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Pixar storytelling rules

http://www.pixartouchbook.com/blog/2011/5/15/pixar-story-rules-one-version.html

#1: You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.

#2: You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. 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.

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

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

#6: What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?

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

#8: Finish your story, let go even if it’s not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.

#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.

#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.

#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.

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

#14: 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.

#15: If you were your character, in this situation, how would you feel? Honesty lends credibility to unbelievable situations.

#16: What are the stakes? Give us reason to root for the character. What happens if they don’t succeed? Stack the odds against.

#17: No work is ever wasted. If it’s not working, let go and move on - it’ll come back around to be useful later.

#18: You have to know yourself: the difference between doing your best & fussing. Story is testing, not refining.

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

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

#21: You gotta identify with your situation/characters, can’t just write ‘cool’. What would make YOU act that way?

#22: What’s the essence of your story? Most economical telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there.

#Pixar

Ted Hughes on Word Processing

http://europrogovision.blogspot.co.uk/

From Europrogovision

How to write flash fiction

Good tips from David Gaffney in the Grunaid on writing Flash Fiction.

How to write flash fiction

1. Start in the middle.

You don't have time in this very short form to set scenes and build character.

2. Don't use too many characters.

You won't have time to describe your characters when you're writing ultra-short. Even a name may not be useful in a micro-story unless it conveys a lot of additional story information or saves you words elsewhere.

3. Make sure the ending isn't at the end.

In micro-fiction there's a danger that much of the engagement with the story takes place when the reader has stopped reading. To avoid this, place the denouement in the middle of the story, allowing us time, as the rest of the text spins out, to consider the situation along with the narrator, and ruminate on the decisions his characters have taken. If you're not careful, micro-stories can lean towards punchline-based or "pull back to reveal" endings which have a one-note, gag-a-minute feel – the drum roll and cymbal crash. Avoid this by giving us almost all the information we need in the first few lines, using the next few paragraphs to take us on a journey below the surface.

4. Sweat your title.

Make it work for a living.

5. Make your last line ring like a bell.

The last line is not the ending – we had that in the middle, remember – but it should leave the reader with something which will continue to sound after the story has finished. It should not complete the story but rather take us into a new place; a place where we can continue to think about the ideas in the story and wonder what it all meant. A story that gives itself up in the last line is no story at all, and after reading a piece of good micro-fiction we should be struggling to understand it, and, in this way, will grow to love it as a beautiful enigma. And this is also another of the dangers of micro-fiction; micro-stories can be too rich and offer too much emotion in a powerful one-off injection, overwhelming the reader, flooding the mind. A few micro-shorts now and again will amaze and delight – one after another and you feel like you've been run over by a lorry full of fridges.

6. Write long, then go short.

Create a lump of stone from which you chip out your story sculpture. Stories can live much more cheaply than you realise, with little deterioration in lifestyle. But do beware: writing micro-fiction is for some like holidaying in a caravan – the grill may well fold out to become an extra bed, but you wouldn't sleep in a fold-out grill for the rest of your life.

Off you go!

#How to write flash fiction

Topos

topos [top‐oss] (plural topoi), an older term for a motif commonly found in literary works, or for a stock device of rhetoric.

#Topos

Links around writing

Darcie Chan

10 years to o a novel

tips on suspense fiction

7 habits

rewriting

author platform

WII as bad fiction

12 harsh truths

art and scriptwriting

Postmodern reads

Rule of thumb

If it's an introspective story make it introspective. Nobody cares unless there's an 'I' to care about.

#introspective story

#Female Characters

the Norton anthology of theory and criticism: Cultural Studies and New Historicism

Cultural Studies include wider areas of discourse such as TV, Film, popular fiction etc.

Ideology Critique - ideas, value etc promoted by a culture or group

Institutional Analysis - how institutions and their networks influence and dictate cultural content.

New Historicism - Uses a wide range of period sources to examine the power relations of an era in shaping culture. Point out that notions of literature, for example, change over time.

#Cultural Studies #New Historicism

the Norton anthology of theory and criticism: Postcolonial, Race, Ethnicity

Key work is Edward Said's Orientalism. How Western representations serve the political interests of ther makers.

-- Education -- Inculcates Western values and helps rule by consent rather than violence.

Studies have also invigorated the realisation of the the hybrid nature of culture. (Esp with Globalisation.)

Race/ Ethnicity studies. eg argue that Black Americans have developed their own distinctive culture, neither Anglo-Saxon nor African.

