Rage Against The Page: Andrew Stanton transcript

Anybody who’s followed this site for a while knows that I’m fascinated by Pixar and how they consistently manage to harness their creativity and produce excellent stories (check out some of my posts here, here, here, here, here, and here). So I was delighted when I visited GITS reader Belzecue at his blog Rage Against The Page for this post in which Belzecue provides a transcript of a keynote address given by Pixar’s Andrew Stanton (Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Wall*E) at Screenwriting Expo 5 (2006) — “Understanding Story: Or My Journey of Pain.” Belzecue doesn’t just provide the transcript — he listened and transcribed the thing himself. Moreover Belzecue ends the post with a summary of the key points of the address. Here are a few:

• Storytelling is knowing your ending and then building the story towards that satisfying conclusion, like how a joke builds towards the punchline.
• The audience must like (empathize with) the main character, but this does not mean the main character must be a nice person.
• Opposing Goals, or ‘unity of opposites’: Set up directly opposing desires between the main characters (protag/antag).
• Find your Key Image: the touchstone that epitomizes the emotional core of your story and keeps you on track.
• Ensure there are powerful reasons why the Protagonist cannot simply walk away from the Problem.
• Stories are about caring and worrying about the characters.
• The story world must follow it’s own rules — if anything can happen at any time then the audience has no reason to care or worry.

Each of these insights is pure gold and you can check out Rage Against The Page for more. And lay a lil’ luv on Belzecue for taking the time to put together this transcript.
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