LisaTeachR's Classroom: Sharing is Caring: Creative Writing Tips from Pixar

Friday

Sharing is Caring: Creative Writing Tips from Pixar

Sharing is Caring

Creative Writing Tips from Pixar

Have you seen Inside Out? How about Lava, the short animation before Inside Out? This a preview of the Lava animation. Such a beautiful story.

How about Up? All of these animations were created by Pixar! The people at Pixar are amazing storytellers. Their stories make you laugh, cry and really connect with the characters. Emma Coats tweeted a few of the key ingredients to Pixars amazing storytelling and PBJ publishing turned them into an amazing infographic! Check out the whole infographic to see all the amazing advice but I will discuss a few.

I'm going to pick out a few that we can reiterate with students...

Audience matters
Who are you writing for? Are you writing for your friends? Are you writing for your parents? The audience determines the type of language yo use: casual, academic or something else... It can determine how you organize your ideas. What does your audience care about? Think about who is going to want to read this and what they want.

Sentence Frames

Sometimes we get stuck. Where do you want to go from here? A writer can use sentence frames to help get ideas flowing. You've heard of Somebody-wanted-but-so strategy, right? Here's an example:

The big bad wolf (Somebody) wanted to eat the little pigs but the pigs were resourceful so he was foiled in his attempts to eat them. Sentence frames can be really useful for generating ideas.

Reason to root

Make sure the character is someone the reader wants to root for. What problems has the character gone through in the past? What challenges will he/she have to go through in the present or future? How can we create a connection between the character and the reader. People want sympathetic (not doormats though) characters to succeed.

Just Write

Just write! Get the ideas down. Sometimes it feels as if the story is going nowhere but if you get the ideas down on paper, maybe you can find a way to use those ideas later in the story. They may or may not work but if you never get the ideas down on paper, you'll never know.

These are just a few of the ideas from Pixar. They are master story tellers. I hope these ideas help you in your journey to become great writers.