Story telling tips from Pixar

In this Ted talk Andrew Stanton of Pixar fame outlines what he believes are the keys to a good story. Chief among these are the idea that storytelling is joke telling.

Make your audience care

Make a promise
Communicate that the story will be worth the audience's time

Ask them to solve a problem
The audience wants to work for their meal, but they don't want to know they are doing this
We are born problem solving
The absence of information draws us in
Don't give people 4, give them 2+2

Have a strong underlying theme
While it is important to have something guiding action and uncertainty moment to moment it is also important to have a larger idea or question to carry people through the entire film.

Aim to create a sense of wonder
If you capture your audience's imagination you have them along for the ride.

Use your structure
The order you present things is important to the equation of story
Should you tell your story linearly or non-linearly? What will make people care the most?

Good Stories are inevitable but not predictable
Good stories are propelled forward by something. Often something within one of the characters, something that drives them forward. This drive makes the progress of the story inevitable but, hopefully, not predictable. There must be something of which we are unsure in order for us to want to learn more.

Avoid Static points in the story.
When stories go static they die


Create characters that have a spine
Great characters have an unconscious itch that they can't scratch, a driving impulse such as a need to please one's father
Wall E's was to find beauty
Nemo's father's was to prevent harm
Woody's is to protect his child
This itch can lead to 'bad' but understandable choices
This is the WHY idea again


Make your main character likeable
Woody was likeable despite a need to be the top toy


Drama is anticipation mingled with uncertainty
What will happen next?
How will it all conclude in the long term?

Don't be afraid to break the standard rules of story telling
Pixar's rules for Toy Story
- No songs
- no I want moments
- no happy village
- no love story
- no villain
These went against all the standard rules of animated films at the time (think of any standard animated Disney film ever)

Use what you know
All writers write from experience (in fact there is a deeper argument here about how imagination necessarily relies on experience but we won't go into that)
Andrew Stanton uses the particular example of how, early in life, he was given a second chance. It is that idea of a second chance that comes through in Finding Nemo. Nemo is the father's second chance.