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

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

Pixar films often feature two main antagonists—one benevolent and one malicious—Buzz/Sid, Princess/Hopper, Jessie/Stinky Pete, Boo/Randall, and so on. Ratatouille has three main antagonists: One evil (Skinner), one benevolent (Linguini) and a third, Anton Ego. Ego isn’t malicious the way Skinner and Muntz are, but I wouldn’t call him benevolent eit

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

All your creations should have an emotional truth founded in reality.

Pixar goes a step further by creating an inner world and existing flaw for these characters. Russel is lonely and feels estranged from and rejected by his father. Dory can’t remember anything for more than a minute or so, which causes her to live a lonely life. Let’s not forget that Pixar also makes both characters incredibly funny.

Change always comes with a price.

Don’t Abuse Structure This structure, and probably any other one, can easily be abused. A blunt and technical insertion of an element into your story will only make your script worse. This isn’t a to-do list where you must check off items. These are useful elements to be implemented with care. Don’t force a “bonding process” into your script if it

In Chapter 1, we explored how every moment in Ratatouille pertains to its core idea. This is true of all Pixar’s films. They each feel like a complex mechanism, in which all parts work together efficiently. Where nothing is missing, nothing is redundant, and every element has a function.