Andrew Stanton: The clues to a great story
"The greatest story commandment is: Make me care."
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Storytelling is joke-telling.
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It's knowing your punch line, your ending;
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Everything you say from the first sentence to the last is leading to singular goal
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Ideally, confirming some truth that deepens our understandings of who we are as human beings
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Stories affirm who we are
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We all want affirmations that our lives have meaning
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Nothing affirms this more than when we connect through stories
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Can cross the barriers of time (past, present, future) and allow us to experience the similarities between ourself and others, real and imagined
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Greatest story commandment: Make me care.
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Emotionally, intellectually, aesthetically. Just make me care
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A good scene will fundamentally make a promise: That this story will lead somewhere that's worth your time.
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Sometimes it's as simple as "Once upon a time..."
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A well-told promise is like a pebble being pulled back in a sling-shot that propels you forward through the story to the end.
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What Stanton learned through working on the film "Wall-E":
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The audience actually wants to work for their meal; they just don't want to know that they're doing that.
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That's your job as a storyteller is to hide the fact that you're making them work for their meal.
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We are born problem-solvers. We're compelled to deduce and deduct, because that's what we do in real life. It's this well-organized absence of information that draws us in.
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It's like a magnet - we can't stop ourselves from wanting to fill in the missing information.
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The Unifying Theory of 2+2
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Make the audience put things together.
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Don't give them 4. Give them 2+2.
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The elements you provide and the order that you put them in is crucial to whether you succeed or fail at engaging the audience.
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Stories are inevitable if they're good, without being predictable.
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One of Judith Weston's key insight to character: All well-drawn characters have a spine.
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A good character has an inner motor: A dominant, unconscious goal that they're striving for. An itch that they can't scratch.
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Examples
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Michael Corleon in the Godfather: To please his father
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Wall-E's : To find the beauty
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Marlon's (in Finding Nemo) : To prevent harm
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Woody's (in Toy Story) : To do what is best for his child
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Lawrence of Arabia: To figure out where is place was in the world. (Answer the question, "Who are you?")
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Spines don't always drive you to make the best choices; sometimes you make terrible choices because of them.
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Everything the character does is an attempt to do this thing.
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Stanton believes you're born with a certain temperament, and there's nothing you can do about it but to recognize it and own it.
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A major threshold is passed when you mature enough to acknowledge what drives you and to take the wheel and steer it.
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As parents you're always learning who your children are, they're learning who they are, and you're still learning who you are.
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So we're all learning all the time.
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That's why change is fundamental in story. If things go static, stories die, because life is never static.
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"Drama is anticipation mingled with uncertainty."
- British playwright William Archer
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We all live life conditionally. We're all willing to play by the rules and follow things along, as long as certain conditions are met. After that, all bets are off.
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A strong theme is always running through a well-told story.
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The magic ingredient: Can you invoke wonder? Wonder is honest, completely innocent; it can't be artificially evoked.
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There's no greater ability than the gift of another human being giving you that feeling.
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To hold them still for just a moment in their day and have them surrender to wonder.
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When it's tapped, the affirmation of being alive reaches you almost to a cellular level.
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When an artist does this to another artist, ti's like a compulsion to pass it on. A dormant command that's suddenly activated to you: To unto other's what's been done to you.
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The best stories infuse wonder.
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The first story lesson: Use what you know. Draw from it. It doesn't always mean plot or fact. It means capturing a truth from your experiences and expressing values you personally feel deep down to your core.