Emma Coats Archives | Robot 6 | The Comics Culture Blog
by Michael May |
September 24, 2012 | 1 Comment |
For process junkies, animated film studios seem to be great sources of instruction about good storytelling, in comics or any medium. Last spring, Ben Caldwell shared some lessons he learned from DreamWorks. This time, former Pixar story artist Emma Coats is offering 22 guidelines she picked up from her senior colleagues at the studio:
#1: You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.
#2: You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be v. different.
#3: Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about til you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite.
#4: Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.
#5: Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.
You can read the rest on Coats’ blog.
(via Kelly Sue DeConnick)
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