List the Youtube Channels That Helped You Write. Which ones you DON'T recommend?

[powerplantanimations]

I'll go first:

1. B-Mask: Greatest essay channel I've ever found on YouTube. What I love about his philosophy is that he tries to find the good in any movie no matter how bad. He says it how it is, but he believes that in order to point the director in the right, you have to find the nuggets. But do to him saying it how it is, he can be a little harsh from time to time.

2. Redlettermedia: These guys are the kings. What I love about them is their Plinkett series. Mr. Plinkett can say some really harsh (and offensive) things, but like B-Mask, they will give credit where credit is due and present cool writing philosophies. They're also funny af. A lot of YouTube channels I know try to mimic them, but they fail all the time (like the Sardonicast group). Obviously the Star Wars videos are good entry points. They take potshots at the prequel series so I should probably tell prequel fans that they love the Mandaolorian and made an apology to George Lucas on their anniversary. Btw Half in the Bag and Re:View are also great.

3. Matthewmatosis: This guy may be a video game reviewer but his videos have helped my writing a lot. He's probably the deepest out of everyone on this YouTube list and cares about details so much that it isn't even nitpicking. He reminds you that every decision you make matters. EVERY little decision. For anyone doing visual stuff like webcomics, I highly recommend him. I loved his Oddworld and Bioshock: Infinite videos.

1. Scamboli: This dude is the funniest anime reviewer ever. I'm just throwing him out there. Check out his stuff. You won't regret it.

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YouTubers I'd Stay Away From:

1. Hitop: This guy is probably the reason why I'm making a "YouTubers I'd Stay Away From" list. Deadass almost ruined my writing style lmao. He contradicts himself in each video to the point where you're like "make up your mind dude". His community also has this mentality where they just thrash thrash thrash.

2. YMS & Cinemasins: Despite the two hating each other's guts, they're ultimately the same. Cinemasins creates this mentality for up and coming writers where they call certain decisions stupid on a superficial level. Everything has to make sense for them even if they don't understand the intentions of the director or if they're just being surface level. The same can be said about YMS, except he's a lot more pretentious. When a small detail, it bugs him, it's a small detail that doesn't matter. It's funny too since he's a fan of Matthewmatosis, except he isn't as aware as him when it comes to explaining why small details matter. You're better off with Matthew.

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What about you guys? This topic is sorta important to me since when I began writing I had a difficult time figuring which channel I'm better off with.

[river121693]

Shanspeare, Jessie Gender, Princess Weekes, Lindsay Ellis, Cheyenne Lin, Big Joel, and Folding Ideas have some really great analysis and critiques that influence how I make art-- particularly on telling cohesive narratives and how art can politically interact with audience .
Film Courage has some great advice from screenwriters, but also it depends on who they interview.

[Fafnir]

Brandon Sanderson's youtube
that is all.

[Swampert_Spawner]

Youtubers I recommend:

1. Overly Sarcastic Productions - Hosted by the duo Red and Blue, who talk about media and history respectively. Red has several series worth noting, Miscellaneous Myths which talk about various myths, the Summarized series that talk about various popular stories (Modern Classics, Legends, so on), and Trope Talk, which discusses and dissects popular tropes in media. While I admittedly don't watch Blue a lot, he still makes great videos for history content that can help with drawing inspiration from.
2. Hello Future Me - Extensively teaches several things that helps with writing and worldbuilding. Most of this teaching comes in the way of his analyses (of Avatar the Last Airbender mostly), but he also has standalone videos that teach them. He also has two books, On Writing and Worldbuilding Vol. 1 and 2.
3. Lindsey Ellis - As stated earlier in the thread, Lindsey Ellis makes great analyses of modern pop culture, and how that interacts with the audience and the world politically. She also has a 40 minute video on the Phantom of the Opera shitpost sequel Love Never Dies, so what's not to love?
4. Quinn Curio - Not a lot of videos, but they have great analysis videos on popular series such as Arkham, The Umbrella Academy, and Harry Potter. She discusses at length the good, the bad, and the ugly about each of them.

Channels I don't recommend
1. CinemaSins - I agree, honestly. CinemaSins sucks as a source of genuinely learning what makes a movie bad because they consistently contradict themselves and have so much bad faith negative reviews.
2. CinemaWins - While generally considered a positive channel, I think he's also not fully helpful with learning to write either. I think his videos talking about good movies are much more helpful than those that talk about bad ones. The reason for this is because of the nature of his channel, in his reviews he might construe some stuff to be positive even though they aren't. Some videos are good to learn from, but not all of them.

