12 Useful Tools To Help Beginning Screenwriters Write A Better Screenplay by Eric Edson 

Really like the lady host in those interviews,she is not just being passive and actively interacts with the guy.Great channel

Commenting as a reminder for myself, 3:44 is probably the best advice I've ever heard.

Love what he said at the end. "If they do not drive the plot forward, get rid of them!" That was one of the gripes I had in the Wonder Woman movie. I liked it a lot but I felt there were too many side characters who ended up being unnecessary.

I love how clear and straightforward Eric Edson is! This is my favorite type of exposition, when learning! Thank you.

Always good to know the rules and then break them.

I admire his vocabulary and personality, the amount of info this video has is amazing thanks for the post please make more videos about KEY elements or basic steps to writing Thank you

So insightful and helpful. My script has gone through multiple rewrites because of this video. Thank you!

Wow! Another fantastically useful video. I'll use these definitions while working on a 48 hour film project at the end of this week. This viewpoint comes at the perfect time! Thank you!

I'm impressed with his ability to speak plainly, which indecently is a quality many would be writers lack. So many screenplays suffer from being way to ambitious in their complexity.

Well said (and reveled)! Thank you, Mr Eric Edson.

Great insights! This guy is peppy and zippy and interesting and he talks funny and I like him!

If you watch enough of these videos - they will all contradict each other.

Huge respect for this guy for his love for films.

I love how he delivers information. You realise it's an interview but the answers are so rich questions don't even matter no more .you just want him to keep educating you.

Haha, I'm so glad to hear about the 4 emotions!!! I've been working on a screenplay and each beat has an emotional change but it's always mad -> happy -> scared etc. and I was lol-ing at my lack of descriptive adjectives, but watching this video, I feel like I'm good! XD

I think the reason many people avoid the love interest is because often times in movies, they are just stuck in there. The love interest is used just for the sake of being used. They don't tie into the theme, push the plot forward or anything, you can take them out of the movie and it would be okay without them. Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom are two example that come to mind.

This was really helpful, thank you!

1:19 been looking for this...

Excellent, thank you!

Great check list 👍 and inspiration

Who ARE you?? Your video postings are AWESOME!! So versatile and comprehensive...extremely useful!

I needed this!!

Have you been spending time in the UK? I've never heard anyone but the English use the word bloody in the way you do. I like it.

Thank you for the video

this guy is amazing. smart words

i think that it's important to remark that he is talking about formuleic story telling. there are some stories which wouldn't work with this formula and characters. but it's ok, this is very commercialy focused it's important to know what you are telling and applying the structure and tools that best fit the concept i believe

The big idea I take from this vid is the need to further develop my Gate Gaurdian, its like I had them here but they were not fully realized. Now its crystal clear to me after watching this. Thx😃

Interesting strategies.

I got character categories 1-8 (hero, adversary, mentor, love interest, helper/follower allies, sidekick, adversary agent, gate guardian) Anyone have the rest????

I feel like a better way to say it would be to say "we like to catagorize plots into 4 types", or "we like to catagorize characters into 14 types" rather than saying "There are only 4 kinds of plots". It's a model for veiwing characters and story but not really a limit to them. Most stories fit into those categories because the categories are so broad, and he admits that there are multiple subtypes. It's like saying there are only two kinds of numbers even numbers and odd numbers. It's true, but there are still infinite even numbers and infinite odd numbers separating them that way is just one way to look at them, and there are other ways that are valid and useful depending on what you're trying to do with them.

I've probably learned more about my characters in this short video than I have in the past year.

Does anyone know if he explores the ideas of major emotion categories and character types in his book? Or does his book focus only on Hero actions/Plotting Structures?

Really interesting

Great video!!

Something that hindered me when starting out was expecting to have a great story idea very quickly. I've learned that the best ideas take a long time to develope. You have to leave them in the incubator for months before you write a word on the page.

These Rock!

Love interest is the less used in the people he gets to teach he says and to me is the most used in all my stories xP

The love interest should personify the growth that the main characters needs. And I think very few young writers actually understand what their main character need to grow. Possibly because they haven’t figured out their own ”hero’s journey” yet.

I like the descriptions of the 14 characters (but I was into C.G. Jung and Joseph Campbell) but the real trick is when you are tempted to - write OUT the non-hero non-adversary - character to make them more unique... even if they serve their role in the story... at what point do they threaten to hijack the story... or even in production, when a far more talented actor who’s supposed to be playing the 2nd banana becomes more interesting than the 1st!

