WRITING FOR ANIMATION

For Bugs…
WRITING FOR ANIMATION

Laura Beaumont and Paul Larson

 CONTENTS

List of Figures
Preface
Foreword
Acknowledgments

Chapter 1
WHY ANIMATION?
Chapter 2
GOALS
Chapter 3
OBSTACLES
Chapter 4
CENTRAL CHARACTER
Chapter 5
THE THREE-ACT STRUCTURE
Chapter 6
ACT TWO
Chapter 7
ACT ONE
Chapter 8
ACT THREE
Chapter 9
THREE-ACT STRUCTURE CASE STUDIES
Chapter 10
EMOTIONAL CONNECTION
Chapter 11
THE EMOTIONAL GOAL
Chapter 12
EMOTIONAL GOAL CASE STUDY
Chapter 13
CHARACTER AND ARCHETYPE
Chapter 14
ANTHROPOMORPHISM
Chapter 15
PUTTING YOUR CHARACTER TOGETHER
Chapter 16
COMEDY
Chapter 17
COMEDIC SITUATIONS: OR WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM
SITCOMS
Chapter 18
THE SCRIPT
Chapter 19
DIALOGUE WORKSHOP
Chapter 20
WRITING FOR AN EXISTING SHOW
Chapter 21
WRITING FOR AN EXISTING SHOW CASE STUDY
Chapter 22
COLLABORATION
Chapter 23
CREATING THE SHORT
Chapter 24
BREAKING THE FORMAT
Chapter 25
HOW TO LAUNCH YOUR CAREER
Chapter 26
FINAL WORD

Appendix A: Script Format

Appendix B: Sample Script Bible
Film and TV Program References
Thinky Time Guide
Index
 FIGURES

1 Peppa Pig, “The Quarrel”, June 7, 2007

2 BoJack Horseman, “The BoJack Horseman Story, Chapter One”, August 22, 2014
3 Adventure Time, “Slumber Party Panic”, April 5, 2010
4 The Triplets of Belleville, August 29, 2003
5 Moana, November 14, 2016
6 Sing, December 3, 2016
7 Hotel Transylvania 2, September 25, 2015
8 Family Guy, “Blue Harvest”, September 23, 2007
9 Coco, October 20, 2017
10 The Croods, March 22, 2013
11 The Flintstones, “Hot Lips Hannigan”, October 7, 1960
12 Kung Fu Panda, June 6, 2008
13 Zootopia, March 4, 2016
14 Zootopia, March 4, 2016
15 Batman: Hush, August 6, 2019
16 The Triplets of Belleville, August 29, 2003
17 Rango, March 4, 2011
18 Fast and Furry-ous, September 1949
19 Jim and the Banana. Script Sample
20 South Park, “Conjoined Fetus Lady”, June 3, 1998
21 Bunker Hill Bunny, September 23, 1960
22 Laurel and Hardy, “Busy Bodies”, October 7, 1933
23 Boring Functional Dialogue. Script Sample
24 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, December 21, 1937
25 Kung Fu Panda, June 6, 2008
26 Rick and Morty, “Vindicators 3: The Return of Worldender”, August 13, 2017
27 Ben 10, “Escape from Aggregor”, December 27, 2005
28 The Meaning of Life, January 2005
29 ParaNorman, August 5, 2012
30 ParaNorman, August 5, 2012
31 Despicable Me, June 27, 2010
32 Cars, May 26, 2006
 PREFACE

For both of us, our first experience of seeing a movie at a theater

was Walt Disney’s Dumbo. These events happened roughly twelve
years and five thousand miles apart, but like many people, our first
taste of cinematic entertainment was an animated movie. Most of us
grow up watching animation. We can all remember our favorite TV
cartoons from when we were young. For Laura, it was The
Flintstones and for Paul it was Wacky Races and Hong Kong
Phooey. It’s clear that animation dominates our early years, so it’s
not surprising that most people have a nostalgia for those shows.
Many a conversation at social events ends up with people talking
about their favorite childhood animation—sometimes even specific
episodes. “The one where Fred and Barney start up their own drive-
in restaurant without telling their wives” and “the one where Hong
Kong Phooey faces the evil magician.” The memories and the joy of
reminiscing about them never fails to bind us together with laughter
and joy.
We have now been writing animation for so long that we meet
people who watched our shows when they were children. Some of
them now have children of their own and they too watch our shows.
Those same families go to see all the latest animated movies. There
are also now a variety of hugely successful animated TV shows for
an adult audience, some of which have a massive cult following.
Animation is everywhere.
On one level, you could say (and some people do) that it’s just
“cartoons” but read any book about animators and you will realize
how much time, love, and creativity goes into an animation, which is
why it can affect us deeply. This is why we love our job. We feel
privileged to have a career writing shows and films that people love
and remember.
We’re not saying it’s always been easy. There are very few books
or courses aimed specifically at how to write great animation, so we
have had to study writing from a variety of forms—including novels,
plays, songwriting, comedy, and movies. When we applied the
principles we learned to animation, we found that some were helpful,
but many were not. So, over the years, through trial and error, we
have developed a lot of systems and practices that have helped us.
As our careers developed and we became head writers working
with other writers, we found people asking us how we know this
“stuff” and whether there is a book they can read. We would have to
tell them that no it didn’t come from a book, that we worked it out for
ourselves. Then came the suggestion that we should write a book.
And that’s what you have here. This is a manual of all the most
valued principles that we use as part of our job in writing for
animation, and they actually work, whether you want to write a two-
minute short or a feature film.
A new generation of animators, directors, and writers are pouring
into the industry and we want to watch the programs and the movies
they make. We would like that generation to benefit from our
experience, not because they won’t do it without help—they will—but
because we can save them time. If you absorb the principles in this
book, you won’t have to go through the same trial and error and the
pain of falling flat on your face as many times as we have. We can’t
wait to see what you create.
 FOREWORD

