
Pixar’s Rules of Storytelling (2013) - joubert
http://www.aerogrammestudio.com/2013/03/07/pixars-22-rules-of-storytelling/
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colinprince
\--Brian McDonald added that in the original story spine tweet a step was
actually left out. The final step should be "And ever since that day…" As
Brian says, the list ‘keeps getting copied with this missing step and it’s an
important step.’

[http://www.aerogrammestudio.com/2013/03/22/the-story-
spine-p...](http://www.aerogrammestudio.com/2013/03/22/the-story-spine-
pixars-4th-rule-of-storytelling/)

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ffn
Holy shit, tip number 5, "Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over
detours. You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.",
is so absolutely true here in the world of software development (replace
characters with features / bugs). They never taught me this in school, but
from real life experience the best bugs / fix / solution you can come up with
when you're trying to solve the problem is almost always inferior to the one
you just sort of stumble across in the wild much later on.

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megablast
I am confused by your reference to bugs in the form of storytelling? Or
characters in relation to Software Engineering.

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olalonde
It does sound a bit like the KISS principle[0] and the UNIX design
philosophy[1].

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle)

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy)

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xerophyte12932
> Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get
> them out of it are cheating.

This one made me laugh. I hate it when stories violate this one

~~~
greggman
and it's why I wasn't a fan of Toy Story 3. They get saved at the climax by
coincidence

~~~
huxley
50 million Tolkien fans can't be wrong

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucatastrophe](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucatastrophe)

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11thEarlOfMar
Pixar is miraculous.

Their incredible technology is integrated into beautiful storytelling so that
what matters is not the ray tracing, global illumination, server farms,
petabytes and GHz:

It's the characters.

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ksec
The same applies to Games, and pretty much everything with technology as well.
People are generally too focused on Ghz, SuperHigh Pixel Density, memory speed
or what so ever.

What's important is the soul of the product, the story, the character, the
user experience. After all these years I am still amazed that so few people
failed understand this.

~~~
shmerl
_> People are generally too focused on Ghz, SuperHigh Pixel Density, memory
speed or what so ever._

There are different people. Most of those who are interested in gaming from
those whom I know are interested in the story first. Naturally such people
usually like RPG and adventure genres where story is the key element of the
game.

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hliyan
I wish I had this before I started on my novel:

 _Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of
that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___._

~~~
searine
Adding on this.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone's rule for story telling : "Every new plot point
should be connected to the last with either a "but" or a "therefore"."

Eg:

Cartman wanted to go to Casa Bonita BUT he was dick to Kyle and wasn't
invited. THEREFORE Cartman fakes kindess to win him over, BUT Kyle sees
through it. THEREFORE...

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marcus_holmes
Amazing how many of these points are good advice for new founders too.

#14 (why must YOU found this business?) is one I use a lot to reality-check

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drawkbox
These are great rules. I was thinking they are also quite nice for game
design/story rules.

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xerophyte12932
Wow, this is VERY helpful. Thank you for sharing!

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Exuma
The only rule of story telling: Don't tell other people the rules of
storytelling.

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mynameishere
_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._

She's right. We've been wasting out lives. Aw, To hell with cartoons. I'm
going to do what I always dreamed of -- I'm going to write that sitcom about
the sassy tropical fish.

Seriously, guys. They're well-crafted kids movies with predictably intervaled
adult jokes inserted as a sop to the parents. The advice ranges from the
sophomoric to the nattily aphoristic, but I can't see much that can be applied
in a practical sense. "Make it better" sums it up just as usefully.

~~~
vacri
There are plenty of deeper adult themes in Pixar movies, not just sops;
classifying them as 'kids movies' is a mistake.

