
The Rules of Storytelling According to Pixar - TravisLS
http://io9.com/5916970/the-22-rules-of-storytelling-according-to-pixar
======
shrikant
For those who aren't fans of the pointlessly JS-heavy page, this is the
original source: [http://www.pixartouchbook.com/blog/2011/5/15/pixar-story-
rul...](http://www.pixartouchbook.com/blog/2011/5/15/pixar-story-rules-one-
version.html)

io9 hasn't added much else to the original list.

~~~
Figs
Thank you; the io9 website is always completely broken for me for some reason
-- any time someone links to it, all I get is their logo (or sometimes only
part of it...) and a broken purple or white page with no text. I've tried
turning off all my extensions (adblock, flashblock, etc) but it is still
totally broken. This is with the latest Firefox on Windows, in case anyone at
their site reads this and cares to try to fix it.

Here's a screenshot: <http://i.imgur.com/ApFCi.png>

~~~
eggdude
Looks similar to what I get with NoScript turned on.

------
JumpCrisscross
> _#19: Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to
> get them out of it are cheating._

With a little bit of retrospection, this seems to be one of the most powerful
factors separating the films I've liked from those I haven't.

It's interesting to see how storytelling is like modelling - build a
hypothetical universe with hypothetical characters and see what plot(s)
emerge(s). If it's unsatisfactory, don't change the plot directly, but instead
manipulate the characters until the black box spits out something interesting.

Reflecting on my recent viewing of _Snow White and the Huntsman_ , it makes
sense why Charlize Theron's character managed to get so much more developed
than the others' - the character-centric story development process naturally
produces a wide distribution of character depths.

~~~
cheatercheater
A coincidence is just something which happened without a lead-on. An outcome
surprising, therefore perceived as improbable (perception bias at play here).

Anything that happens in time has an outcome and things that follow it in
logical order. However, we think differently if we flip the time axis, and
look at the sequence of events _leading onto_ a final event, rather than if we
look at the sequence of events _started by_ a seminal event.

The simple way to overcome this?

Put your coincidence in. Then, start going back in time, dropping smaller and
smaller clues and building premise for the "coincidence" to happen. Finally,
it's not a coincidence any more.

The difference between "coincidence" and "culmination" is fairly menial work.
I am surprised more authors don't do this, and sometimes wonder if they don't
include a build-up just to be intentionally cheesy.

If you want to have fun experimenting with the reversal of time in logical
reasoning, please try a game I have invented, called _Neutrino_. You can find
a description at <http://cheater.posterous.com/neutrino> (let me know if there
are any problems). I have come up with it autumn last year and wrote a blog
post about it, but forgot to upload it (or maybe there was some more work to
do that I forgot about completely...) - you get an upvote for several reasons,
one of them is that you reminded me that I should put it up! Thanks!

~~~
barrkel
Your back-building of coincidence is essentially Chekov's gun, viewed from
another angle. A potential downside is that if it isn't very artfully placed,
the reader will see the significance before the characters, and grow
frustrated at their idiocy.

~~~
cheatercheater
Thanks for the comment. Yeah, you're right, it's just something you can come
up with researching tv tropes. Basically it's like the story teller's
technical manual, and again, being annoyed at stupid characters will be
something you fix by reading tv tropes.

In some fringe cases you want the reader to "get the idea" before the
characters do.

One reason is to annoy them and create stress, which is often used in
thrillers, where you can see exactly the character's going to die.. or are
they? Yep, thrilling.

Another one is to give the reader a feeling of "superiority", in the meaning
of seeing a grander scheme of things. By making this level of reasoning fairly
predictable you can use this as fundament and build more complicated meaning
on top of it.

------
fuzzythinker
The list applies to developers too. I like these in particular:

#5: Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You'll feel like
you're losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.

(substitute characters for features)

#7: Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously.
Endings are hard, get yours working up front.

(when starting a new project, there's so many different directions/visions)

#11: Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a
perfect idea, you'll never share it with anyone.

#12: Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th –
get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.

~~~
ma2rten
_#12: Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th –
get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself._

"I don't think it's good that Apple is perceived as different. I think it's
important that Apple is perceived as much better. If being different is
essential for that, then we should be different, but if we could be much
better without being different that would be fine with me."