As a producer and creative executive, I spend a great deal of time

talking about animation scripts. Much of this discussion is about the
demands of animation and live action and how they differ. I’ve often
wished I had a good reference to share on the subject, but it hasn’t
existed. Until now.
My first job in animation was as the production office receptionist at
Warner Bros. Animation. Between greeting guests and answering
phones, I typed recording scripts for the Voice-Over department. The
task (on a manual typewriter, no less) was to create a dialogue-only
version for the actors by eliminating all scene descriptions and stage
directions. As a recently graduated theater and film student, I was
unaccustomed to reading elaborate, specific descriptions of blocking
and physical comedy. In contrast to playwrights and screenwriters,
the animation writers were unencumbered by the constraints of time,
space, and physics. Their imaginations ran free. They could conjure
anything and everything and did so with sensational comedic chops.
I fell in love with the medium. I was young and inexperienced enough
to be confident I could simply dive in and write for animation, too.
These were cartoons—kids’ stuff—how hard could it be?
I still have the pages of ideas I submitted to a story editor who was
willing to indulge me. More importantly, I have the notes he
generously returned to me. While constructive, supportive, and
encouraging, they basically translate to, “Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”
Turns out playful, precise, character-driven animated comedy is not
as easy as it looks. How did the writers make it seem so effortless? I
resolved to read every book in print about animation writing and, like
Wile E. Coyote, I hit a wall. I couldn’t find a single book on the
subject. Plan B was to pester the writers with questions, read more
scripts, and watch even more animation. That education evolved into
my career. Lucky me.
The volume and variety of animation has exploded since then.
Technology transforms the medium almost daily. Publishers have
kept pace, and there are now many titles covering animation art,
production, even how to develop animation-specific ideas. However,
books dedicated to the nuts-and-bolts process of animation writing
remain scarce. Explaining it may be as elusive as doing it well. All of
which adds up to Writing for Animation being a rare book. It is an
invaluable resource for writers wrestling with the not-at-all effortless
task of creating effortless scripts. It’s exactly the book I was looking
for all those years ago.
Beyond the scarcity of books of its kind, this one is also rare
because animation writers of Laura Beaumont and Paul Larson’s
caliber are few. They are among the most talented and prolific in the
field. Working with them is a joy. Their scripts reflect their skill and
passion, as does their book. Like master magicians revealing the
secrets behind mystifying illusions, Paul and Laura draw back the
curtain to offer a virtuosic instruction manual. Lucky you. Lucky us.

By Christopher Keenan,
Producer, Executive, and sometimes Writer.
(Credits include Barbie, Scooby-Doo, Masters of the Universe, Tom
and Jerry, and Thomas and Friends.)
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Everyone that you work with contributes to your writing journey, and,
as such, all have contributed to this book in some way. Some people
do however stand out as particularly significant and therefore we
would like to thank the following:
Katie Gallof, for agreeing to read our book proposal and for her
support throughout the writing process; Tim Bain, for suggesting we
write the book in the first place; Jocelyn Stevenson, for giving us
each our big break all those years ago; and Christopher Keenan, for
his incredible support and for writing the foreword.
Other significant contributors include Erin Duffy, Adam Long,
Marion Edwards, Lisa Pacheco, Marc Seal, Simon Spencer, Rosie
Bones, Anna Starkey, Tim Compton, Christine Ponzevera, Alex
Jennings, Ian McCue, Abi Grant, Dominic Minghella, Deirdre Kelly,
Gail Renard, Jen Upton, Madeleine Warburg, Peter Corey, Ross
Hastings, Sophie Finston, Pete Coogan, Andy Defty, Miranda
Larson, Conrad Williams, the legendary Sam Barlow, Gary Andrews,
Ken Faier, Jamie Anderson, Theresa Plummer-Andrews, Jackie
Edwards, Chris Rose, Joan Lofts, Vanessa Hill, Katrina Tanzer,
Karen Doyle, Simon Nicholson, James Mason, Phil Gomm, Dave
Ingham, Jan Page, Mellie Buse, Hilary Baverstock, Jackie Cockle,
Sue Nott, and Tony Collingwood.
 Chapter 1
WHY ANIMATION?

