5:20 is a slip-up, I meant to say “conscious want” please don’t curse my bloodline

scriptman, you've revolutionized my view on writing and the psychology behind making good characters, thank you for this high quality ms paint content during these trying times.

9:08 there's this concept in poetry that really applies here: detail is more relatable than vagueness. Basically, people won't relate to your story if you shy away from details in order to make it more relatable. If you are writing about someone brushing their teeth, it's more relatable if you tell the reader that their tooth brush is pink and a little bit too stiff, than if you just say "toothbrush." Sure, not everyone has a pink, too stiff toothbrush, but relatability does not come from the reader imagining that the character lives in their own life, but the reader being able to imagine that they could live the character's life. A reader can't imagine living someone else's life without details. When it comes to creating motivations, it's the same. Most insecurities and fears are, to some extent, relatable to everyone. If your character's deepest motivation is not specific, it won't be relatable because then the reader can't imagine themself living the character's life.

I love the absolutely unhinged MS Paint explanations that, ironically, are always extremely useful and practical

Fucked up they threw a brick at crancesca and then she was forced to be two halved versions of herself stitched together

Your writing advice is pretty good, but your hypothetical character names are next level. Can I hire you as a character naming consultant?

Funny enough, this is also a great strategy to have deep conversations with friends and family, though most people aren't as fully aware of their bedrock motivations (which is why I think writing them from 1st principles can be difficult)

"And she's also super chaotic. They love that word." Lol, I know exactly what people you're talking about, dude. Also, I really appreciate the silly names you come up with for your hypotheticals.

Friday afternoon, stuck in a meeting that could have been an email, and what in my subscription box should appear but another dollop of insight into the craft of writing fiction. Thank you for yet another entertaining and informative lesson. And a perfectly timed distraction.

Dude, I've been watching you for a while and I just gotta say, I love how structured and technical you get with your topics. Not to shit on other writing advice channels, but I feel like the discourse is dominated by conversation about themes, vibes, and tropes, but never really cover the structural, logical, "give your story a framework" parts. Usually it's just general vibe advice like, "Your protagonist and antagonist should reflect one another in some way." Like, yeah, no shit. Now how do you actually organize that further than a "We're not so different, you and I" handwave? Anyways, I'm rambling. Just wanted to say I appreciate your content for actually talking about the bones of story structure instead of just hurling platitudes focused on windowdressing.

8:59 I like to add that multiple characters can want the same thing but the reason, the why they want needs to be unique to that character, to their arch or place in the story, that is what makes them different character.

10:45 I think a cool topic to cover is how one cannot create “one character” stories, as external stimuli required to change the main character invariably becomes a character in itself. Wilson from Castaway, for example, while completely imagined, is treated as a completely separate entity to Chuck, and therefore, for the purpose of the story, is. This is exactly what happened when I wrote a short story that was supposed to be a “one character” story. The dead character may not have undergone a character arc, but it still existed within the mind of my living character as a catalyst for change. Therefore, it wasn’t really a “one character story”, but rather, an “only one character arc” story. Lemme know what ya think. Great video as always, LocalBardMan.

I imagine being a consultant in this context is difficult because I would have a hard time resisting the urge to slap someone if the description for their character was “so chaotic and randem XP”

One thing I love about these videos is they're exactly as long as they need to be to get your point across, no longer and no shorter. I wish this wasn't a rare thing on UKposts.

The beauty of your approach to screenwriting Local, is that you have created a method to “have the characters write themselves” which to me has always been a nebulous concept but now that I have a more concrete approach they legitimately write themselves. Not because “I totally know their personalities” or whatever, but I know their core beliefs, how they reflect on the stories theme and what natural conflicts will arise. I’ve been surprised as with this method, the character I have in mind as the protagonist ends up changing because there ends up being other characters with far more interesting conflicts and narrative potential.

As a 2-3 month long viewer, I’m definitely feeling an evolution in the content you’re making. It’s clear that you’re still asking and thinking through new writing questions and dilemmas and that process shines through when comparing this video to older ones. I like how you also involve what you’re clients have in their heads when discussing the subjects you go through, it helps to relate better to the thought process you have. That’s all I had to say!

Crancesca is in my top 10 fictional characters of all time.

When I write characters I make sure to answer two important questions 1. What do they want in the story? 2. What do they want in life?

If there's one thing I've learned from you (and all the other great advice I've found on writing in my searches) it's that you can't just make a character "Fun" and expect them to hold up under any real investigation. Creating a character (or a narrative, or a theme) with dramatic weight is Hard work, and it takes real effort and thought to craft something that feels even a little original and truthful. But considering how impactful those things feel when they're done right, I'd say it's work that's well worth the sweat and tears. (Really happy to see your videos popping up more frequently on here now; it's always cool to watch your methodologies unfold.)