\-- Steve Jobs at WWDC 1997

~~~
vacri
Interesting that the marketing slogan for that year was 'think different'
rather than 'think much better'...

------
mdonahoe
"#9: When you're stuck, make a list of what WOULDN'T happen next. Lots of
times the material to get you unstuck will show up."

I use a similar technique when brainstorming, after all the obvious good ideas
are exhausted. Think of the worst possible way to solve a problem, and then
look nearby for reasonable solutions.

------
wallflower
If you liked this, I highly recommend reading Stephen King's "On Writing"

<http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10569.On_Writing>

------
RockofStrength
A very interesting theory of storytelling is the Dramatica theory of story.
<http://storymind.com/dramatica/>

I believe the movie Contact (any many others) were written with the Dramatica
template.

This area was how I was introduced to the site (I was investigating Robert
Mckee because of seeing the movie "Synecdoche New York"):
<http://www.dramatica.com/theory/articles/index.htm>

~~~
egypturnash
I'm about thirty pages into the Dramatica PDF and am finding it very
interesting in how it specifically codifies some things I've observed about
stories while working on my comics. This promises to be an interesting read,
thanks!

------
Vadoff
Blizzard's writing staff would do well to brush up on these rules... Diablo
3's and SC2's writing was absolutely terrible.

Oh, George Lucas too.

~~~
Jare
George Lucas would probably read them like this:

#1: You admire a character for trying to be funny more than for actually being
interesting.

#2: You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what
got you an actual audience. They can be v. different.

#3: Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is
actually about til you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite it so Greedo shoots
first.

etc...

------
kvnn
I'm really happy that this is on the front page. This sort of tangential
wisdom makes me a better builder than many acute technical posts do.

------
sreyaNotfilc
"11: Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a
perfect idea, you'll never share it with anyone."

This is the theme of my project. Especially the past 2 years. Except I do put
it on paper, but actually building the thing always takes a second hand
because I keep waiting for the "perfect" solution. I've finally gave up on
that idea, because

1) i don't have the resources to build the perfect idea 2) it takes too long
to wait for something to happen in your head

I've recently adopt a motto "hackFast". This means to know what you want to
get done and just do it. And not just lazily open up your IDE and selective
fix or create things. I mean, to open the IDE and just dominate the code.

There's a balance that I haven't achieved yet. There are times when you do
need to think of the perfect solution, but until then get the prototype done.
You're mind will wrap around the logic and it will eventually fix itself.

#11 and #17 goes hand and hand. It all go down to doing it.

..I've also been recently reading "Getting Things Done".

------
TrevorJ
I've had the pleasure of hearing various people from Pixar speak. What
impresses me most is the attitude of humility and the love of learning the
craft the seem to have. I'm pretty amazed they have managed to maintain that
after so many hit movies, the temptation to sit back and feel like you've
cracked the enigma of storytelling and have it all figured out must be huge.

------
akg
There seems to be a pretty common message for many of the rules here that
encourage trial-and-error and re-doing things. I think that is just brilliant
advice for innovation in general not just story writing. Not being afraid to
fail and trying things again and again truly leads to amazing results.

------
haberman
> Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get
> them out of it are cheating.

Ugh. Please, no. I have no training as a fiction writer but as an audience
member I hate this. Nothing is more annoying than tension that comes from a
totally implausible sequence of events.

~~~
runevault
Coincidence and implausibility are not necessarily the same thing. Good
writing requires you to still make it BELIEVABLE but that doesn't mean it
can't have an element of "Talk about bad luck"

~~~
jackalope
Agreed. Coincidences do have an effect and are worth exploring when writing
about the human condition, regardless of the outcome. I get the feeling the
author was trying to offer a simple example of _deus ex machina_ , which can
be enjoyable, but is cheating, nonetheless.

------
pjg
Substitute the word "character" with "product" and all these rules seem to
have remarkable likeness to designing a successful product/building a
successful startup

------
loceng
Thanks for posting this. This now gives me the framework to start creating a
plot around some ideas I've had floating around and evolving for quite some
time.

------
batista
I, for one, find Pixar's storytelling extremely naive, paint-by-numbers kind
of affair.

Like past Disney without the genius (e.g Fantasia, the dark forest scene in
Snow White, etc) but with more puns thrown in. Or maybe "animated ho-hum
Spielberg" is more apt.

Could be OK to take your kid to, but IMHO even kids (or especially kids)
deserve better.

And not to be accused that I speak without offering an alternative, I think
that something like "A nightmare before Christmas" is light years ahead of
Pixar's work, in storytelling, artistic vision, and even visually (and I'm not
saying that because of its "dark mood". Light stories could also be told in a
more artistic way than Pixar's).

~~~
darasen
While I will grant that Tim Burton can be clever I have never seen anything of
his that carries the same emotional weight of Pixar's best works. Toy Story 3
was an amazing success and pulled off being a very emotional film while being
a comedy/adventure. I know many people who cried or nearly cried toward the
end who are parents with kids leaving their childhood behind. The first
several minutes of UP are amazingly melancholy. The "dance" in space from
Wall-E is downright beautiful and Wall-E's devotion to the girl robot when she
is broken is rather heartwarming.