A lot of writers will tell you that you cannot learn to write; it is a gift
you either have or you don’t. There is a small element of truth in that;
some writers have more natural ability than others but everyone can
get better. Everyone can learn principles of structure and dialogue,
and they can learn to apply elements of drama and comedy that will
make their stories better. That’s what we aim to do here, but before
we get into the nuts and bolts of how to make your scripts great, we
need to have a reality check.

The Business of Animation

Animation is expensive. It doesn’t need to be; it is now possible to
create animations on your phone using paper cutouts for next to
nothing, but animation as you would see it on TV or at the movie
theater is costly to make. At the time of writing, the cheapest form of
computer-generated imagery (CGI) animation costs around $15,000
a minute to make. A good one can cost upward of $50,000 a minute.
To get a rough idea of a series budget, let’s take the lower number of
$15,000 per minute. If it’s a ten-minute episode, the body of the
episode will be around nine-minutes long, giving us a cost of
$135,000 per episode. If you’re making a series of twenty-six
episodes, you then need to multiply that number by twenty-six.
That’s a lot of money. Your idea for that quirky new cartoon series
about a robotic samurai is in fact a multimillion-dollar business
proposal.
 To illustrate further, moving out of the world of animation for a
moment, we are going to look at a show called Shark Tank (Dragon’s
Den in some territories). In this show, members of the public are
given the opportunity to pitch business ideas to successful
entrepreneurs, or “Sharks,” in the hope of finding an investor. There
are a lot of bad ideas on the show, but there are quite a few ideas
that seem like good ones too. But when you watch it, it’s amazing
how often the ideas that seem good suddenly start to fall apart under
the scrutiny of the “Sharks.” The idea might be innovative but the
numbers don’t add up; it might be the best-tasting jelly that’s ever
been invented but the branding is all wrong. Sometimes the person
making their pitch has done everything right, that is, the accounts
add up and the marketing plan is perfect, but it turns out that
someone has already started something just like it and is six months
ahead. The list of the ways that these business ideas can fall apart
seems endless. These top entrepreneurs know what they’re looking
for and know how many different ways a business can fail. But how
does this apply to you as a writer of animation?
Most companies that make animated shows either have a lot of
money or know investors that have a lot of money. People and
companies with lots of money don’t tend to keep lots of money if they
take too many risks. Now, what if we told you that the way to see
your ideas and stories come to life on the screen is as simple as
making people feel more comfortable about the risk they are taking?
The more comfortable you make people feel, the more stories you’ll
get to write. And that’s what this book is about. That doesn’t mean
this is a checklist on how to project the right body language and say
the right buzzwords. This is about bullet proofing your ideas. It’s
about the fundamentals of what you need to do to give the industry
(and your audience) what they want, at the same time as allowing
yourself to be creative.
But, how do you make the decision-makers feel comfortable about
choosing your project?
Master the Craft of Writing
Writing animation requires a complex and unique set of skills. To
start with, you need to be able to think visually and process your
ideas into a series of shots, you need to write dialogue that is both
energetic and true to character, and you need to be able to think in
terms of dramatic structure. In short, you need to be both technical
and creative and, depending on your chosen genre, you may need to
be funny too. This may sound daunting, but the truth is that no one is
great at all of those things (if they were, Toy Story wouldn’t have four
writers on the credits), but we can all improve our weak areas and
get even stronger at our strong ones.
But how do you master the craft of writing? Well, we’re going to
give you lots of tools that will help you. These tools will make your
stories better, and the more tools you master using, the more
accomplished you will become as a writer.

Tools Not Rules

There are no rules in writing. Although some people will tell you that
there are. Some will tell you that they know the golden rule that you
must stick to, the one thing that you must always do when writing a
script. This simply is not true. For every rule that someone comes up
with, you can find a successful story that breaks that rule. So, we’ve
come up with a toolbox rather than a rulebook. Now, it’s important to
remember that some tools are more helpful and should be used
more often than others. If you’re a cabinetmaker, you probably use a
saw on pretty much every job you do, but you might use needle-
nosed pliers only occasionally. So, we’ll be recommending that you
use some of these tools in pretty much every story, while others you
might only use if you feel like your story is “lacking in something.”
It is important to note here that while there are no rules in writing,
most shows do have their own format that make them successful—
we’ll be covering that in Chapter 20. These formats are the “rules” for
those shows, but there is no one set of rules that apply to all stories
or shows.

