Stories that “come from the heart”

In the current online screenwriting class I’m teaching “Pixar and the Craft of Storytelling,” we were talking about how one key to Pixar’s success with their movies (all twelve of them #1 hits) is that they tell stories that come from the heart. One of the writers in the class Jeff Kirschner posted this:

As writers, we have a tendency to be overly cerebral. Personally, I’m always worried about adhering to this story principle, or that hitting that plot point, that I often overlook my heart — a true source for emotion.

Two other prominent storytellers said this…

“The best stories lead from the heart, not the mind.”
- Stacy Snider, CEO/Co-Chairman, Dreamworks

“The heart is always the first target in story telling.”
- Peter Guber, CEO & Chairman, Mandalay Entertainment

To which I responded:

Great quotes, Jeff. Into my list of quotes they go!

If I may set the table for an upcoming discussion on sentimentality, which Pixar admits their stories are unabashedly so, I would always want to make the distinction between “coming from the heart” and “melodrama.”

So often “stories from the heart” or “sentimental stories” can carry a connotation of overly wrought, dripping with emotion, syrupy, etc.

That’s not what I mean. Nor that’s not what Pixar aims for. Nor is that what, I’m sure, Snider and Guber mean either.

I like to look at this as meaning two things: (1) Feel something. (2) Emotional connection.

That’s it.

In a story, we as writers want to conjure up some feelings in a script reader. We do that by making an emotional connection.

So we all have nightmares, right? That’s the emotional touchstone of Clarice Starling’s journey in The Silence of the Lambs.

We all have screwed up big time at some point in our lives, yes? That’s an emotional touchstone for the guys in The Hangover.

We all know what it’s like to have been dumped by a lover. That’s an emotional touchstone for Rick in Casablanca.

So when a story comes from the heart, the way I look at it — no matter the genre — we as writers try to find those key points of emotional connection in our characters and plot with which a script reader will connect so that they feel something.

P.S.: As a corrective, my high school creative writing teacher had a very simple way of communicating to students when their stories or writing was too drenched in emotion: She would draw a line in the margin next to the offending section and write, “Drip.” Like “dripping” with pathos. It became a fun catch-phrase for us when we’d read stories aloud. “Drip!” Boy, did we learn to run away from melodrama in that class!

I thought we could carry on this conversation here on GITS because finding that balance point where we create something in our stories that does create an emotional connection with script readers, but not go too far with that can be a tricky business.

What are your thoughts? Is the phrase “come from the heart” perhaps too loaded? Maybe we should use “emotional resonance” or “emotional connection”? Or perhaps “emotional” is too much, maybe best to think simply in terms of “resonance” or “connection”? Or do we lose something by omitting that key word: “heart.”

And more importantly, how best to find the heart of a story? How best to write that so the emotions and sentiments are honest, clean and human, not dishonest, syrupy and manipulative?

What are examples of movies that do a good job on this front? And perhaps some that go too far into sentimentality and melodrama?

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