It’s a feat to top the Black List, Hollywood’s list of favorite unproduced screenplays, any year. But what if you did it two years in a row?
Travis Braun has been the only writer to accomplish this so far. In 2023, it was his horror script Bad Boy that won the top spot; in 2024, rom-com One Night Only was named the number-one work. Both are currently in development. Bad Boy has Ke Huy Quan and Lili Reinhart attached, while Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner are set to star in One Night Only for Universal.
Beyond this, Braun has already found a ton of success in the children’s TV space, with an Emmy nomination and an overall deal at Disney, where he created the shows Pupstruction, T.O.T.S., and Fast Layne.
His new features fall outside the world of kids’ entertainment, though. Bad Boy is about a dog who uncovers a serial killer, and One Night Only follows the single night every year when extramarital sex is allowed. Both high-concept stories clearly resonated with readers eager for original plotlines.
The diversity of Braun’s slate is impressive, but there’s volume, as well. Which is probably how his work has found a home at some of Hollywood’s biggest networks and on coveted lists.
Final Draft chatted with Braun about his writing process, and he told us that there was no secret formula to it but rather a dedication to pursuing exciting ideas and cutting out noise. Dive into his advice below.
Editor’s note: The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Final Draft: You topped the Black List two years in a row, and you were the first person to do so. What’s your secret?
Travis Braun: Man, I don’t know. I wish there was a secret, then it would be a lot easier to write these scripts.
They’re always hard. Each one is its own challenge. I feel like every time you think you know how to write a script, or at least I think I know how to write a script, I start the next one and it’s a quick rude awakening that all the lessons from the last one just don’t apply to the next one. So it feels like you’re always making the tools as you’re trying to build the car. You need new tools for each type of car you’re building. I wish I knew the secret, but I’m still trying to figure that out.
I think the biggest shift that I’ve made in the last four or five years was just really trying to tap into what excites me and cut out a lot of the noise, which is hard to do. And there’s a lot of voices out there from your reps to buyers, to producers, and everyone has a feeling of what’s going to work. And ultimately, it’s been me just trying to figure out, what do I love? What do I think is exciting, what entertains me, and trying to follow that North Star.
Final Draft: I’d love to explore that a little more because both of the scripts I mentioned, Bad Boy and One Night Only, they’re both high-concept. What attracts you to that space?
Travis Braun: I’m always trying to find something that feels original. That’s why I live in Burbank. I go to the Burbank AMC three times a week, probably. I love that feeling of discovering something new.
That’s what I am trying to find in my writing too, is just chasing that feeling of what’s fresh, what’s a completely new take on a horror movie or a thriller or a romcom and just trying to find something that feels fresh and different and unexpected. Because as an audience member, as a lover of movies, that’s what I’m always looking for.
Final Draft: Your background is very interesting. You work in children’s TV, and you started as an intern and then worked your way to Disney.
Travis Braun: I started as an intern on Criminal Minds, and then I was a writer’s PA there for a few seasons, learning from a great team of writers under Erica Messer.
And then I got into the Nickelodeon Writing Program. It’s a year-long talent development program. And that was my first foray into anything kids and family, and transitioned from there to Disney. Where I started, I was staff writing on Vampirina, and then I’ve just been at Disney since. I’ve created a show called T.O.T.S., and Pupstruction, a live-action series called Fast Layne. And then we just started on my new show, which was just announced last week, actually. It’s Cars. We’re doing a series for Disney based on the movies.
Final Draft: How does writing for TV and children inform your writing for features?
Travis Braun: I think it’s definitely made me a sharper writer, and the biggest benefit has been getting a ton of eps, because we do so many episodes in that space. We’re doing 50 episodes a year on a lot of these shows, which has us every week breaking a new story. Every Monday you’re faced with the blank whiteboard and going, “Okay, act one, act two, act three. How do we tell a new story that’s fun and exciting and interesting?”