Why Animation?
In theory, you could make any TV show as an animated series if you
wanted to. But then why are Breaking Bad and Friends live action?
And why were Tom and Jerry and Bugs Bunny animated? The
answers might seem obvious, but we need to break this down to the
fundamentals so that your stories always have a strong foundation.
Laura once sat in a meeting where a creative with a series idea was
pitching his concept to a producer. Part of the conversation went
something like this.
PRODUCER
I love the show idea, but why is
it animated?
CREATIVE
Because it’s for kids.
PRODUCER
No, I mean why would you animate
this show? It would work just as
well if it was live action. Kids
watch live action too.
CREATIVE
I just think it should be
animated.
PRODUCER
Ummm . . . Let me put it this way . . .
This isn’t an animated show.
CREATIVE
It is, I’ve drawn the
 Characters . . .
This went on for some time, but hopefully you get the picture. Just to
be clear—that show didn’t get made. But also to be clear, the person
with the idea didn’t understand why that show shouldn’t be animated
and neither did Laura. We had to make quite a few mistakes of our
own before our point of view switched from “that producer is wrong”
to “I get it, I know the changes we need to make if it’s going to be
animated.” So, it’s time to open our toolbox and start tinkering about
with the nuts and bolts of animation.
There are three main reasons why a TV show should be animated.
These are not in order of priority, and the reason can be any one or a
combination of all three.

Fantasy
Let’s start with Tom and Jerry. Imagine you’re Hanna and Barbera
and you’ve just come up with this idea. There’s a cat that’s trying to
catch a mouse and the mouse is always one step ahead of him.
You’ve got great ideas for slapstick comedy and exciting action
sequences and you can’t wait to get started. So, why are you going
to make it animation? Is it possible to do a live action version of the
show?
You could get an animal training school to train some cats and
mice and then film it with a real cat and mouse. The best we can say
about that idea is “good luck with that!” Or maybe, you could get two
actors who are good at physical comedy, put one in a cat costume
and one in a mouse costume, build some giant props, and you’re
away. But would that look as good as the Hanna Barbera animation?
We doubt it. What if we make it that the characters are not a cat and
a mouse but two people who don’t like each other? Someone who is
big and aggressive chasing around someone who is small, smart,
and agile. Well, that might work, but you would lose all the incredible
sequences that rely on the cat and mouse scale. If you disagree, just
watch the pool table sequence in Cue Ball Cat. On top of that, you’d
also lose the legacy of cat and mouse conflict, you don’t need to
explain why Tom and Jerry hate each other; we already know that
cats and mice don’t get along.
We put it to you that in the case of Tom and Jerry the fantasy of two
animal adversaries with some cat and mouse traits and some human
traits was best realized as an animation series. The fact that
everything was a sequence of drawn pictures allowed the freedom to
create scenes that would be difficult to recreate in the real world.
There are a number of ways in which fantasy makes animation
your best choice of medium. We’ve just talked about one but the
possibilities are endless. Think about Bugs Bunny, Adventure Time,
and Frozen. Why are each of those animated? And once you’ve
thought about those, we want you to think a little harder. We want
you to really get this stuff and take it on board, and the best way to
do that is to think about it, ponder, explore, and get stuck in.
Thinky Time #1
We tried to come up with a scholarly name for these exercises, but
hey, you’re going to be an animation writer, you have to get used to
“silly.”
You’re now going to come up with some ideas for your very own
animated TV show. Yes, you’re in the first chapter, and you are
already going to create your own show idea. We’re going to do this
by taking a live-action TV series and giving it a fantasy twist. Think
about The Flintstones; it’s like a family sitcom in a caveman world.
Top Cat is The Phil Silvers Show with alley cats. What about
Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!? A mystery horror comedy with a
talking dog. Now, what if you took Downton Abbey and made all the
characters mice? What would happen if you set Blue Bloods in a
beehive?
Now try some yourself. You’re going to start by making two lists.
First, on the left side of your piece of paper, write down some TV
shows. Then, on the right side, write down some ways you could
give it a fantasy twist. We’ll give you four of each to kick things off,
but try and come up with at least ten.
Schitt’s Creek in Santa’s Workshop
The Mandalorian in Medieval Times
The X Factor in a Vegetable Patch
Shameless in an Aquarium

When you have completed your lists, it’s time to mix and match. Try
putting different combinations of right and left together. What would
The X Factor in medieval times look like? Just run through them in
your head and see if any two that you put together make you laugh
or excited. This may sound very simplistic, but you’d be surprised by
how many times this kicks off a good idea. And it also works with
movies. Have you ever seen Chicken Run? It’s like The Great
Escape set in a chicken coop. Oliver and Company is Oliver Twist
with dogs.
Some of the ideas this exercise generates might not be great, you
might also realize that the idea that you’ve come up with already
exists. That doesn’t matter. The whole point is to start thinking about
what makes good animation. But, you might have hit on an idea that
you really like, and if you have, we don’t want you to waste it. Write it
down and keep it somewhere; you might decide to develop it later.
Next, we’re going to go on to talk about fantasy’s not-so-distant
cousin.

