How To Write A Great Story (Decades Of Wisdom Distilled Down To 17 Minutes)

0:01 – Intro 0:31 – Every story must have a Problem/Obstacle/Goal 1:03 – The Problem, the Dramatic Question, the Transformation 2:02 – Transformation/Growth through a personal inner struggle 2:39 – Measuring progress by the story yardstick 3:27 – Character flaws 4:05 – The story idea 5:47 – The logline 6:14 – The craft of writing and your personal process 7:14 – The theme and story concept 8:06 – Writing the first scene 8:30 – (& plotting vs pantsing) 9:03 – Knowing the 5 Pillar Beats: the 1.) Ending/Resolution, 9:37 – the 2.) Beginning, the 3.) Inciting Incident, 10:22 – the 4.) Midpoint, the 5.) All is Lost 10:46 – Writing a script through a series of questions: 11:39 – Ask: Who, What do they want, Why, What do they do about it, How? 12:39 – How to make a scene work? clarity of Goals and Stakes 12:55 – Moving the story forward through: Stakes, Conflict and Tension 13:42 – Only include beats/scenes that serve the story and the character’s Goal 15:19 – The importance of Conflict 15:34 – Building the emotional bedrock of the story 16:12 – Outro: the story you need to tell

Shoutout to whoever edited this, I'm sure these clips are pulled from hours of footage, you killed it!

"There's something in there thats scaring you. And that's good. You need to go there" Love that.

There is something about the way this was put together that made me feel like every person in each interview clip was talking directly to me. "Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid!" I have dealt with enough situations in my life to know that statement has a lot of truth in it. Thank you for that reminder!

Different people have different ideas about what's a great story. In my view, a story which stays for a long time in memory of a viewer or reader after coming out of it makes it great.

Absolutely incredible! How you managed to encapsulate thousands of years of the innate, existential human experience, (need to tell stories), in 17 minutes, is simply astounding. Thank you so much to all that shared their wisdom, and to all of those who created this.

Whoever assembled this montage from the imponderable amount of original interview footage is an editing savant.

This edit is the result of a mad genius.

This is a rare moment that pushed me again to take notes. I'm not forced, but I have a feeling that there is a lot of learning here that I don't want to forget in my journey in creating my first story.

this reads like a classroom of 6th graders answering the teacher on a test about narrative structure. character vs conflict, character development, literally copy pasting that 5 step plot structure all of which i learned before middleschool." make sure to write down all your ideas" "there's no right or wrong way"

The bit about "if something scares you, you need to go after it" resonated big time. I'm trying to write my first story. I've tried many time only for it to crash during take off. Sometimes my ideas wouldn't even make it past the gate. Something is different with this one though. I've actually finished whole scenes. It's actually taken off and ascending to 10k feet! In my very core this story burns with the sun's intensity. But i get these feeling of being scared and anxious. I'm not sure why. I only know that this plane cannot be allowed to crash.

This is gold! I've seen at least half of those writers in your videos and this edit is just awesome! Hope to see more like these in the future

I would like to thank the people and the editors for making this channel be possible. I have this story idea that I have been planning since the early days of high school and plan to share this for the next 5 years or so. This channels has always a point of reference to hone in my storytelling/writing techniques and I cannot express my gratitude enough. Thank you :)

This is priceless Thank you immensely for taking the time to put this together, and share with us. 👊🏾

This taught me so much about what’s different about how to write a screenplay because I study novel writing, and this wild. Of course being on YouTube I’ve seen my share of screen writing tips and advice and have always known its differences but this truly showed me. Thank you

Masterfully edited!!! Seeing talented Writers speak on the entire process of Story, pulled from clips years apart, with all in agreement encouraging us to write Story, got me choked up!

One of the greatest pieces of writing advice I’ve ever been given is that the story doesn’t start at the beginning of your book, there should have already been some stuff happen before your book even starts, and you’re just throwing the reader into the world. In an absolutely underrated book called Thief, it doesn’t even introduce characters to you, the characters just start talking to each other like they’re familiar (coz why wouldn’t they be?)👍🏽❤️

13:00 about the characters having a good time in the middle, works amazingly if they keep the feeling that something isn’t right. And then do the twist. these are the biggest punch to the heart (for me). So much so, I somehow developed a spidy-sense to detec them 😅 “you can’t trick me anymore 😭

Thank you! Very informative. I have a story that crying to get out of my soul and onto paper. It’s personal and will be misunderstood so I have to do it right. I’ve never been published before so intimidating but I’ve carried this around for 10 years. I feel like it’s my life purpose in a way! I’ll get there 😅

Karen, to you and your team, this video is truly glorious! I have spent many hours watching Film Courage. I wish to thank you very much. I have learned so much from you and your brilliant guests. All the best to you and your team. Cheers!