#Postcolonial

the Norton anthology of theory and criticism: Feminist and Queer Theory

Feminist Criticism

Interrelated projects. Key effects:

expanding the cannon

critique sexual representations and values

stressing importance of gender

Women must become 'resisting readers' - challenging overt and covet assumptions

Psychoanalytical ideas important (and revised)

Bloom's anxiety of influence vs 'anxiety of authorship' -- where female predecessors are nurturing and cooperative

ecriture feminine - re-evaluates Lacan's idea of the Imaginary. Not an infantile sphere of primary dives but liberating rhythms associated with the mother. Links to experimental poetry. The pre-Symbolic Imaginary order of polymorphous and androgynous sexuality liberates from the 'compulsory heterosexuality' of patriarchal culture.

Queer Theory -- Attacks patriarchal and homophobic basis of heterosexuality. Goes beyond Gay and Feminist Theory to explore alternative sexualities.

#Queer Theory #Feminist Theory

Amplitude (From Adam Roberts)

But it would be a mistake to think that Aaronovitch writes 150 words instead of 25 because he has more specific detail to communicate to the reader. The point is not in the content; it is in the tone—the voice of the novel. It is a voice that sets its face against terseness and reticence in favour of a generous discursive expansiveness.

—this amplitude is precisely what many readers of Fantasy go to their chosen genre for in the first place.

One of the striking things about Scott’s career is that he had a significant stroke in later life, yet continued writing—great screedy novels like Castle Dangerous (1831) and Count Robert of Paris (1832) which read like regular Scott novels with all the actual stuff-happening taken out. Nobody seemed to mind. As if Scott didn’t really need a fully functioning brain to produce the sort of verbal art that made his name.

#Amplitude

On Science Fiction

Science fiction is a form of modernism. It shares modern art's belief in progress and meaningful change: it proposes a history of the future.

Jonathan Jones Sep 5, 2011

#Science Fiction

On Postmodernism

The idea of artists as prophets or priests was abandoned. Artists were not special and neither was art.

-- Jonathan Jones Sep 5, 2011

#postmodernism

The Rise and Fall of Theory. From Peter Barry Chapter 'Lit Theory A history in Ten events'

Indiana University 'Conference on Style', 1958 -- The lingusitics scholars get the upper hand. Crit must now be 'scientific'.

The John Hopkins University International Symposium, 1966 -- Consolidation of structuralism over dominance of linguistics. But also has the seed of poststructuralism.

Publication of Deconstruction and Criticism, 1979 -- The 'Yale Mafia'. deconstruction as a practice rather than merely a theory.

McCabe Affair, 1981 -- About McCabe's non-appointment to a permanent chair at Cambridge. Structuralism and 'Theory' hit the news. Presented as a story of a martyr vs the forces of reaction.

Publication of Eagleton's Literary Theory: An Introduction, 1983. -- Shows how Theory can be taught. (Apex of Theory.)

J. Hillis Miller's MLA presidential address, 1986 -- A 'state of the discipline' address. Deconstruction challenge from historicist approaches to literature. Historicism is the polar opposite of deconstruction. Basically, historicism is more fun than Theory. Historicism = notion that they can recapture what is felt like to be Elizabethan. Fatal complacency of Theory vs the new challenges.

The Strathclyde University 'Linguistics of Writing' conference, 1986 -- Theory has turned into the establishment.

Scandal over Paul de Man's wartime writings, 1987-88 -- PdM a major figure in deconstructive theory. After his death discovered that he had written 200 antisemitic articles while living in occupied Belgium during the 40s. The bad news was the way other theorists stepped in to try and defend PdM. Esp Derrida who used all the subtleties of deconstruction to do so. Therefore deconstruction began to seem morally suspect.

Jean Baudrillard (1929 - 2007) and 'The Gulf War never happened', 1991 -- A savage attack on Western policy (1st Gulf War) that claims it was not a 'real' war. (If the soldiers had stayed at home more would have died from traffic accidents) but was a cleaned-up aneasthatised simulacrum of a real war. Laid JB open to attacks of being indifferent to suffering and death. If can clain no Gulf War why not claim no Holocaust? Barry says JB was trying to show how the war was mis-represented. But this was taken as showing Theory's erosion of truth and morality.

The Sokal Affair, 1996 -- Alan Sokal, physics professor wrote a paper which was accepted by a postmodernist cultural journal. On the day it was published he also revealed it was a hoax. Sokal's actual argument was that terms from physics had been used by postmodern theory without understanding them (shown by the fact the nonsense article was published) and completely out of context. Widely taken as a criticism of all Theory. Theorist took this a nationalist attack on the French.

