![]() ![]() TIP: When you’re stuck, make a list of what wouldn’t happen next. “The hate is laced with admiration, though, because you never give up.” “However, if you spin the tale of how you bet your PlayStation on an arm-wrestling contest and lost to some guy and you trained and trained and faced him again and lost your whole home theater this time, and you went and studied with an arm-wrestling master who trod upon your dreams but you couldn't be dissuaded from facing this guy again and you lost again and now he owns your vacation home - you're still going to meet with outright hate because seriously, you have awesome stuff and you're making terrible decisions. If you tell people how you found $300 on the sidewalk and bought a second PlayStation, the response you get is going to range from, “Cool story, bro” to outright hate. “Success without trials is meaningless, as you probably know if you've ever got something easy and then tried to share your triumph. These characters move forward when there's no hope of success, miles after any one of us in the audience would have given up. The deck is always stacked against Ripley's survival. “Indiana Jones fails at nearly everything he tries to do. ![]() TIP: You admire a character for trying more than for their successes. So as our own type of “exit interview,” Comic Riffs asked Coats to go into detail as to how she has put a few of her “rules” (22 of them are listed at the end of this post) into actual creative practice. ![]() What’s the essence of your story? Most economical telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there.Coats, who has also worked on Pixar’s “Monsters University” and the indie films “Sweetpea” and “Horizon” - is leaving Emeryville for Los Angeles as of Friday, as she takes her Pixar-honed education south to “seriously pursue a path directing live-action films.”.You gotta identify with your situation/characters, can’t just write ‘cool’.How d’you rearrange them into what you DO like? Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie you dislike.Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.You have to know yourself: the difference between doing your best & fussing.If it’s not working, let go and move on – it’ll come back around to be useful later. What happens if they don’t succeed? Stack the odds against. What are the stakes? Give us reason to root for the character.If you were your character, in this situation, how would you feel? Honesty lends credibility to unbelievable situations.Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.Passive/malleable might seem likable to you as you write, but it’s poison to the audience. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind.If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone. Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it.What you like in them is a part of you you’ve got to recognize it before you can use it. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up. When you’re stuck, make a list of what WOULDN’T happen next.In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Finish your story, let go even if it’s not perfect.Endings are hard, get yours working up front. Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle.What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them.You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuff but it sets you free. Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about til you’re at the end of it.You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer.You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.Pixar’s rules can be applied to writing fiction, and I urge you to review and adopt some, if not all, of these strategies: These rules were originally tweeted by Emma Coats, Pixar’s Story Artist.Īs a beginning writer (many years ago), I started with #3, I’ve since added many of these to my arsenal, specifically, #6, 7 and 16. How does Pixar hit all these points? How are they so successful? Well, it seems they have a formula, or rules. The objective is to have the reader empathize with your characters, worry and despair over their troubles and cheer when they overcome insurmountable difficulties. There isn’t much difference between writing for the screen and writing for print. We can identify with many of the characters and situations. These include the Toy Story series UP Wall-e (my favorite), Finding Nemo Monsters, Inc. Pixar Studios has developed wonderful stories in the past twenty-five years. Pixar’s 22 Rules of Storytelling Pixar’s 22 Rules of Storytelling ![]()
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