PlotPoints Podcast

PlotPoints Podcast is a working-writer show about screenwriting, prose, movies, television, publishing, and the uneven business of staying in the game. It is not built around scoop culture. Mark Sevi and Chris Stiers are more interested in what writers actually do after the excitement fades: rewrite the old script, adapt the novella, teach the class, chase the article, solve the publishing problem, and start again. That gives the show a grounded quality. Episodes often begin with ordinary check-ins from Southern California before opening into talk about current projects, writing classes, anthology work, seminars, and the long gap between finishing something and getting paid for it. The craft advice usually arrives through example. A discussion of novel length becomes a comparison between prose density and screenplay formatting. A conversation about adapting books to screen turns into choices about what to keep and what to cut. Award-season talk leads back to career perspective, ego, and the reminder that selling one script does not end the work. Film and television culture stays close by. Recent episodes touch Robert Duvall, awards, Spike Lee, Tom Cruise, Star Trek, Australian television, Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, and The Expanse. The references are casual rather than academic. They function like a working writer’s shelf of examples, irritations, pleasures, and caution signs. Chris Stiers’s novels, screenplays, short stories, and Blood Fiction appearances recur throughout, while Mark’s ghostwriting, articles, teaching, self-publishing, and anthology editing keep the production side visible. The show can feel loose, but that looseness is part of its utility. It captures the actual rhythm of writers comparing notes before and after the polished version of the advice exists. Listeners hear ambition, uncertainty, encouragement, career fatigue, and affection for the work in the same hour. The recurring quotes at the end underline the show’s core belief: stories matter, but they still have to be written. PlotPoints Podcast is best for screenwriters, fiction writers, film fans, and writing students who want candid shop talk from people still doing the work. It is less a masterclass than a standing conversation at the edge of the workshop.