And that pressure of always having to just produce constantly, it’s a really helpful tool to be able to just, whether you’re tired, exhausted, out of ideas, doesn’t matter. The train keeps rolling and you got to keep filling that whiteboard.
So that’s been really helpful of just getting those eps and seeing what’s entertaining, what’s exciting. And you do that enough times, it makes you really good at structure, it makes you really good at finding how to tell the cleanest, clearest, most fun and engaging version of the story. You get so many at bats.
Final Draft: How do you face the challenge of maybe not feeling super excited about something immediately? What is your process for breaking a story when you hit that wall?
Travis Braun: I wish there was a process. That is definitely the big question. It’s hard. Everything I’ve written, for the most part, has been ideas that I’ve had been noodling on for a couple years. I mean, Bad Boy was definitely two-plus years of trying to figure out how to write that script. My script Dying for You was at least three years before that one saw the light of day. So a lot of times it’s just sitting with an idea long enough to get over all of the times where you hit the wall.
Honestly, I wish I could say I just power through, and then I find an amazing idea, and I continue on. But the reality is you hit that wall and it sucks, and you put it aside and you’re like, “Ah, that script’s terrible, and that’s not going to work.” And then you wait three months and you’re on a walk in the park and you’re like, “Wait a second.” And you have that idea that fixes it and you turn back to it and you can’t stop writing it.
I don’t know if there’s any special sauce. For me, it’s just time. And I think realizing as I get more experienced as a writer, that that moment where you hit that wall where you do feel like “I suck, the script sucks, everything sucks,” that’s just part of the process. And not beating yourself up about that and being okay just kind of sitting in that uncomfortableness.
Final Draft: And having patience, it sounds like, which is so hard.
Travis Braun: It’s so hard. Like, I just wanted this to work. I know I need a script and I have all these people telling me I need to write this or I have a limited time window, or it’s three in the morning and there’s a lot. Life comes at you fast, and there’s a lot of pressures and you just want to have it done.
That’s definitely something I’ve been trying to work on, is being more patient with myself and not getting frustrated at the work, at myself, as things take time and just trying to let them take the time that they need.
Final Draft: One thing I really loved about Bad Boy is it has such a motor, it moves so fast from those opening pages. For pacing, what is your advice?
Travis Braun: I think for me it’s trying to just read the script again and again as I’m writing it and separate myself from the writer-me and the audience-me and just trying to be that audience as much as possible as I read it through.
And if there’s a line that trips me up or confuses me or bores me, I try to get rid of it. It is such a privilege to get an audience’s attention, especially these days when there’s so many distractions and so many avenues and ways for them to find entertainment that when someone gives you their attention, that is such a meaningful thing. And I do not want to waste a second of it, whether that’s on the screen or on the page.
So it’s just reading it again and again. Most days I’ll start and read the script, however far I’ve gotten, I’ll read it again from the beginning, and every day just try to chisel more and more of the script away to just make it as entertaining and as clean as possible so that I’m not wasting anybody’s time and trying to get rid of anything that stands in the way of someone being entertained by the story.
And that’s a lot of work, but I think that’s our job is to really make it easy for an audience, but also for the reader because it’s supposed to replicate the experience of going to the movies. And the more you can try to replicate that experience and entertain not just in telling a great story, but in writing an engaging script, that to me goes a long way of showing everyone, whether it’s executives, the studio, the filmmaker, art department, costumes, what this movie should feel like when it’s made.
Final Draft: I think another thing that’s so strong about that script is you have several big reveals. They’re so well placed because you don’t hold onto them, you don’t save them, you let them happen, and then the story moves on in a new direction.
Travis Braun: That’s something I continually am learning and trying, experimenting with things. But back to your question about the kids’ space, I think one thing I’ve definitely picked up from that is this idea that each act can kind of feel like its own movie in a way. And the stories that I find really engaging and interesting have those big twists and then they continue on.
And so as an audience member, you feel like you’ve gotten three movies by the end of it. Act one was its own movie and an interesting, engaging, what’s going to happen. And then there’s a huge twist. And now act two is totally different—still connected to your original movie—but totally different tone, feeling, goal, whatever it is. And that’s exciting.