Hyper-reality
Hyper-reality is a little like fantasy, but for the purposes of
understanding animation we need to make a distinction between the
two. Fantasy would be a TV series about a talking sponge who lives
in a pineapple; it has no basis in reality. Hyper-reality is when that
talking sponge can cook 100 crab patties in just a few seconds. Take
Scooby-Doo. A talking dog is fantasy, but squeezing a five-foot-high
sandwich into one mouthful is hyper-reality. It’s kind of real, but
hyper.
 Fantasy and hyper-reality often exist side by side; many fantasy
shows also have hyper-reality in them, but they don’t always. Take
Dinotrux. If you’ve never seen it, take a moment and watch an
episode. Dinotrux is packed full of fantasy; all the machines have
personalities and can talk. This has no basis in reality. The rest of
the show is grounded in a very real world. There are no extreme
sound effects and no eyes popping out on stalks; the mechanics of
the Dinotrux world is for the most part based on reality.
Let’s talk about The Simpsons. When Mr. Burns built a device that
blocked out the sun, that was fantasy. But when Homer fell off a cliff
and hit every rock on the way down, it didn’t kill him, it just really hurt
—that’s hyper-reality. Have you ever seen the episode where
Sideshow Bob stands on rake after rake, each one springing up and
hitting him in the face? That is definitely hyper-reality. How do we
know that? When Paul was a kid, he’d seen cartoon characters
stepping on rakes quite a few times and wondered if they did spring
up like they did on TV. Then one day he was playing in the garden
and there was a rake on the ground, so he decided to test it. Just
gently in case it really did hurt. It turns out, that it’s quite difficult to do
gently and it does hurt. Seriously, don’t try that one at home. We
know that there is no way Sideshow Bob would still be standing after
stepping on that many rakes in a row. The action of standing on the
rake is real, the fact that it flies up and hits him in the face is real, but
the fact that Sideshow Bob goes on to do it about seventeen more
times and it doesn’t crack his skull, that’s hyper-reality.
You may have noticed that a lot of this hyper-reality is very visual.
That is a key point. Animation is a very visual medium and perhaps
is more related to the movies of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin
than it is to many modern TV programs that have more dialogue.
Don’t get us wrong, animation has great dialogue—the silent era
finished a long time ago—but visual humor is a big part of animation
and hyper-reality.
Thinky Time #2
Okay, so now you’re going to watch some TV. One of the great
things about this job is that you get to watch cartoons and it counts
as actual work. So, choose an episode of an animated TV series.
You can do this with a movie too, but an episode is quicker. Now as
you watch it, we want you to think about the hyper-reality used in the
animation you are watching. Which parts are fantasy and which parts
are hyper-reality? How extreme are the levels of hyper-reality?
Different shows will have more or less, depending on the style of the
show.
Sometimes the line between hyper-reality and fantasy is blurred, so
you may not be able to put everything into a clear category. That’s
okay. We just want you to think about why stories should be
animated instead of live action.
Now this exercise won’t give you an idea for a whole show or
movie like the last one, but this is more useful than it first appears.
Being able to analyze the style of a show is very important, and we’ll
be talking more about that in Chapter 20. But just so you know, we
promise that we won’t give you any exercises to do that aren’t really
helpful—so they’re all worth doing! And hopefully they’re quite fun
too.

Money
You may have noticed a slight flaw in our logic in the last two
sections. You can film fantasy and hyper-reality without using
animation. So now we’re going to look at the exceptions to the rule.
Let’s go back to The Flintstones. That has been made into a live-
action movie. What about Home Alone? That movie is jam packed
with hyper-real animation-type moments, and it’s not animated. But
there is an element that comes into play with all movies and TV
shows, and animation is not exempt. And that’s money.
We’ve already told you that animation is expensive to make, so
let’s have a look at one particular show to illustrate how budget can
influence a decision to animate a show.
Have you seen Futurama? You could make that show in live action
if you had a huge budget and you really wanted to, but what are the
practicalities? Models of futuristic cityscapes can be constructed,
giant spaceship sets can be built on huge stages, aliens and mutants
can be achieved with prosthetic makeup, and slapstick action scenes
can be performed by stuntmen. You also have to make twenty-six
half-hour episodes in a year. That’s a lot. And it’s just cheaper, and
often quicker, to draw the images and move them about inside a
computer.
You don’t need to know the complexities of budgeting an animated
series or movie; we’re writers not production accountants. It just
helps if you’re aware of it. What we don’t want is for you to put your
heart and soul into an idea, then when you get to pitch it to a
producer they say those words, “this isn’t an animated show.” We
want you to be more professional than that—and you already are.
But just to hammer the point home, do the following exercise.
Thinky Time #3
Remember that episode you watched for Thinky Time #2? We want
you to think about these questions:

1. Which scenes would be really tricky to film in live action? If you

were a director and you had to film those scenes, how would you
do them?
2. How big would some of the sets have to be if it was a live-action
show?
3. And finally, does it just look better animated?