Win, stop, escape or retrieve. Is it OK to use all these?

clear and inspiring,, where can I find all 14 different characters outlined? does nayboady know?

He says that there are no internal goals. The main character needs to have a specific and objective goal. So what is Will Hunting's specific, objective goal?

Can another attempt please be made about the captioning? This man has a quite dulcet voice that the recording method hasn't quite captured, leading to difficulty for me in understanding what he says. Seems the captioner hasn't understood either, as there are 'greyed out' words that I assume they haven't registered. Or perhaps there is a more direct option; can a commenter help me out? When he says there are 4 viable goals in screenwriting, is it: when, stop, escape or retrieve? I'm having difficulty with the first word.

Sir Didimus in Labyrinth is literally a Gate Guardian!!!

Plot and story are the same thing? how is that?

I’m writing a Romance story right now, super excited. Not many romantic movies these days. Strange.

HA HA! It's like building a Great Big House without knowing anything to achieve so... That's exactly what my Dad did! And He built an Amazing Hilltop Mediterranean style Villa! Along with a dozen or so/less local workers and multiple local contractors! He kept firing then for multiple reasons, ha da : ]

Could be other things than a love interest character, could be an intimate relationship role.

Going to be honest, all this sounds like a bunch of jargon learned at film school. At the end of the day I don't care about that; I want someone to tell me a compelling story. I don't care how it's done ... I can't imagine Tarantino writing a character and cramming them into the one of 14 categories. He just has an intriguing idea for a scene and let's the characters steal the lines away.

Where can i find a list of these 14 character types ?

1:24

@4:40 Lisbeth of Stig Larsson's trilogy is walking in mad and leaving mad a lot. She is usually mad. Once in a while her character has different emotions, but mostly - she's mad.

Useful content besides, Eric Edson look like an interesting mix between Kevin Spacey and Jack erdie.

damn hes talking some good shit

Any one. What are the four viable goals. Thank you

“If they do not forward the plot, get rid of them!” Escape The Night in a Nutshell.

If we have don't idea to write a script then what we do

I'm having such a hard time wrapping my head around the nuances of screenwriting...and at 48 it doesn't seem like I'll be able to get it. I can't seem to formulate a coherent story.

It's great that somebody can obtain and organise all this analytical information from a film, but watch the creatives crumble when they try to take all of that and assimilate it into their screenplays/films. As close to impossible as anything could be.

It's the same in writing books . 💔🙏

Big ideas... I understand structure and the emotions and other things like raising stakes, etc. But I'm weak in understanding character. Something he said was a lot of students least write about love interests... I partly disagree with his guess as to why. I'm willing to bet most find it cliche, cheesy or not as interesting. Furthermore, I'll bet women are least likely to go there because they want to write stories that don't use women for the same 2 dimensions all the time. BUT! Corey Mandell said a serious writer practices their weaknesses.... sigh.. I don't wanna develop romantic interest skill but it looks like I should. Lol Compromise... when I get good at the over all writing skill beyond beginner level, I'll try romantic (puke) interest. XP Heh

Please develop this story

Some times the best teachers does not paint like Michael Angelo ....some time u must heard to copy some times to not do...

I would love to know who the 14 characters are. Maybe I miscounted.

10 people actually thumbs downed this video. I'd love to hear their perspective on shit. Wow!

Kevin Spaceys brother knows his stuff

Whatever your opinion of his work, Stephen King has done pretty well with his philosophy: “Story is honorable and trustworthy; plot is shifty, and best kept under house arrest.”

Conflicts are important. Without them, your story will be boring.

These guys talk about certain numbers of things as if they're Platonic solids, but you haven't shown any videos where they give proofs. I'd like to see a video like that.

