Every writer has to pitch themselves, but how do you do it without sounding like a tool? John welcomes back Pamela Ribon (Nimona, My Year of Dicks) for a big talk about small talk and general meetings. They offer practical tips on what to expect, how to get people to open up, navigating NDAs, staying true to yourself, and organically moving the conversation away from the weather and towards your work.

We also look at a pernicious effect of underemployment (starting with a prompt from Ryan Knighton,) and answer listener questions on alternating POV, reusing adjectives, and giving your story beats cause and effect.

In our bonus segment for premium members, we get meta as we discuss the modern podcast landscape and next era of Scriptnotes.

Links:

• Scriptnotes Episode 700 – LIVE


• Pamela Ribon


• My Year of Dicks


• Rental Family trailer


• Japan’s Rent-A-Family Industry by Elif Batuman for The New Yorker


• 37 Seconds


• Good conversations have lots of doorknobs by Adam Mastroianni


• Real Time Lightning Map


• Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEAT)


• Who Is Watching All These Podcasts? by Joseph Bernstein for NYT


• Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!


• Check out the Inneresting Newsletter


• Become a Scriptnotes Premium member, or gift a subscription


• Subscribe to Scriptnotes on YouTube


• Craig Mazin on Instagram


• John August on Bluesky and Instagram


• Outro by Nick Moore (send us yours!)


• Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.

UPDATE 8-22-25: The transcript for this episode can be found here.

The post How to Talk About Yourself first appeared on John August.