Incidentally according to BoxOffice Mojo Wall-E made 521 Million dollars.

~~~
dspillett
_> The "dance" in space from Wall-E is downright beautiful_

IMO Wall-E is more of a work of pure art than a flick, for the first half or
so (before the mad rush towards the climax at the end). The wonderful detail
both in the derelict environment Wall-E trundles through at the begging and
the genuine sense of awe once the story hits space are head and shoulders over
most similar efforts.

------
cheatercheater
I have been struggling to produce some form of artistic, or even creative
output almost all my life, in different media and contexts, and I have had to
learn #14 on my own. Trying hard, and I have thought about this on many
occasions, I could not come up with a more essential and fundamental
prerequisite to making art. There is so much "art" out there that simply does
not have a story to tell. There are so many struggling artists that do not
have a story to tell, and they keep wondering why they don't achieve success
of any measure. I'm not going to say that realizing this made me insanely
successful overnight, but it has given me a direction and hope of ever
actually reaching the point at which I can be satisfied with something I have
created.

However, I think that it is more important than just as a way to make good
art. The quote originally reads:

 _"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."_

I would say that this generalizes to:

 _What is the value of what you're doing?_

This is crucial. A lot of people do things without value, or do not focus on
the value and let themselves become sidetracked by the whole ritual of their
form. What I mean by "the ritual of their form" is the often sizeable set of
gimmicks you feel forced to tack onto whatever you are making. For example,
every website now "needs" Oauth and social network support and other junk,
which is not crucial, but it's something everyone feels they need to have.
This sort of ritualistic dance happens in every form of output, be it when
they create a computer program, a business (we need to be agile! be green!
support the community!), a new philosophy, a new movie, a new bicycle, a new
mathematics theorem, a new noodle recipe.

The generalized form does lose its potency, though. Applied literally to
music, you'd ask:

 _What is the value of the music you are creating?_

I think asking _What is the story your music tells?_ is much more accurate. I
guess I am trying to say that the word _value_ can be interpreted in different
ways, and many of them are not going to get you very far from what you are
doing already. For example, when thinking of technology, _value_ is
_application_. So I'd ask: _What sort of application can this technology
bear?_

If I were going to add anything to Pixar's list, it would be this:

 _!!!! KEEP A SCRAPBOOK, ASSOCIATE ENTRIES TO THE VALUES (EMOTIONS, THEMES,
APPLICATIONS) THEY EVOKE !!!!_

Yup, all caps, so that you don't scroll past. This was the single thing that
boosted my productivity most in the last several years, and it out-classes
everything else by very, very far.

I currently have two folders under $HOME/Documents, called "creative" and
"topics". I first started "topics" where I'd save pages visited, notes,
documents, and so on in a directory tree, so for example I have
topics/computers/haskell/refactoring/. and topics/electronics/tubes/. and
topics/health/bodybuilding/training-plan/. and so on. Later I started noticing
that I also visit a lot of creative stuff that I want to keep a track on,
which I cannot sort into this rigid system I built under "topics" because it
evoked emotions, rather than ideas of practical applications. I guess that
this is my _Starship & the Canoe_ (and if you haven't read the book, at least
read a summary). The "creative" system came into place a bit after I started
trawling Youtube for music I like, and decided to sort it according to
emotion. I now have 59 private playlists, with entries like "feeling of
optimism and inner peace", "peril / 70s car chase", "hanging at the peak",
"hyped", and "pleasant summer sun", many of those have more than 20 entries.
Some of the names won't make much of a sense to anyone but me. My "creative"
directory contains entries like "beauty", "inspirational", "introversion",
"poverty", "trippy", and so on.

If there was only one thing they were to teach me during primary and high
school, I wish it was how to do this. Sadly, they didn't. As many people, I
can't really pinpoint one skill I use every day that school has taught me.

