Episode 38: Pixar Storytelling Part 2

Notes:

The Verbivore forgot the name of the Chef in Ratatouille. The chef’s name is Gusteau.

The Verbivore discusses the flexibility in Pixar’s story structure. Some of these details came from the “Pixar in a Box: The Art of Storytelling” free class available on Khanacademy.org. Here is the link:

Introduction to Structure - https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/hass-storytelling/storytelling-pixar-in-a-box/ah-piab-story-structure/v/piab-storystructure

Both Fable and the Verbivore talk throughout the episode about Pixar’s 22 Rules of Storytelling. This list is located in many places online, but here us one link to one copy of the list. Here are the rules they mentioned:

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

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

10. Pull apart the stories you like. What you like in them is a part of you; you’ve got to recognize it before you can use it.

13. Give your characters opinions. Passive/malleable might seem likable to you as you write, but it’s poison to the audience.

20. Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie you dislike. How d’you rearrange them into what you DO like?

The Verbivore incorrectly references Bolt as a Pixar film, although some individuals from Pixar helped with the film it is officially a Walt Disney animation film.

The Verbivore mentioned the rule that Brad Bird who wrote The Incredibles and The Incredibles II followed to have each fantastic thing followed by a mundane thing and vice versa. He has talked about it in many interviews, but this Deadline interview is the one the Verbivore used for research.

The Verbivore references the Ted Talk “Andrew Stanton: The clues to a great story”. The sequence about storytelling as joke telling starts at timestamp 1:23. Here are some of his words:

“Story telling is joke telling. It’s knowing your punchline. Your ending. Knowing that everything you are saying from first sentence to the last is leading to a singular goal. And ideally confirming some truth that deepens our understandings of who we are as human beings.”

Books Mentioned:

Pixar Storytelling: Rules for Effective Storytelling Based on Pixar's Greatest Films 1st Edition by Dean Movshovitz

Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull, Amy Wallace, et al.

Music from: https://filmmusic.io
’Friendly day’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
Licence: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)