Pixar's 22 Rules of Story, Analyzed

by Stephan Vladimir Bugaj

The eBook goes in-depth into all of the now famous "22 Rules of Story According To Pixar", drilling down into each one in order to make the advice as useful as possible to storytellers across all narrative disciplines.

Genres: Nonfiction

75 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Norah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book! The original 22 tweets were very concise, and I have to admit I didn't get all of them when I read it, but with this book, it's more clearly elaborated. Can't wait to apply some of the rules to future posting.

[Noah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Simply wonderful. I don't think I left a single page unmarked.

Bugaj gives an expansion on Emma Coates original tweets, and his comments are general enough that you feel a constriction of your creative vessels beginning to pump blood, but not so particular that you feel that constriction choking out creativity before you even get started.

Some of his most important points revolve around courage - to try and fail, to rewrite - and awareness - to know yourself, your characters, your theme, and your audience. The main idea I took away was focus on practicing focus. As you intentionally write, and practice focusing in on what you have written, you are able to see your creations not just for what they are, but what they could be - which frees you from the fear of keeping them (or attempting to make them) "perfect".

Wonderful in it's enthusiasm for the craft of storytelling, and it is simple in its guidelines for doing so. The combination creates a compelling, concise launch pad for anybody looking to craft stories.

[Félix Marqués · Rating 3 out of 5]

This pamphlet is essentially an annotated version of the “22 rules of storytelling” that Pixar storyboard artist Emma Coats tweeted a while ago:

http://io9.gizmodo.com/5916970/the-22...

Stephan Bugaj goes over each one of them and fine-tunes the message, elaborating on how some of the rules can be implemented or explores, while warning about how others are often misinterpreted.

It's not revolutionary stuff, but for anyone who wants to get into storytelling, it's a useful approach.

[Shane Moore · Rating 4 out of 5]

The success of the Tweets does illustrate one important idea quite clearly: people are drawn to compelling ideas concisely stated.

I really appreciated the elaborations, counterpoints, and extra advice of this book. It gave me useful tools that had immediate and obvious applications in my own attempts at creative writing.