The Screenwriters Taxonomy ─ A Roadmap to Collaborative Storytelling

In The Screenwriters Taxonomy, award-winning screenwriter and teacher Eric R. Williams offers a new collaborative approach for creative storytellers to recognize, discuss and reinvent storytelling paradigms that have evolved over the decades. Williams presents seven different aspects of storytelling that can be applied to any fictional narrative film—from genre and microgenre to voice and point of view—allowing writers to analyze existing films and innovate on these structures in their own stories. Moving beyond film theory, Williams offers a hands-on perspective on this taxonomy, exploring classic and recent films like Sunset Boulevard (1950) and Anomalisa (2015).

Eric Williams’ screenplays have received the Best New Work award from the Writers Guild of America, East, a Regional Emmy Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and the Award for Individual Excellence in Screenwriting from the Ohio Arts Council. He has written screenplays for Universal Studios, developed programming for American Movie Classics, and adapted novels by Luis Urrea (Across the Wire), Bill Littlefield (The Prospect) and Guillermo Fadanelli (The Other Face of Rock Hudson). Eric received his MFA from Columbia University’s School of Film, and currently teaches at Ohio University, in the School of Media Arts & Studies’ Screenwriting and Producing program. He is also the author of Screen Adaptations: Beyond the Basics (Routledge, 2017).