Man I've been following your stuff since month 1. (remember that video on action scenes and "finding the right move" moments?) Since then, you've helped me truly understand the theory and structures behind the best works and the skills of the best writers! All delivered in concise, casual, dryly humorous videos

babe wake up localscriptman posted

Scriptman, you haven’t revolutionized how I think about stories because you have said out loud everything I have felt when being critiqued. You’ve revolutionized how much more passionately I will YEll at people giving me unsolicited and bad advice.

I’ve been struggling with this exact concept for weeks now! It’s honestly gotten me burnt out on writing. Thank you! You really give some of the best writing advice I’ve ever heard!

I always looked at stories like Harry Potter, or FF7, or other long stories where everything is so well written and everything's interesting, and I always felt a little jealous because I sorta want to do that same to, I was like "Man, I wish I had that idea first," but after finding this channel and watching the stuff here I've found that it's all so much easier and simpler than I thought, and I've already gone through these cycles and ideas you talk about in my head, and it just works. So glad I found this channel, it's helping a lot!

There are few writing channels that are able to break down concepts in such an effective way. Awesome video!

i love your videos so much!! i'm not a writer at all but i am an artist and always debate whether i should stick my existing character designs into a story or not. your channel has helped me realize all of the thought and structure that goes behind good storytelling!!

THE LOCALSCRIPTMAN FANDOM HAS BEEN DINING THIS PAST WEEK 🗣 🗣 🗣

Always appreciate how well and practical you explain storytelling. You make it seem so do-able.

Your goofy drawing visuals are actually very helpful lol

There is so many psychological concepts that can help flesh out characters. Tropes are a great short hand, but if you want characters with depth learning about psychology is the way to go and you've absolutely demonstrated that!

This was super helpful. We always hear the question "what does your character want?" but we rarely get the follow up of "why?". these things are rooted in their past and their emotions, and it can be hard to remember that when you're all caught up in the whats of the world and not focused on the whys.

Hello Local Script Man! I just finished watching your most recent upload, the key to writing meaningful action sequences, and I thought it was very insightful into what makes action sequences work. And when I finished watching it, I noticed that it was just unlisted, and shortly thereafter removed. might I ask do you have any plans to rerelease it?

So many uploads! This is awesome.

you are practically the only creator with writing related videos that manages to make everything digestible, interesting and useful - thank you, genuinely, i appreciate your videos a lot

You've helped to rewire my approach when it comes to writing, reading, and analyzing narratives in a new and concisely defined way. Thank you for doing what you do.

Friday Just got off work, and Local drops a new video. Feeling blessed🙏😇

Thank you for the video. Your videos have actually been very helpful in fleshing out my characters and helping me figuring out what I like/ is good about my work and what needs fixing. I look forward to seeing what insights you have.

Subscribed! Already loving the idea of short form nuggets of wisdom with longer pieces of thought too.

I started making a playlist to save some of these videos and then I realized I was on my way to just saving every video on the channel so... thank you. This is top tier content.

i rly appreciate the short but frequent uploads 🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽

I really appreciate these videos, it's great not just in a "I should avoid doing this" way, but also sometimes I feel like "Oh cool, I'm actually already doing that" and it's quite nice to be able to have that kind of reflection instead of just constantly worrying.

I liked when you used a pop culture example, I would love to see more of that. It helps me understand the concept you're describing super well.

The examples really being this to life. Would be great to see a few more, especially where the same core need manifested in different ways. Thanks for making these, each one takes me back to the drawing board but the story gets better each time.

Your writing advice is actually so amazing! I find that most UKpostsrs have really bare videos in the grand scheme of things and I find your content to be really refreshing. (You actually remind me a lot of another UKpostsr I really like: Schnee. He mostly analyzes other movies and TV shows, but he gives writing advice from analyzing especially impressive writing. You two are the only writers I trust on the internet right now.) ANYWAY! I've learned a lot from your videos about characterization and dialogue and such. But what I currently struggle with the most is the outlining stage. I can come up with really cool concepts and a cool beginning and then I have no idea where to go from there. Is it just intensive brainstorm to get through plotting? I feel like there's some system or methodology that I'm missing out on or I don't understand yet. I have my character's internal beliefs, I have a theme, I have their arcs. I'm just not sure what should happen throughout the story.

As far as this writing advice genre goes you probably have the most engaging and understandable presentation I've seen. Nice stuff, very straightforward

I now want to draw fanart of Crancesca, because with her as example you put in words something that helped me understand another thing about my own characters 😅 Your videos are amazing ❤

Awesome video - love the analysis and MS paint. Much appreciated. Enjoy the tangible steps you give so people can quickly improve/consolidate their own characters.

But couldn't they just 'want to survive," but they way they intend to uncovers their flaw and they have to grow to actually be able to?

