't work. But we did find something. He felt heard. We tried it. Like for collaboration too. I would think you got to try it. Even if it's feeling not good to one of you. Do you look at there? You guys can't see them.

But they're both laughing and looking at each other. So I'm interested to see what's going to happen

John: right now. We had this thing that we figured out because we used to battle over which way to go, like you're talking about. And then sometimes we just wouldn't have time. And then we came up with this thing that was the third way.

It sounds all very like, you know, yoga, like retreaty kind of talk, but the Matrix . But it was like if the, we argue a little bit and if we can't agree on one or the other, we literally have to come up with a third way and it can't be. My way, but 10% different or yours, it has to be completely different.

And right away, you discover if someone's going to be like you, I don't want to go over the third way. You care more about it than I do. Let's just do your way or you can do this third way. It works fantastic. And I think that's how we resolved all that is it's like third way. And truly someone will just be like, I don't want a third way.

We'll just, let's just do yours.

Lorien: It's like a threat. Third way. Get on board. Or third way, and that's going to be a lot harder and take a lot longer. But I think it's such a great option because it could be the answer.

Kat: Yeah, it really could be. It's

John: in that third ways, honestly, is where we've come up with some of the craziest shit you've ever seen that we put that we've loved.

Kat: Yeah, that we've ended up really loving.

Lorien: So how would you suggest somebody on their own do that? Where, okay, I tried this, ugh, I tried this, ugh, okay, I gotta come up with more ideas. But then you have to let go of those ideas one and two without dragging any legacy things into the third way. By yourself, that sounds really hard.

You know, because I'm always trying to build on things. Maybe I'm just coming up with an excuse not to write this afternoon? I don't know. Like, I'm very complicated, but I'm not judging.

Jeff: We have this thing where we

John: We'll save a file as like crazy try. Right. And then now that crazy truck, cause you have the other version and now this is just, this is like Looney tunes.

We're just going to try something completely off the rails and now it's in a different document and somehow it feels like it's not destructive. And I think. It's safe.

Jeff: Right. It's a crazy try,

Kat: guys. It's a crazy try. You can do whatever you want. You could, you know, they could suddenly break out into, you know, a porn movie in the middle of your script, you know, but it's not in the paper you're going to be turning into anybody.

John: No, that's the porn try. We always do

Jeff: the

Kat: porn try. I'm sorry. I confused that with the porn try.

Lorien: Did you say the porn try? Yes. I mean, that's cool. Whatever you need to do to get through to the draft .

Meg: Oh

Lorien: my God, that's amazing. No, I really, I do that. Yeah. I have like so many files that iterate through the day so that I can feel like I have something that might work.

Kat: And then the important thing about that though is I am terrible at organization, so organizationally, I'll have all these different tries and then at the end of the day, I'm like, which one was the one I landed on? And then I have to go back through and it's like, but what will normally happen when I do that is like, Oh, I like this sentence from this one.

I like that thought from that one. And I like that thought. And so I kind of end up doing an amalgamation.

Lorien: This organization is actually a process superpower.

Kat: That's it. That is my, all, that sentence is my middle name.

John: These cats are so disorganized, I can be like, Oh man, the only version we could find was my way.

Oh well, let's just do

this. It's all a head game. It's like, How on earth do you convince yourself to move forward? Like, it must be like what running a marathon's like. Or even running a hundred yards. I wouldn't know either of those things. I wouldn't

Meg: know those

John: things. . I wouldn't either. I never wanna know those things. But here's

Kat: the thing, here's the thing.

It is like, I mean, I've been really mad when I've been driving, you know, like I'm on the freeway and suddenly the perfect phrase comes into my head that like, oh, that's the answer. That's the thing. I'll remember this, I'll remember this, I'll remember this. And then I get home and I have no idea what it was.

I can't, I can pull up two words in my brain. But I can't remember that it's like waking up from a dream and it was like such a clear dream. And now in the light of day, I have no idea what it was, but I'm left with a feeling. And and then all you can do is go with that feeling. And because it's like, in a lot of ways, the exact words are not important.

It's the thought and the feeling behind it. So, you know, as long as you can remember, I think, I feel like as long as you can remember what that felt like, you can recreate it. It won't be exactly the same. It won't be the exact same words, but that thing will still go into your project.

You haven't lost it.

Lorien: Yeah, I think that's really powerful because there have time, have been times when I have written the thing down somehow, like on voice text, or I've woken up and written it down, and it's not as good as I thought it was, but the feeling is there. Like I had this dream and I wrote down in the middle of the night, duck boat, and I was like, sure it was it.