And then you think, well, there can’t possibly be more, and then act three comes. And that can be a totally different movie.
If you go into it with that mindset of, “How can I take this story to the furthest lengths?” it always brings up interesting turns for me of going, “Okay, cool, instead of ending where I think my movie ends, what if that’s actually just the end of act one and then what happens?” And just challenging myself to go further.
Final Draft: You do these stylistic things where dialogue is fading away and it gets smaller in size on the page in Bad Boy. We spoke with Dan Gilroy, and he does something similar where he does little stylistic things for every script. Is that something that you also do regularly?
Travis Braun: I would love to say that I have a house style, but it really, for me, it’s so dependent on the script. Like I was saying, it feels like every script you’re writing is building a car and you need totally different set of tools to do that. Sometimes if I’m writing maybe a thriller or a horror, something that feels scary, and I really want to try to convey those scares, that’s hard to do on a page.
But for my romcom, One Night Only, I don’t think I did much in terms of messing with the text because I just wanted to get out of the way of the story and let the characters shine through in the dialogue.
For me, a big part of the writing process is discovering not only the story, but how I’m going to tell the story. And that changes script to script, because I feel like it’s the same thing with filmmaking. Every movie you’ve got to figure out, all right, what lenses are we using and what’s the color palette and what are the actors wearing and how are we shooting this? What’s the audio going to be like? What’s the score? And all of it has to be bespoke to really tell the best story.
So I think it’s a great tool for writers to have in their toolkit. And for me it’s been really helpful. I think each script I’ve challenged myself to figure out what’s the best way to tell this story and use those tools only if they’re fit for that particular script.
Final Draft: Do you have any advice for someone trying to break in right now? What do they need to know?
Travis Braun: Man, I wish I was in a place to give anyone advice on how to break in these days or to go about it. I wish I knew. We’re all in the same boat of just trying to figure out a way through and trying to make stuff.
I think the advice I’ve gotten from people I really respect and have had long careers has just been follow your instincts, trust your gut, try to make cool stuff constantly, whether that’s if you’re a writer, a director, producer, whatever it is that you do, just continue to try to make the work first.
Try to make stuff that you love and chances are someone else is going to love it. And that works. Whether we’re an economic boom or we’re an economic downturn, people are always going to seek out stuff that’s great. And so just focus on the work, try to cut out the noise, do stuff that you love, and hopefully the rest will take care of itself.
Final Draft: Is there something that you wish you would’ve known when you were starting?
Travis Braun: Great question. I think starting out, this is a trap that I fell into and I think it’s easy to do as a young writer, beginning writer, is to try to write movies that feel like movies.
You watch whatever it is, Die Hard, and you’re like, “I love Die Hard. I should write Die Hard.”
And then you do write Die Hard, and you’re super excited about it. It’s just like Die Hard. The only problem is Die Hard exists, and a lot of studios will read it and go, “Look, this person’s a great writer and this is a really competent draft and no one’s going to make it because it’s too similar to X, Y, Z.”
So I think the thing that took me the longest time to figure out was to write stuff that feels new, that feels original, that doesn’t feel like another movie.
I know that’s scary. I know that’s hard to do. And you start in that path and you’re like, I have no reference. If I was writing How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, I have a structure. I know how that worked, that movie worked. I could just copy those beats and make it my own thing.
And, look, there’s a place for those movies and scripts I think is a great training ground, but to really push to do something new and to do what I think this town really is looking for and really rewards is original thought, it’s original fresh ideas, big swings, and that can be scary. It’s like doing a startup and no one believes in it and everyone’s like, “It’ll never work,” until it becomes the next giant app.
And so it’s lonely and can be scary, but I think it’s also why we do this. We want to make our mark and tell the story that’s inside of us. So I think if I could give myself advice going back, I’d say trust your gut and don’t be afraid to write the things that you really want to do, even if it scares you.