A Brief Word about Visual Style

A thought that might be crossing your mind, and that we haven’t
covered yet, is, what about visual style? Surely just how great it
looks is a good reason to animate something? And our response to
that is, absolutely yes! Ultimately, some things will just look better in
animation. Sometimes it’s not about money or logic, it’s about
creativity. It’s about just how gorgeous it looks. Some animations are
animated, not because of the financial reasons, but because of their
aesthetic. Both Persepolis and Ethel & Ernest could have been
filmed as live action, but you would have lost the unique vision of the
artists who created them.
That very same unique vision is what makes animation so diverse.
It allows us to produce something as sweet and endearing as Peppa
Pig (Figure 1) to something as subversive as BoJack Horseman
(Figure 2). You can make something that looks as simple as
Adventure Time (Figure 3) or as rich and complex as The Triplets of
Belleville (Figure 4). There is nothing like animation to whisk you into
a world of fantasy and wonder. Sometimes animation is just the best.

Figure 1 Peppa Pig, “The Quarrel”, June 7, 2007.

Figure 2 BoJack Horseman, “The BoJack Horseman Story, Chapter One”, August
22, 2014.

Figure 3 Adventure Time, “Slumber Party Panic”, April 5, 2010.

Figure 4 The Triplets of Belleville, August 29, 2003.

How to Get the Most Out of This Book

If you’re going to write (or work in) the animation industry, you’re
going to need to watch a lot of animation. You will need to keep up to
date with the latest releases, partly so you know what the current
trends are, both in style and in content. If you want to work in
animated comedy, you will need to know about Family Guy, Rick and
Morty, and Bob’s Burgers, but if you’re more interested in features
you will need to keep up to date with the production slate of
DreamWorks, Disney/Pixar, Studio Ghibli, Laika, and Sony.
Another reason for absorbing as much animation as possible is so
that you can see how technology is developing. When we first
started working in CGI, we had to avoid stories that involved
characters interacting directly with water because it was so difficult to
animate, but now technology has moved on and it has become
easier. It would have been much harder to get the greenlight for a
movie like Moana (Figure 5) in 2006 than it was in 2016. Similarly, in
the movie Sing, we see the theater being destroyed by a flood
(Figure 6). We suspect that ten years before this, budget and
animation difficulties would have meant that the writers would have
been forced to come up with a different way to destroy the theater. At
the time of writing, crowd scenes are time consuming (and therefore
expensive) to animate (especially in CGI and stop-motion) so need
to be kept to a minimum. If you are working on a high-budget
blockbuster, then the production will probably accommodate this. But
scenes like we see at the end of Hotel Transylvania 2 (Figure 7)
need to be kept to a minimum. It would seem though, that it is just a
question of time before developments in software make this cheaper
and easier to create.

Figure 5 Moana, November 14, 2016.

Figure 6 Sing, December 3, 2016.

Figure 7 Hotel Transylvania 2, September 25, 2015.

Throughout this book we will be using lots of examples from

animated TV series and movies. There is so much animation out
there, it will be impossible to keep up with everything, and chances
are we will be using some examples of projects you have might not
have heard of. That’s okay. Where necessary we will provide you
with all the information you need to understand the examples when
you get to them. In some cases, you might want to run an internet
search so that you know a bit more about the project and in others
you might want to watch the whole thing. There are also a few
movies that will be helpful to watch as you are reading; this will
depend on the chapters you are finding most helpful, but in particul
ar we would recommend Zootopia and Shrek.
You will notice that a lot of examples we use are from animated
features. That doesn’t mean that this book is just for those who want
to write an animated feature—although it does fulfill that role. We
use those examples for three reasons:

1. These features are familiar to a lot of people and are easy to

access if you want to watch them.
2. Many of the principles used in writing an animated feature are the
same in TV and even in a two-minute independent short, so most
can be applied to whatever form of animated storytelling you are
interested in.
3. Writers of successful animated features tend to be the very best at
what they do, so they make great examples.

Bonus Material
Throughout the book, there are various sections titled “Bonus
Material.” They appear in the same format as this insert, and they
contain advice that we feel needs special emphasis.