And then the morning I woke up, I'm like, duck boat, but I can remember the feeling of the dream still, even though duck boat is absurd, but I will one day make duck boat. I just don't know How to quite translate it, but I remember the feeling and that feeling felt so good of this is the idea, you know, it has all these elements, but you know what I wrote down was duck boat.

So who knows what you would have written down in the car had you had the chance, right? It's you were holding on to the feeling.

Jeff: Yeah, I was always

John: picture spouses of writers and how hard that must be for like you're living with someone who suddenly just goes duck boat and like runs out of the room.

Lorien: Or I'll do this, I'll be like, Okay, to my husband, I have this idea. And I start pitching it through, but I haven't thought it all the way through and I get to the point in the middle of the scene and I'm like, and then Okay, let me just back up a little. So earlier, what I think happened is... Like a bad pitch, the poor thing.

Yeah, it's the worst pitch ever, and he's like, I lost your, I'm what? And I'm always like, okay, never mind. I'll go write it down. So in a way, I use him as this, I punish him as my sounding board. But yes, like, duck boat, and then...

John: Where'd she go? No idea.

Meg: This has been so much fun, you guys. Kat and John, I was so excited to have you on the show.

And we always end every show with the same three questions. So we're going to ask you guys what the first question is, what brings you the most joy when it comes to writing? Who goes first?

Jeff: You

John: go. Honestly, I think it's getting getting the laugh. Oh, I hate to say it, but it's like, whether that's on the page or whether it's On screen or with the crew that will never be or in the room and it'll never get in the script.

I think I kind of live for that a little bit. And I remember when I was in college, I first got into improv. I was like, ah, this, I think I want to do this. I want to do stuff, make people laugh. And someone was like, that's so giving, like, you want to make people laugh. And I was like no, I want to make people laugh.

Like, it's a selfish thing.

Jeff: Then I think I come to realize

John: that I think it's like, It's a connection is ultimately what it's about. If you can get someone to laugh with you, you've made some kind of connection in some form, but yeah that's what brings me the most joy in showbiz. Kat doesn't have anything that brings her joy in shaping.

I don't have anything that brings

Kat: me joy. You just got notes today, so. In general. No, I think when I the thing that really brings me joy is that feeling where I've cracked a moment. There's a you've suddenly, you're driving or you're half asleep or you're talking to somebody and suddenly that unexpected thing Leaps into your head and that you didn't even see coming and and and you get the chance to write it down.

I mean, my notes are full of like one sentence things that I know I'm going to use for something at some point, but it's like that, that, that. That, I don't know how to describe it. It's like that moment where a beautiful little thought that's just perfect for what you need or what you can save to use later just suddenly appears.

I think it's magic. It's just, it's magic. It's beyond words. There's something in our brain that is just beyond words. And I love it when That plus the words connect, that's my greatest joy, I think, in

John: writing. Which from now on should be called a duck boat, having a duck boat.

Kat: Having a duck boat.

Lorien: I mean, I'll make a t shirt. That will be what that idea actually was, is that I had to make a t shirt. It's all coming together. All right here's the second question. What pisses you off about writing?

John: I think the thing that pisses me off about it, and I guess this is collaborative writing, is when someone kills the play of it in some ways.

Like, I'm talking about that thing with the little thing you're blowing on to try to, like, here's an idea if, and, you know, someone steps on it and is like, maybe there's fire over here! And that feeling when people are shutting people down instead of rolling with it. I think that's, if I catch myself getting...

angry in showbiz. I think that's it. But we worked with a guy who said, if you ever get angry in showbiz, it's because your ego has been hurt. He's like, always, if you're angry, it's because in some form your ego has been hurt. So maybe that's not why I get angry when people step on it because we're not collaborating.

It's because I wanted my idea to go through.

Jeff: It can

Kat: be both. I think it is. Yeah. I think hearing no is the thing that is and it's like hearing no from an editor, a producer, a whatever, I hate hearing, it's like the thing that I hate the most is hearing no from somebody you're collaborating with or that no inside your own head is, and so I guess that's just, I'm talking about just generally negative, negativity.

Everybody hates negativity, but it's like, I hate hearing. No. Particularly when look, my idea may not be the greatest idea ever, but don't say no. Please don't say no. Say yes and say, you know, well, what if we, whatever. But just don't say no. It infuriates me. That's a great answer. Good to know.

Lorien: So, no, that's not the answer, you guys.

Yeah, we're gonna cut that from the show. And it's not funny. No.

Jeff: It is funny. It's just so unhelpful, right? I was just getting, working with someone on something, and I felt like I was giving a lot of no's, and I was like, this is just not helpful. Like, at best, this is very unhelpful right now, so. I totally agree.