[powerplantanimations]

I remember B-Mask having issues with Lindsey Ellis. Especially with the Notre Dame video and I guess other videos that have to do with plays/musicals. As for Cinemawins, I never watched his stuff, but I've always considered him to be like "Oh good for him, he's doing something positive". I didn't think he'd be flawed tho. I guess I'd have to check his channel out out. I'm a little curious by what you mean by "he might construe stuff to be positive even though they aren't".

[NickRowler]

YMS is great. He is obsessed with cinema, he understands them inside and out. Dude knows what he is talking about. People tend to hate him because he doesn’t simp over shallow blockbusters. He is nothing like CinemaSins at all. Sardoicast is not mimicking RedLetterMedia, like other people are allowed to talk about cinema. As much as I enjoy RLM, I hate how people act like there word is scripture and everyone else is wrong or copycats. Maybe I am a bit annoyed because I minored in film media, that is just how people talk about film.

[jaytee]

Abbie Emmons is really, really helpful, especially with characters design and plotting. Tale Foundry helps with world building. Overly Sarcastic Productions's Trope Talk is a Boon, and I adore red (side note, if you like OSP, check out their podcast. It's really fun.)

[Lensing]

This guy is so wise, he made me cry
One of the things he talks about in this interview is how to speak in different voices when
you are writing and how to speak with your own voice. I think the woman who interviewed
him cried too when he started asking her questions

[darthmongoose]

Channels I'd recommend:

Nando v Movies: Nando makes some incredibly good observations of what the issues are in popular movies and how they could be resolved by making a single change. It really helped me deal with those situations where I feel like something is bad in an otherwise good story and how to fix it.

Ellen Brock: She's an actual pro book editor, and gives very solid basic advice that's particularly useful to newer writers, both on basic writing, pacing and structure but also getting into the industry.

Folding Ideas: He makes videos on all sorts of things, but his ones about storytelling and editing are some of my favourites. The ones about the failures of Suicide Squad in telling a cohesive story are amazing. He really picks apart why it fails.

Channel I wouldn't recommend (for writing advice):

Lost in Adaptation: I love this channel for entertainment, but because Dom tends to rate accuracy to the book very highly and only occasionally concedes that a change or omission is an improvement, and doesn't tend to pick apart why all that deeply, this is best enjoyed as something on the side to enjoy rather than writing advice.

And yeah, agree with everyone who said Cinemasins.

[IndigoShirtProd]

People have already pointed out some of my favorites: OSP, Folding ideas, Lindsy Ellis.
For my recommendations.
Jenna Moreci She's a successful author that give great advice about how to get started in structuring your book, how to follow through in the writing process, deconstructing tropes and story beats, and also how to build and author platform to have an audience to promote to. She's pretty to the point in her videos and also gives room for nuances; she understands her advice isn't the be all end all. She really inspired me when I first started takes writing seriously.

withcindy While I mostly watch her for entertainment, she is an avid reader who understands how the structure and pacing of story should work. She very opinionated and even though those opinions shouldn't be taken as fact, I think they're worthwhile in that they're a criticisms from a reader's perspective. Maybe I'm biased because I think she’s really funny.

Terrible Writing Advice Ironic, I know. But he gives out great advice in his single topic videos through sarcasm and satire. The videos are tangentially related to OSP's trope talk videos but it's less media deconstruction and more focused on story implementation. Sometimes he'll focus on "ending a story" other time the topic may be about "holiday specials", so there's variety

I don't really have channels I wouldn't recommend. So I have to agree with what others have mentioned, namely CinemaSins and Lost in Adaptation. I haven't watched CinemaSins recently, but yea, I wouldn't call that a source of good advice. Lost in Adaptation, I also think is great for entertainment (and for story summaries) but I don't know I would rely on those videos for writing advice.

[river121693]

Withcindy is hilarious lol. I quote her all day, and no one around me knows what Im talking about.

[feuersichel]

I recomend those two:

Cinema Therapy - A proffesional filmmaker and a licensed therapist watch movies together and take them apart and although they also talk about bad and depressing stuff, they are super sympatic and positive.

Terrible writing advice - this chanel is amazing! A must!

As for bad channels, I don't really know one or just forgott about it.

[skyfarron]

I'll second Terrible Writing Advice, he's a goober but his content is legitimately funny and insightful. He keeps his aim pretty low and doesn't try to clothesline other authors by being "high-concept" or "better than that", he just sticks to the basics. He can pretty effectively make a trope look stupid just by making it stand on its own two feet. Dude might actually be one of the best writing critics on YouTube just by not trying to act like one.

[system]

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