#Sokal #Gulf War #Paul de Man #McCabe

Beginning Theory: Peter Barry. Narratology

Basic components:

Story vs Plot. Story = actual sequence of events. Plot = ('discourse') those events as they are ordered, presented and packaged. Including style, viewpoint, pace etc.

Aristotle's categories (Theme)

Propp's system (Plots)

Genette on how the story is told (narration)

Barthes' five codes (the reader experience)

Narratology is about looking at a number of different stories and looking for elements in common.

Aristotle:

hamartia = character fault

anagnorisis = recognition. The truth of the situation is recognised by the protagonist

peripeteia = reversal of fortune

Can be multiple instances of all of these within one story. These categories are about 'deep content'. The inner events (recognition and consequences) and moral impact.

Vladimir Propp (1895-1970): Morphology of the Folktale (1928)

Propp examined 100s of Russian folktales and derived 31 'functions' = possible actions. Any folktale will consist of a series of these functions. The functions always occur in the order listed. (eg the villain cannot be punished until the hero defeats him.)

The approach is more superficial than Aristotle as it is looking at surface events.

Propp Character types - the functions group into 'spheres of action'. roles rather than characters. (This relates back to Aristotle who says that character is expressed in action.)

The villain

The donor (provider)

The helper

The princess (sought after person) and her father

The dispatcher

The hero (seeker or victim)

The false hero

These elements can generate all of Russian folklore.

Robert Scholes points out the versatility that one character can play any of thes roles in a given tale and one role may employ several characters.

Realist fiction -- character more important than action. But Propp's archetypes can be seen as underlying these. eg Cinderella archetype can be seen as behind novel like Mansfield Park and Jane Eyre.

Gerard Genette. Narrative Discourse (1972)

Not about the content, but how it is presented.

1. Is the basic narrative mode 'memetic' or 'diegetic'?

Mimetic = dramatised. We 'see' the events.

Diegetic = reported. Summarised.

Almost all prose mixes the two. Esc longer works.

2. How is the narrative focalised?

external = outside the characters. What they say and do.

internal = how they think and feel.

If there is a main POV character she is the focaliser/ reflector.

zero = internal focus on multiple characters. (Omniscient narrator)

3. Who is telling the story?

Authorial persona. Also called 'covert', 'effaced', non-intrusive', 'non-dramatised'.

Named characters. Also called 'overt', 'dramatised', 'intrusive'.

These have subtypes:

'heterodiegetic'. ('other telling') An outsider to the story being narrated.

'homodiegetic'. ('same telling') A character in the story being told. eg Jane Eyre.

Omniscient narrators are 'heterodiegetic'.

4. How is time handled in the story?

analeptic = ('back-take'). eg flashback

prolepsis = ('fore-take'). eg flash forward. Also show in foreshadowing. eg spilt wine is proleptic of split blood later.

5. How is the story 'packaged'?

Frame narratives ('primary narratives') contain within them embedded narratives ('secondary narratives' or in Genette's terms 'meta-narratives'). The primary narrative is just the one that comes first. Not usually the main narrative.

Frame narratives are also single-ended or double-ended. If single-ended the frame situation is not returned to at the end of the story.

Frames can be 'intrusive'. The embedded tale can be interrupted by the frame situation.

6. How are speech and thought represented?

Genette's terms are generalised to three layers:

Mimetic - "I have to go," I said.

Transposed - I told her I had to go

Narrated - I informed her it was necessary for me to leave.

Barry explains thus:

direct and tagged - "What's your name?" Joe asked.

direct and untagged - "What's your name?"

direct and selectively tagged - "What's you name?" asked Joe. "Thelma."

tagged indirect - He asked her what her name was and she told him it was Thelma.

free indirect speech - What was her name? It was Thelma.

(The last is good for 'stream of consciousness' type stuff.)

Narratologists:

Look at individual narratives to pick out structures recurrent to all narratives.

Focus on the teller and the telling rather than comtent.

Use structures derived from sort narratives and apply to longer forms.

Foreground action and structure rather than character and motive

Foreground affinities between narratives rather than look for afew unique highly regarded examples.

Some practical points

What is the frame for? Resonance? Wider applicability? Delaying tactic?

'Narrativised' - we don't actually 'see' what is happening. Vs 'full mimesis' we 'see' what happens. Mid-points of 'slightly narratised' or 'partial mimesis'. eg 'making forcible entrance'

#Narratology #Story vs Plot #Aristotle:#Propp #Genette

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