Brilliant! We’ve made a great start and you’re on your way to being a
top-class animation writer. Now it’s time to get stuck in with one of
the most powerful tools at your disposal.
 Chapter 2
GOALS

This is a short chapter. But the information here comes up again in

other parts of the book, so it’s important to understand.
Goals drive stories. Great goals make great stories. Whether it’s
Macbeth aiming to be king or Doc McStuffins trying to fix a teddy
bear. It is hard to write a story without characters having goals.
There have been great movies that are not entirely goal driven, the
recent Joker movie being a perfect example, but it is hard to think of
a successful animation that does not use goals to drive the story. But
what are goals and how do we use them most effectively?
To answer that, we want to take you into a different world for a
moment. The world of motivational speaking and positive thinking
seminars. There are all kinds of seminars you can go on; they
usually have words like “excellence” or “power” in the title. They
often take place in big hotels or conference centers and have
whiteboards and PowerPoint presentations. A rock song might play
as the speaker struts out and tells you how to improve your life. We
know about these because in a former life Paul went to most of
them. Now, there is one thing that most of these courses have in
common—they talk about goals. And the goals that you give your
characters will work in a very similar way to the goals that you learn
at these seminars. You can learn a lot about goals by going on one
of these courses, fortunately you don’t have to. We’re going to tell
you all the bits you need to know for your script right here.
 First, let’s go back to the motivational seminar for a moment. Often
the kind of goal these courses promote is how to earn a certain
amount of money, say a million dollars, or to land the job as the chief
executive officer (CEO) in a big company. Maybe it could be to sell a
certain number of phone contracts. These could all work as the
character’s goal in an animated movie. Usually those goals are a
little more off the wall than that, but just to highlight the point, a story
about a honeybee who is trying to usurp the Queen and be the CEO
of the hive might make a great movie. We will come back later to the
reasons why that might work, after we’ve talked about the
fundamentals of goals in storytelling.
There are three things that make a goal work in a story, and we’re
going to examine them one at a time.

1 Goals Require Desire and Action

A goal is something that a character wants. Whether it’s Charlie
Brown trying to get the Little Red-Haired Girl to notice him or
Elastigirl trying to save the world, these are things that the character
wants. But they don’t just want them, they set out to get them. A goal
with no action or pursuit by the character is just a thought, and a
thought on its own does not give us a story. What would happen in
the movie if Marlin didn’t set off to find Nemo? We suspect that a
movie about a fish that was depressed about the loss of his son and
did nothing to rectify the situation would have flopped at the box
office.
Your character has to want the goal badly enough to spring into
action. The more your character wants to achieve the goal, the better
your story will be. It’s almost like a law of storytelling:

The greater your character’s desire, the more dramatic your story will
be if it’s a drama
or the funnier your story will be if it’s a comedy.
If your character just wants to be a king a little bit, that’s kind of
interesting, but look at Simba in The Lion King. Scar killed his dad,
took his kingdom, and is now destroying it, Simba desperately wants
to rule the pride and make things right again. One of the best
examples of strong desire comes in the movie Moana. The central
character, Moana, has the goal of returning the “heart” to Te Fiti.
Moana knows this will be a perilous quest, so why does she set out
to achieve this goal? First, there is a coconut blight on her island,
then the fishermen can’t find any fish, then she discovers that there
is a “darkness” that is draining the life from the island, and then she
discovers that the ocean has chosen her for this quest. This might
seem like a lot of good reasons to achieve this goal, but she is still
resistant. But then, you have her grandmother’s dying words when
she tells Moana “you must.” Now, there are enough reasons for her
to go and, as an audience, we really want her to achieve her goal.

2 Goals Are Specific

There is more to a good goal than it just being something a character
wants. A good goal also has to be specific. Marlin doesn’t want to
find just any young fish; he wants to find Nemo. Simba doesn’t want
to be ruler of any bunch of lions, he wants to take his place as the
ruler of the Pride Lands. When you write, the more specific you
become, the better your story gets. So, make your characters’ goals
specific.
Now we’re going to drill down into this a bit more. A good way to
make a goal specific is to make it “tickable.” Now “tickable” isn’t a
real word (at least it’s not in the dictionary at time of writing), what we
mean is that if your character were to write his goal down on a piece
of paper, he would know when he could tick it off as achieved. Stick
with us on this one, because getting this right can mean the
difference between a great script and one that is constantly rewritten
because it doesn’t quite work.
 Let’s go back to the motivational seminar again. The person doing
the presentation has got everyone to write down their goals.
Invariably, a few people will have put down something like “to be
happy” as their top goal. Which sounds great, but it’s not specific
enough. Most motivational coaches will tell you that you need to be
more specific than that. Chasing happiness is a very vague activity
and can send people to the Himalayas in search of themselves.
What is it that’s going to make you happy? Is it a Ferrari? A million
dollars? To be a real live boy? You can’t tick “being happy”; it’s a
state of mind that comes and goes. Your character might end up
living happily ever after, but what was the “tickable” goal that led to
that moment?
In Toy Story, Woody wants to be Andy’s favorite toy, but then Buzz
turns up and seems to ruin that for him. We could state that Woody’s
goal is to be Andy’s favorite toy, it’s something he wants, and it’s kind
of specific. But how would Woody know he could tick that off on his
piece of paper? Like happiness, it is a tran sient thing. It can change.
Andy could state at the end that “you’re my favorite toy ever” and
then maybe he could tick it off, but what if Andy’s mum gets him the
latest X-Box for Christmas? Woody might be erasing that tick.
So how do we make it more specific? We make it physical.
Something concrete that everyone can see. Animation is a visual
medium, and being able to see the goal achieved, something
tangible, makes the story stronger. In Toy Story, Woody’s tickable
goal is to get Buzz back to Andy after they get left at the gas station.
That is specific and tickable, and we can see when that has
happened. In Beauty and the Beast, the Beast doesn’t just want to
learn to love another and earn their love in return. No, he wants to do
it so he can become human again and we see that happen. Great,
I’m a human; I can tick that box now. And then he does live happily
ever after.