~~~
larve
Why worry about value? I make art mostly because I enjoy the process, and
don't usually care about the result at all. It's much easier to handle that
way, and I pretty much never get block. If I feel tired of what I'm doing, I
just resort to doing exercises or copying and analyzing other people's work. I
think the point "why must you tell this story" is not about whether you should
make art, write that story, draw that picture, but for you to research your
inner reason to make this piece. Obviously you tell the story because you want
to, this question just helps you make the intention clearer, so that you can
structure your work around it in order to bring that essence out. In
photography/painting, you would pick a main subject, which can be anything you
find interesting, images you see or images you imagine or just abstract work,
and then build the image around the reason you find that image interesting.
Not about whether the image or the work of art has any inherent value, of
course it has because you are making it.

~~~
cheatercheater
> Why worry about value? I make art mostly because I enjoy the process

<black turtleneck> Because if you do something to enjoy yourself it isn't art,
it's onanism </black turtleneck>

> research your inner reason to make this piece

 _exactly_. Some people never do that, and once you look behind the scenes and
try to answer this question it turns out there's no inner reason and it's just
paint by numbers. I think we're just talking about the same thing in different
terms: your inner reason is the value that I talk about.

> Obviously you tell the story because you want to

I very much abstracted from _stories_ in my comment above - the question I
said is necessary to ask yourself is:

* "what story does your music tell?" * "what story does your painting tell?" * "what story does your business tell?"

You're right, asking _what story does your story tell_ is a bit senseless. But
back to value: really, what sort of person goes to people, and tells them
stories with no value what so ever? If I knew that guy and he kept coming back
I'd punch him in the face. I am assuming you tell people your stories because
you are encouraged, because they find them cool. Here, "cool" is also of
value. With time you'll notice more important things in life that can be
achieved with storytelling, be it moral support, politics, philosophy. Those
are values just like your "cool", but often end up working at a deeper level.
Because what's "cool", really? Your cool skateboarder character might end up
being "cool" because they're a defiant character who doesn't give up. He might
be "cool" for other reasons that meld together seamlessly to just display
"cool", but if you analyse it further you can break it down to very deep,
fundamental values being displayed, and balanced against his shortcomings.

> In photography/painting, you would pick a main subject, which can be
> anything you find interesting, images you see or images you imagine or just
> abstract work

That's waiting for your work to do itself. It takes ages to come up with
something good this way. That's like randomly bashing on the piano and trying
to come up with a cool melody. And you know what, I did that when I was
starting with piano, and I did that quite a lot, and it taught me some things.
But it's not the smart way to go. Photography, painting, and music are
figurative forms. This means they convey deeper meaning by use of trite
objects in intricate compositions or settings. The right way to go is to find
an abstract subject or meaning you want to go, and come up with a subject that
will convey some or most of it, and then make it work. This makes the
difference between a guy with a flickr stream and a photographer who goes out,
takes one photo, and it's a hit. If you want to take ten thousand photos and
only find one thing which meaning can be assigned to, that's one approach, and
lots of people do it. But it's an amazing loss of time because trying to
reverse-engineer meaning into one of a thousand pictures is difficult and
time-consuming. Better to make the picture work for your purpose, not your
purpose work for the picture.

> and then build the image around the reason you find that image interesting.

Exactly. That's the thing. You have to find an image that is interesting. You
forgot to mention, but you also have to find an image that other people will
find interesting, otherwise you're again just shaking your dick. Art is
communication with other people, it doesn't work solo. If you come up with an
idea that lots of people share, you can convey it by means of a picture. You
can't say "oh, a lot of people share this _picture_ with me" but you can say
"I bet a lot of people share this _value_ or _feeling_ or _interest_ with me".
That's why it's easier to connect with your consumers if you first think about
the meaning of your output, tune it to what they will like, and only then
follow this up with form that conveys the meaning. If you first come up with
form, and then try to stick meaning onto it, it just doesn't work.

Another issue with retrofitting meaning onto form is that you often come up
with fairly stretched analogies, and those end up working for less and less
people. If you retrofit meaning onto form, the form will be ambiguous, because
there will be angles from which you hadn't viewed your art, and it's difficult
to cover all possible analyses of your form and make sure they all end up
conveying your retrofitted meaning. If you come up with meaning first, and
create a form while keeping the meaning in your head at all times, then in
every second of the form's creation you shape it towards conveying the
meaning. This has much better, more coherent results.

> Not about whether the image or the work of art has any inherent value, of
> course it has because you are making it

Is that really so? Nowadays you can easily say 99% of all photography is
throwaway. When it started out, it was pretty much art, no matter whether high
art or kitsch. Would you say every photograph out there has some inherent
value and meaning? Bear in mind that this isn't up to the person who made the
photograph, it's up to the people who look at it, and evaluate it. Value is in
the eye of the beholder, and if you can't make the beholder see the value,
then you fail as an artist.

Thanks for the comment, it was very thought-provoking.

~~~
larve
I still stand by my point of view. You have to enjoy the process first, and if
you plan to show your work to other people, or publish it, then you go into
the curation and editing process. No photographer goes out, takes one picture,
and it's a hit. No author writes a book and it's a worthy book from the first
draft. Often the meaning of the work shows itself while you're creating it. Or
you will find a theme, a meaning while doing random shiznit. And really the
most important part for me is to enjoy it, else why would I do it? That way I
keep my productivity up, and if after discarding 99% people like the remaining
1%, good for them.