Could you elaborate on the process of conveying different personalities through dialogue? I feel like I have never really found a concrete way to do this.

Dude, this was really good. Thank you!😊

I really really appreciate that all of your writing advice always goes back to one singular point; themes bro!

your videos have had an actual affect on the way i write. i was adept enough in technical stuff. but you really made me learn the characterization and other abstract things about storywriting. thank you so much

I like the MS Paint/Whiteboard progression Super good and concise vid, I find it easy to get lost in the minutia of story beats and my arc falls to the wayside for the sake of trying to stay on top of pacing and pushing the story forward. Watching this video forced me to pause and open my notepad to write down what makes my characters tick. You explained the core motivation really well, I never considered what a person "wants" as the fulcrum between their past and their arc in the story. Great stuff as usual.

Like some other have said... I don't wanna shyt on other "ADVICE" channels but your's is truly the golden standard for me when it comes to writing advice. It's a scientific, more tangible way of looking at things rather than saying "I FEEL LIKE THIS TROPE IS LAME" which is what most other's advisors say and lead to nothing. I actually leave your channel with applicable knowledge and thought process... rather than confused and wondering why and how and leaving me to find the proper answer on my own anyways like most other advice channels do.

My Guy - back to back videos is insane

genuine best writing advice ive ever seen 10/10, you go girl

This has really helped my view on how I’m writing. You made some really good points and said it all so clearly and so simply that I understood everything from beginning to end while also helping me realize where I could improve on my characters. Really good video, my man👍

I love your videos to death just like the client from the first 10 seconds loves their original story and characters to death

I was literally just stuck a few minutes ago and this helped so much, thank you. 😊

Amazing Video, helps me understand my favorite stories even further, and helps my skills for my own stories

i love this channel so much im having so many big brained thoughts about my story and characters

Thanks for the video!

Fantastic as always!

I haven't seen the vide yet, but I'm sure it's great!

You'll probably see this. Thanks for the videos, man. I'm a theme-centric guy as well and although I don't write in a while, it still gives me a lot of ground for story analysis in my videos. Thanks for keeping me in check about storytelling :)

This is a great summary of the process I realised while watching that I went through when I decided to reboot the 9 year old webcomic I'd made and still loved the characters into my current webcomic (Yeah, not necessarily the best idea; lead to lots of extraneous characters, but that was a thing I learned from this). I had to reverse-engineer characters who can go through a narrative arc from these static "OCs". Some of them changed a lot, because a character who is just a legitimately confident gutsy girlboss is hard to build a narrative around (Captain Marvel learned the hard way...), so the girlboss protagonist ended up as this deeply insecure person who tries to act like a badass girlboss, and it made her so much more likeable and compelling while keeping those surface elements like "has a big sword, loves to fight, says gutsy action movie lines"... but when I first did it, I was like "is this still the same person!?" Ultimately... she both is and isn't, because the old version of the character was a sort of shallow idea about being a really song cool girl created by a teenager, and now she's a young woman who tries to project that idea as a facade. I do know she's a way more interesting character, though, in a better story.

I would love to see you make a video about what I feel would be the next step after you have your themes and your thematic characters in place. I understand that the sky is the limit on this part, going from the core motivations to winning a zucchini contest, but the fact that the options are endless is halting my progress, it seems difficult to translate themes into real world scenarios, world building, inciting incidents, whether to incorporate magic systems, what elements would amplify and what elements would detract from the themes I want to talk about.

This bangs nice work king 🎉

Yo i just watched the 5 writing tips video and this was the most interesting point to me. Happy to see it expended on

Love your drawing skills

This was very helpful to me, thank you

Really well made video. I do like the longer form stuff too, but there's something nice about a very focused topic. I think you'll succeed with either approach. I also really appreciate how often you use examples to demonstrate. Too many creators and essayists get lost in the theory and forget to prove anything they're saying.

Your vids are always s tier man! Your style and presentation makes me willing to listen to the whole video and I don’t feel like I’m being lectured. Might need to get in touch about some consulting for my comic book I’m writing 👀

you've easily become one of my favorite screenwriting channels in the past year

Man, i've been working on a favorite character of mine, and your video has perfectly encapsulated what my worries about him are. I know everything about his external self, but i haven't been able to really understand what his true deeper motivations and wants are. I appreciate the advice in this video, and im excited to start applying it to him!

i love the way you think. this is just pure gold

I feel rather confident with how I've tried 'hitting the bedrock' with why my characters pursue a certain goal, but I'll definitely use your wonderful little flowchart to see if it checks out for them. I've established my characters perspectives on a specific theme/issue and I've given them appropriate backstories to inform where that perspective is coming from and how it might shift, but 'hitting the bedrock' may be the last key experiment to see if how I've written them sticks. As always with your videos, there's always something new to learn and apply. Edit: Already doing the mental flow diagram in my head for my main character, and I think that a significant change is in order to make their goal and motivation consistent with their soul motivation. Okay, this is actually very important and revelatory. There was just something about my MC's motivations in the first act that didn't gel with the rest of the story and what he want and why he does what he does... a rewrite may be in order.