The last question we ask, and this will be interesting because you guys are a partnership. But if you could go back and have a coffee with your younger selves, what advice would you give them? And I think I would love to hear you answer that maybe individually. And then also as a team, I'd be curious to hear

John: I think it'd be different.

What I would say as a team individually, I think I would say, don't stop wasting. Don't waste a bunch of time in your twenties.

Jeff: Worried

John: people think you're stupid. If I'm a hundred percent honest, I think I wasted too much time. Like this is good. I don't know. Did I talk about that too long? And it's like, it's a waste of energy and it doesn't do any good.

They're going to think you're stupid or not. I don't know. I can't do anything about it.

Kat: That's

Lorien: good advice. I think for me to hear right now and for so many of our listeners to be reminded of. So thank you. Stop worrying about what other people think.

John: That's I mean, I guess that's a broader way to say it.

Stop where don't waste your time worrying what other people think. It is a complete waste of your time.

Kat: I got to go with that one. To be honest it's like, it is a thing. It's like the, no, it's like, don't listen to the no. Don't waste your time wondering what other people don't waste your time wondering if you can do it or if you're allowed to do it, don't waste your time on that, just.

Say yes to yourself and do it. Try it. You might fail, but say yes to

John: yourself and do it. Can I tell you a lovely thing Kat did? Yes. We were back in Battle Creek where Kat grew up before her family moved to Kansas. And we went to a mall, because that's the there was only where we were staying, that's where you could eat, like, BW3s or another thing like that.

And so we were eating, like, BW3s and we're like, oh, there's a movie theater in this mall. We walked around the corner and they were playing Elemental, and so there was a poster up, and Kat had gone to that theater when she was younger. And so she's like, I want to get a picture. Of the movie poster, and as we were doing that she was suddenly like, You know what?

Cause there are a bunch of teenagers working in there. And she's like, I'm gonna go in there, And I'm gonna, I'm gonna tell them I used to go to this theater, And that I'm one of the writers on this movie. Cause I wish someone had done that for me. Which I think you would have told your younger self at the coffee.

And she went in, and I was like, Oh, don't do that is such a, Setting yourself up for no one giving a shit. Shit. I was ready to be like, Guys, come on. Let's all, let's be happy about this. But Kat went in and told these these people that and they were so excited and they gathered around and took a picture with her.

And it was really, it was

Jeff: so sweet, all about inspiring and it was

John: like, you can do whatever your dreams are. It doesn't mean leave town, but you can do anything. That was what she wanted to pass on to

Lorien: them. What I love the most about this story is the generosity and that it did not come from spite. And how you like me now, there's two different ways to have done that and I like your way, but I know what I would do.

So,

Kat: If you saw the faces of these kids, I'll send you, I'll send you guys the picture. Oh, yes. But yeah, I wish somebody could have done that for me. I wish somebody come to me and said, you can do a cat, you know, whatever it is that you want to do. It doesn't matter if you're from a small town, it doesn't matter if you're not from a rich family.

It doesn't matter, you know, it's all of those. roadblocks we put up for ourselves and we say we're not worth it or that's out of my reach. I don't, you know, it's not, it really isn't. And I wanted those kids sitting there and I one of them in particular reached out to me afterwards and told me how much it meant to him that I had done that.

And I gave them all my email address and said, if they ever, you know, whatever, but but it really, and I think. I got as much or more out of that than they did because it felt really good to be able to pass something along and then remember myself from that time, you know, feeling hopeless, thinking that this was it.

The little town of Battle Creek, Michigan was going to be the end of my life.

John: And they were like, do you guys remember when that lady with all the buffalo wing sauce on her lips came in?

Lorien: Dreams can come true.

Meg: Thank you so much, you guys, for coming on the show. I was so excited to have you on and you did not let me down.

You guys, it was amazing. Thank you so much for being

Lorien: here. Yes. Thank you very much. Thank you guys.

Meg: This is great. Thanks so much to Kat and John for joining us on today's show. Elemental is, I believe, still in the movie theaters and look for it soon on Disney Plus. Please join our

Lorien: Facebook group where a lot of people are finding support and connecting.

It's emerging writers and professional writers and artists and creators in all disciplines. And it's a great place to find some comfort and a little bit of stability during what's going on in our industry right now.

Meg: And also come on over to our Patreon, we've got a lot of people over there and it's a wonderful place.

We're gonna really enjoy interacting with everybody and hearing your stories and helping you honestly. It's been super fun.

Lorien: And I have started to post a little bit more on the Patreon, sort of a little accountability things once a week. So if you're interested in that, come on over and check it out.

And remember, you are not alone and keep writing.