3 Ways The Best Writers In The Business Create Characters We Love
Lessons from Pixar on how to make up people that your audience won’t be able to resist caring about
Every Pixar movie follows a simple idea that makes their characters irresistible and loved by every generation.
It’s one concept that I didn’t even notice until I read a description of it in Pixar Storytelling: Rules for Effective Storytelling Based On Pixar’s Greatest Films by Dean Movshovitz.
“If you’re trying to do multiple agendas, you’ll confuse yourself as a storyteller. If you have one purpose, everything else will fall into place.” — Andrew Stanton
He points out that in every Pixar movie, a character is shown to have a want, and then the movie ventures to deny them that want time and time again.
Woody vows to never share the throne with anyone else in Andy’s room. Throughout the course of his stories, he not only befriends Buzz Lightyear, but eventually leaves Andy’s room and is comfortable no longer being a beloved toy of a child, coming around full circle in the fourth Toy Story film.
By the end of the fourth film, we witness a beautiful wrap-up that shows how far he’s come.
In Onward, Ian is set on meeting his dad. He never gets to, but realizes he doesn’t have to at the end of the film because of the relationship he’s built up with his brother.
“When people go to the theater, they don’t want to think ‘I know exactly what I’m gonna get,’ and then they get it and then they walk out. I think you want to walk in going ‘I don’t really know what this is about,’ and have the fun of discovering it.” — Pete Doctor, Pixar director
With that principle in mind, here are some more specific ways to create better characters that your audience is guaranteed to care about:
#1: Establish backstory quickly
You don’t have to spend the first twenty minutes or five chapters of your movie establishing where we’re at in the story.
Good writers and great films get us up to speed quickly, whether that be with a quick flashback to set the movie in motion, or just dropping us right in the middle of the character’s everyday life.
“Backstory is like a flavour you can’t quite pick, lurking in the layers of a curry. You know it’s there and it enhances the flavour, but it’s intangible and fleeting. Use it sparingly!” ― Sandy Vaile
Audiences, readers, viewers, etc. don’t need a lot. In fact, they don’t want a lot that they have to keep up with.
We don’t need to know what the main character had for breakfast seven years ago or where they went to preschool — we just need to know roughly where they’re at in life and why we should care about them now.
#2: Make them uncannily distinct
Stereotypes are okay, up to a certain point. Make your characters familiar, but still very much your own person.
I think about Dory, a character who has short-term memory loss, a quality that is both interesting, humorous, and a driver of the plot at many points in Finding Nemo and Finding Dory.
“The most important step in creating your hero, as well as all other characters, is to connect and compare each to the others.” — John Truby, The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller
Creating distinctions between characters, and comparing and contrasting them in subtle ways, will make your story more realistic and allow for the story to be driven forward.
#3: Establish the character’s goal early
From the beginning of Monsters Inc., we know that Sully cares about being popular, a winner at work, and an overall nice guy that everyone’s a fan of. By the end of the film, he’s an outcast because he’s associated with a child — and he doesn’t care.
“Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations.” — Ray Bradbury
His goal is so clear and flows easily throughout the story as he realizes what he really wants in life and becomes a deeper character and an even more loveable creature.
Every motivation of the character, every scene, every moment, and every friendship can be framed under this goal in an organic and compelling way. If you don’t know your character’s goal clearly and how you’ll be denying them that goal, in the eyes of Pixar, you don’t have a story yet.
Storytelling is an art and a science all in one. But it can be learned.
I’ve found that the best way to learn it is to study good art. Pixar movies are an incredible way to start. I hope this has been a sufficient introduction for you, and that you’ll be able to use a franchise of fantastic films to learn more about telling great stories.
Best of luck!