Hello Lucas, the short-form videos are a great idea. You can deliver ideas and get into a discussion with your audience about the subject matter and we get amazing videos from you, like this one. Keep the good work up, sir and thank you.

You just answered one of my biggest question about my characters. Thanks brother, appreciate it

Haven't seen this type of discussion before. I'm excited to learn!

thank you for making a video that's literally a callout post for my exact problem

I needed this advice thanks

Great video! I love the short format. Keep it up. I know you already touched a little bit on the subject but maybe you could say more about realtions between characters? Other kinds of relations beside romantic ones.

may god bless you, localscriptman

Goat! I worked on Talk To Me 2023, seeing you use it as an example in one of your videos was dope! Big fan! Appreciate your videos! 🎬

This has been plaguing me for years and finally I understand. I suppose i should just... Keep asking whys. Oh!! I know! Treat it like literary analysis to reverse engineer it! I could do that. Okay but seriously this video has helped me understand how to tackle this. You don't know how many 'character sheets' i used back when i was a tween because that's what i thought helped, but all the questions were so... Surface level. Literally. There's eye color questions. And whenever i got to fears or whatnot, my answers were surface level too. Also coming up with motivations for the characters in my original stories is so hard too. I used to see it in my mind like, this one character looking pensive, conflicted, before deciding to help character B, but not really beyond it, and stuff like that. An implied soul is exactly it. Thank you a lot for this video

While having this kind of "new age pseudopsychology" vibe, the Enneagram typology sounds like a nice base to identify what you call "soul fears". This is also useful to check if the fears you give your characters are always the same (usually mimicking their writer's) or not. xoxoxo

Im thinking of picking up my old, on-indefinite-hiatus webcomic because of your videos. Thank you for your very helpful educational work!

"Why do I want to win the tournament? Well, it all started at the beginning of the known universe..."

thank you for putting the sponsourship at the end,not in the middle.

Grat videos! Cinema is needing this kind of analysis and theory.

Indiana Jones does have an arc in Raiders Of The Lost Ark. He starts of as a man engrossed in his job due to his separation from Marion from when he was a student. That's the point of the eyelid moment, and the university scene in general and how it contrasts with the high adventure of the opening scene, he doesn't have a life outside of treasure hunting. Throughout the story he gives up on the Ark after repeatedly putting Marion through danger. This is shown when he threatens the Nazis with a bazooka. In the end the government stashes the Ark away and he is a bit annoyed, but you can see that he is very happy to be joined by Marion even though he is not on an adventure and the Ark won't end up in a museum nor studied. Then George fucked everything up with Temple Of Doom being a prequel and wanting to make him into a Bond-like unchanging character.

Man the fact you post stuff like this for free is insane. I've done non fiction writing my whole life as a journalist precisely because I felt uncomfortable with a lot of the delicate parts of character creation (my style always been a little straightforward and maybe too direct). I've made the jump into non-fiction pretty much entirely because of this channel, just great content.

was literally struggling with this exact problem last night, this video dropped at the perfect fucking time for me 🙏

This is the only channel you need.

Literally the best writing channel on YT. It's not content, it's goddamn wisdom.

Another cracking video 👍🔥

I get it. It's frustrating to want to treat characters you have a personal attachment to as a creator, more like an actual person. But you fundamentally don't know every last motivation, every last internal conflict, every last priority of a person. You DO have to know those things if you want to write a character with internal consistency, though. But once you know those things, you also have to have the reservation to not post and signal them everywhere in your story, because then you make your character less like a person to others. All these fundamental things you know about this entity you've created, things you wouldn't even know about your own family members, have to just kind of float around and be available for when they're needed to interact with an event in a verisimilitudinous (true-to-life) way. In other words, it's hidden effort you have to put into creation to make the creating look effortless.

I think Cranchesca could work with the two motivations described. You could tell a story about her motivations coming into conflict. You could make it at tradgedy by giving her the oprotunity for change and her rejecting it and leaving her inner conflict unresolved leaving her just as vulnerable as before with a new group of friends, or let her complete her arc living her own life with a new more healthy support structure. Also, if you dont want them to come into conflict, like you said, one should take presidence, but that does not mean one motivation does not exist. For example solo Cranchesca may still search for a new friend group since her desire for belonging would not come into conflict with her desire for security in this case.

I've been watching you for a while, and I've finally started writing my story after a year of "workshopping" it thanks for pushing me even though you know me. (Im not trying to be parasocial, I'm just saying your videos inspire me.)