This guy cracking himself up is cracking me up. :P

Far be it from me to disagree with his opening statement about story and plot being the same. Another source from whom I’m taking notes always says that plot is about what happens. Story is about WHY what happens Matters to and transforms the characters. Overly simplified example: A woman gets up and has breakfast and cleans the dishes afterwards. She then vacuums her floor and polishes her dustless furniture. Finally she forced herself to look at the clock on the wall. It’s time. She walks to her window and looks out. The flag is up on her mailbox. She has mail. She smiles humorlessly reminded of the movie with the similar title. Before she can think of another method of procrastinating, she walks to the front door and unlocks it. She opens the door and surveys the yard before stepping out onto the meandering walkway connecting her front door step to the sidewalk in front of her house. She set out for the mailbox making sure to stay on the path. She reached the mailbox, reached in and retrieved the junk mail contained within. She paid all her bills online so all she ever got was junk mail. She headed back toward the house, neither taking her time nor rushing. She looked straight ahead at her front door and made a bee line for it ignoring the path, crushing grass beneath her feet. She entered her house and closed the door locking it once again. She leaned back against the door and smiled. She got a glass of cold water and sat down at her kitchen table after fishing her journal out of the side table. She turned to the placeholder and opened the journal to a blank page. This is Plot. Specifically Status quo. On the nose and mundane? Yes. For most people - but for this woman in particular NO. Here’s why the Plot happening matters to her also known as the woman’s STORY (fear/internal conflict): She hesitated a few seconds to gather her thoughts before she wrote “Day 101. A first today! I made it all the way to the mailbox and back to the house without running on the way back. I couldn’t stay on the path on the return trip but I didn’t run. My heart is still racing even now but I expect that to be the last thing to go away. Tomorrow is Sunday so I’ll have a day to celebrate my progress - before I have to test myself to see if it sticks. I pray it does. Agoraphobia is a bitch but I’m really starting to believe there’s hope for me yet”. Agoraphobia: phobia level fear of open spaces. She is virtually a prisoner in her home due to this fear and is undergoing therapy by emerging from her house and forcing herself to travel the short distance between her house and her mailbox. She’s done it for 100 days but she procrastinates every day before she gets up the courage to venture out. Again it’s her status quo. Clearly the Plot takes on a different significance once you hear the Story narrative/ inner dialogue / journal entry which could be shown on screen or as a voiceover. For me it’s the what happens versus the why it matters to the characters. Put another way, the Story is why the Plot matters. They are two separate things in my understanding. Are they intertwined yes but I don’t think the words are interchangeable. Maybe they are in a screenplay? Because everything has to be visually perceptible? I don’t care about that. Story is connected to internal conflict and plot is connected to external conflict / events and that rings true to me. I’m studying craft with an interest in writing a novel not a screenplay but Story is Story. To be clear, I love everything ELSE this man is saying. 😂😂

obviously a very experienced and talented chap, fair enough, but i can’t help but find it funny when people impart these apparently cast iron platitudes that are near-biblical in alleged accuracy and use, then... “there are only 4 emotions, don’t you know that?” then moments later “well obviously there are others and ones between”

What about of you don't want to build a house and you only need a kitchen then what?

Don’t you learn by doing things that you don’t know entirely? Some people learn first! But some people learn in the process

Not sure about 4 plot goals. For my taste, the best stories have them only as means for intermediate conflicts at best. Like, Melancholy or Paranoia Agent. There are good stories with these goals, but even in some very popular examples, like Twin Peaks they aren't too real. I mean, they are probably needed for most stories, but placing them as foundation is questionable Also regarding necessity of change, I'm not sure it's a must. Most popular sitcoms don't do that much of change of characters and their relationships. Some epic heroes in stories that are made for sake of epicness don't do it either. Though his main idea is that you need to know this stuff to make something decent, which is probably true

Looking at you Ron Weasley 😂

Squared

You need to know your tools before you start writing a story.

Yes, but the reason there are - two valid words - is that story comes to us from campfires and are good or bad... but “plot” or plotting comes to us relatively recently... and used mostly by “architects” who construct a story for purposes - OTHER THAN - telling a story... and as an derogatory by person listening or watching the story and sense the “plotting” is sticking out like sore thumbs...

No, no, no, no. Plot is the cause and effect of events. Story is the background machinery that makes that happen.Child spills glass, which leads to Dad hitting him. Plot. Dad hits him because he has deep seeded contempt for child. Story. Yet another self appointment arbiter of pseudo wisdom from someone who has never written a good movie.

4 emotions? 14 different characters? And we MUST know about it? I have never even heard about this. Don't really think it's a rule.

" There are only 4 kinds of this." "Has to be this." "Must have that." *This kind of rigid dogma should be avoided at all costs.* Some of the best movies and shows don't have or fit these. This kind of moralizing, self-appointed absolute authoritarianism is everything creativity is NOT.

I don’t want plot I want story. Ha sounds like a Trump supporter