Pixar Storytelling Secrets
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And now, on to the newsletter.
Welcome to the one hundred and nineteenth edition of ‘3-2-1 by Story Rules‘.
A newsletter recommending good examples of storytelling across:
- 3 tweets
- 2 articles, and
- 1 long-form content piece
Let’s dive in.
𝕏 3 Tweets of the week
Good to know that the God of AI-experiments still writes his own posts.
The more things change…
Hahaha, super smart word-play there.
📄 2 Articles of the week
a. ‘Go Direct: The Manifesto’ by Rostra
I’ve recently been hearing a podcast featuring the super-sharp Lulu Cheng Meservey (the most sought after PR expert in Silicon Valley).
The conversation referred to this ‘manifesto’ which intrigued me. When I read it (would recommend you do too!), I was very impressed by the clarity of thought and the use of the 1-3-9 Story Spine.
It starts with clearly calling out the old-game-is-over (Andy Raskin would approve):
I. TRADITIONAL PR IS DEAD.
For too long, founders have yielded control over their narratives to media and middlemen.
Before the internet, it was by necessity. The way to reach large audiences was through the media, and the way to get media coverage was through professional publicists.
Today, most of the planet is directly reachable through social media or email. There’s no longer a need to go through traditional gatekeepers of information and brokers of reputation — especially as their own credibility has plummeted.
The old PR playbook of relying on third parties with misaligned interests is obsolete.
The manifesto then goes on to prescribe what needs to be done – founders need to take ownership of the narrative:
Founders need to take their narrative as seriously as they take the rockets or robots. They would never outsource their product — and when it comes to convincing others to support the mission, the story is the product. Outsourcing comms is as bad as outsourcing code.
It won’t be easy, but it is a skill that must be built:
Just as founders might have more natural talents at product, management, or engineering, some founders will be naturals at communicating while others have a harder time.
The good news is that going direct and building a movement, while not easy, are skills that can be developed with discipline and time. The bad news is that, unlike with engineering or management, communications failures are immediately public and personally humiliating. It’s not surprising that many are loath to take on this responsibility.
At the same time, founders willing to pick up that gauntlet will find that it gives them a massive edge in recruiting, fundraising, selling, and shaping the information environment needed for their companies to thrive.
Clear, compelling and rousing call to action. Great writing.
b. ‘The zero-sum mindset is no mystery’ by Tim Harford
Tim Harford writes about the rise of zero-sum thinking across key countries in the west:
There are many ways to describe Donald Trump’s approach to government, or the philosophy of the new Reform party in the UK, but “zero sum” is a useful one.
The zero-sum thinker frames the world in terms of winning and losing, us and them. If one person is to get richer, someone else must get poorer. If China is doing well, then the US must logically be doing badly. Jobs go either to the native born, or to foreigners. In contrast, the centrist dads among us see win-win solutions.
He points out an interesting contradiction – popular leaders who borrow (bad) ideas from the left and the right:
One puzzle in modern politics has been the rise of populists who grab ideas from both the political left and right…
For example, a zero-sum thinker tends to be in favour of more redistribution and in favour of affirmative action — traditionally leftwing policies — but also in favour of strict immigration rules. Rightwing populists also think affirmative action is important, they just think it’s important and wrong.
Why is there a rise in zero-sum thinking? It’s because of (inevitable) slowing growth as compared to the go-go years of the second half of the twentieth century:
Young people in the US tend to see the world as zero sum, reflecting the fact that they have grown up in a slower-growth economy than those born in the 1940s and 1950s. A similar pattern emerges across countries: the higher the level of economic growth a person grew up with, the less likely they are to see the world in zero-sum terms.
Harford’s recommendation – unless we fix the root cause of too many zero-sum situations, we won’t be able to solve the problem:
If we want to understand why so many people see the world in zero-sum terms, we only have to look at the fact that our dysfunctional politics and our sluggish economies have needlessly produced far too many zero-sum situations. Fix that problem and maybe economics will one day be cool again.
🎧 1 long-form listen of the week
I discovered this podcast through a Malcolm Gladwell podcast episode. And I’ve been impressed by the host’s sharp listening and questioning skills.
In this episode, Dr. Michael Gervais, the host, speaks with Meg LaFauve, an employee of Pixar who wrote Inside Out and Inside Out 2 – two of my favorite movies from that studio.
Here are some of the themes that stuck with me from the conversation.
- Iterate, iterate, iterate
So there is a part where Meg is talking about Pixar making 16 versions of Inside Out 2, and in the final movie, only a small portion (a 10-second shot) from the first version remained:
I realized after about three months in the first movie of when I got there, that this is a building full of artists and they have been drawing in sketchbooks, probably since they could hold a pencil. So, they are very used to iteration, iterate, iterate, iterate, do it again, go again, go again.
As a writer, we can get a bit protective of our work and fearful that, but this is a great scene. What if I can’t write another great scene? This one works. Why would I throw it out? You can get a bit kind of caught up in that.
But at Pixar, you are going to throw it out, because if it doesn’t work at the level it needs to work or with all the other elements. So we start over many, many times. I will say in the last movie, Inside Out 2, you go through eight screenings and there’s rough cuts of each. So you make the movie 16 times.
The first screening, I think of that screening, there’s one 10-second shot that has remained. Everything else is gone.
- Vulnerability needs embarrasment
Meg makes an interesting point about vulnerability requiring embarrassment. If you are not embarrassed (at least a little) about sharing something, then you’re not being vulnerable enough:
So how do you get that good? It is iteration. It’s pushing yourself creatively. It’s bringing something deeply personal, almost something that makes you feel, well, absolutely makes you feel vulnerable, almost to the point of embarrassment.
And then she makes another powerful point – when you are vulnerable, you give permission to the others to do so likewise, to share their own embarrassing stories. The insight that knocked me over was when she says that artists are first to the breach. That’s such a lovely visual metaphor of being brave enough to be the first to share what you want to share and then letting the others follow you.
But what’s beautiful about it is that it is the power source, I believe, at least in art. As soon as you admit it, other people will admit they feel the same way.
We as artists are the first ones into the breach. We have the catharsis. We are the brave ones who are willing to go that deep into our guts and humanity.
We go first and so that other people then can watch what you did or experience what you did and have it too.
- The 3-Act Structure works
I like it when Meg says, “If you are not following the 3-Act structure, my only question to you is, why not?”:
I do follow a three act structure. Not every writer does. If you don’t, my only question is why? What does the story need that it’s not three acts?
And what are the three acts?
So it’s first act, second act, third act, and second act’s always generally divide into, like, the lingo is 2A and 2B. And each, the different things are happening in different, those parts of those sections.
When the host asks, “How do you get better at telling a story?”, Meg’s advice is to first listen to good stories:
…storytelling is rhythm. It’s like music. And it’s just something you have to get in your body.
And you can- so listen to somebody at the next dinner party who told a great story and how that felt. Ba-boom-ba-boom-ba-boom. Ba-boom-ba-ba-ah-ah. And then reversals. And then they land it. Right?
It’s like a good joke. And then listen to somebody else at the dinner party who’s doing and then and then and then and then. And they don’t really have any concept that people are listening to them, that they have an audience, that there’s a responsibility to be telling them.
A key requirement of creativity is to have periods of ‘extreme rest’. It could be, as Meg quotes her writer husband, “Just go to bed. Just lay down and take a nap. Just watch TV all day. Just watch some movies all day.” It’s important to recharge the creative energy reservoir. For, as Meg quotes a Buddhist saying:
Busyness is the highest form of laziness.in.
That’s all from this week’s edition.
Photo by Diana Polekhina on Unsplash
