Pixar Storytelling: Rules for Effective Storytelling Based on Pixar’s Greatest Films

Some antagonists will have a thematic relationship to your protagonist. They will be a distorted mirror image, presenting our heroes with their darkest fears, or at least shining a light on their fallacies and weaknesses. This is very apparent in Toy Story 2 and Toy Story 3. Both Stinky Pete and Lotso are toys broken by the desertion of their owner

Pixar’s determination to avoid clichés pushes its stories and characters to more interesting and exciting places than you’d expect.

Coincidences happen in life. Random, statistically unfeasible things happen daily. But they can’t happen to your characters, not when it counts. If you let your character’s fate—good or bad—simply fall in their lap, you’re robbing us of the joy of knowing who these characters really are.

A good ending must make sense without being predictable.

In storytelling, the most powerful instance of construction is personal, when a protagonist must change something deep within themselves to achieve their goal.

What Is Theme? Theme can be an elusive concept that can be approached in many different ways. For this chapter, let’s treat theme as any abstract concept that your story is fundamentally about. What does your story present and explore that is universal and timeless? What is inherently human about it? Finding Nemo is about a clownfish searching for

Why do these characters resonate so strongly? Well, they are all one of a kind.