The Pixar Way to Think About Story Conflict
92.9 هزار بار بازدید -
9 سال پیش
-
http://helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com
http://www.kmweiland.com
Historical and speculative novelist K.M. Weiland offers tips and essays about the writing life to help other writers understand the ins and outs of the craft and the psychology behind the inspiration.
This week’s video offers two lessons you can learn from the complicated story conflict in Toy Story to improve your own writing.
Video Transcript:
Conflict, conflict, conflict! It’s like this mantra among fiction writers, right? And we all nod our heads in agreement, because we all know story conflict is integral to good storytelling. But even though all humans totally get conflict on its most obvious level—altercation—understanding its uses and implementation in a story is sometimes a little harder to get our heads around.
Today, I’m going to use a fabulous object lesson about good story conflict that we can learn from Pixar’s seminal work Toy Story. This lesson is two-fold, and I’m just come straight out and tell you the first one. Lesson #1 is simply this: story conflict isn’t actually about character altercations. Story conflict is nothing more or less than the meeting of your character’s goal with an obstacle that gets in the way of that goal. The character is [here], the goal is [here]—and the obstacle (the conflict)? Right [here].
So for our example, I want you remember the scene in Toy Story’s Third Act in which the evil neighbor kid Sid has strapped Buzz to a rocket and taken him out to the yard to blow him up—leaving Woody locked in the bedroom. Saving Buzz is the goal, and the locked door is an obstacle creating conflict. Pretty simple, right? And this conflict leads Woody to concocting a whole plan that begins with unlocking the door. Now let’s say overcoming that first bit of conflict and achieving that first goal was end the of the scene. Nothing wrong with that; it is well structured. But complications are the stuff of good fiction and good conflict. And so we should certainly not be surprised that master storytellers such as those as Pixar didn’t stop there. What’s waiting for Woody on the other side of that door once he finally gets it unlocked? Scud the psycho bull terrier—another, even more dangerous obstacle! Just like that, the conflict is upped, and the story is able to keep right on rolling. And that is Lesson #2.
http://www.kmweiland.com
Historical and speculative novelist K.M. Weiland offers tips and essays about the writing life to help other writers understand the ins and outs of the craft and the psychology behind the inspiration.
This week’s video offers two lessons you can learn from the complicated story conflict in Toy Story to improve your own writing.
Video Transcript:
Conflict, conflict, conflict! It’s like this mantra among fiction writers, right? And we all nod our heads in agreement, because we all know story conflict is integral to good storytelling. But even though all humans totally get conflict on its most obvious level—altercation—understanding its uses and implementation in a story is sometimes a little harder to get our heads around.
Today, I’m going to use a fabulous object lesson about good story conflict that we can learn from Pixar’s seminal work Toy Story. This lesson is two-fold, and I’m just come straight out and tell you the first one. Lesson #1 is simply this: story conflict isn’t actually about character altercations. Story conflict is nothing more or less than the meeting of your character’s goal with an obstacle that gets in the way of that goal. The character is [here], the goal is [here]—and the obstacle (the conflict)? Right [here].
So for our example, I want you remember the scene in Toy Story’s Third Act in which the evil neighbor kid Sid has strapped Buzz to a rocket and taken him out to the yard to blow him up—leaving Woody locked in the bedroom. Saving Buzz is the goal, and the locked door is an obstacle creating conflict. Pretty simple, right? And this conflict leads Woody to concocting a whole plan that begins with unlocking the door. Now let’s say overcoming that first bit of conflict and achieving that first goal was end the of the scene. Nothing wrong with that; it is well structured. But complications are the stuff of good fiction and good conflict. And so we should certainly not be surprised that master storytellers such as those as Pixar didn’t stop there. What’s waiting for Woody on the other side of that door once he finally gets it unlocked? Scud the psycho bull terrier—another, even more dangerous obstacle! Just like that, the conflict is upped, and the story is able to keep right on rolling. And that is Lesson #2.
9 سال پیش
در تاریخ 1394/06/03 منتشر شده
است.
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