3 Goals Have a Time Frame

Meanwhile, back at the motivational seminar, the course leader has
finally got everyone to cross out “be happy” from their goals list and
come up with something more specific. He’s made them think of a
ton of reasons to achieve their goal so now they really want it. The
next thing we need is to give that goal a time frame. There’s a big
difference between earning a million dollars over the course of a
lifetime and earning a million dollars in the next year. So, we put a
date on achieving our goals. The Beast doesn’t just need to earn the
love of another, he has to do it before his twenty-first birthday. In
Cars, Lightning McQueen is desperate to escape Radiator Springs
and get to California, but it has to be in time for the Piston Cup tie-
breaker race.
In a story, we don’t always know the time frame from the beginning,
but the better stories introduce one at some point. This is often
called the “ticking clock” or a “time lock.” Sometimes the time frame
changes throughout the story—usually getting shorter to increase
the tension.

Goals in Summary
So, we know that our character must deeply desire their goal. It has
to be specific, physical, and tickable. It’s also better if it has a
deadline. Now, let’s go back to the idea that we talked about earlier
in this chapter again: the honeybee who wants to usurp the Queen
and become the CEO of the beehive. That’s an idea that is less than
one line long, but it just seems to work. Why? Because that one line
tells us something very specific that our character wants and we can
picture what that would look like when they achieve it. That picture
will be different for each person as we don’t have all the story details
yet, but most of us will imagine something. That is the power of a
goal in storytelling.

Thinky Time #4
We know specifically what our honeybee wants to achieve, but now
we want you to think more about the other aspects of the goal. Why
does he want to become the CEO of the hive? Is he selfish and
wants to control the honey supply in the area? Does he think it will
be an easy life? Is the Queen evil and oppressing the other
honeybees? And what is the time frame? Why does the goal have to
be achieved by a set time?

1) Write down five reasons that our honeybee might want to achieve
this goal.
2) Write down five reasons for the goal to be achieved within a
particular time frame.
3) Decide which combination of your answers you like the most and
see how that plays out as a story in your head.

Most of the examples we have used in this section have been from
movies. But these goals are just as important in short form and
episodic television. In the pilot episode of Rick and Morty, Rick wants
to bring back Mega Tree Seeds from another dimension. SpongeBob
might be delivering a pizza or passing his boating exam. In each
case, it is the specific physical goal that is driving the story.
 Chapter 3
OBSTACLES

Let’s start with a bold statement.

If you don’t have any obstacles you don’t have a story.
All stories have obstacles for characters to overcome; whether we
are talking about an epic saga or a short you are making for
YouTube. If it’s a story, you will need obstacles. While a goal drives
your story, it’s the obstacles that make it interesting.
Try to imagine a goal without an obstacle. Let’s just say that we
have a character, we’ll call her Lou, and Lou’s goal is to make a cup
of coffee. Pretty straightforward, especially if she works in a coffee
shop and she has all the necessary tools and ingredients in hand. If
there’s a coffee machine, she probably just needs to pour the coffee
into a cup. So, we have a character and a goal. But we are left with a
pretty uninteresting story—an animated short where someone pours
coffee into a cup.
Now let’s say that Lou goes to make the coffee and realizes that
there is no coffee in the shop. We now have an obstacle to
overcome and a bit more of a story, but still, it’s not much of an
obstacle and not much of a story. So, let’s stack up the obstacles a
bit more. What if there is an irate customer in the shop? He’s fed up
with Lou’s bad service and won’t leave till he gets his coffee—it’s the
only coffee shop for miles. She’s also looking after the manager’s
children and Lou promised her that she wouldn’t leave them
unattended. Lou wants to run down the road to the shop, but the kids
are refusing to come with her. She tries calling a friend and asking if
they could bring her some coffee but she can’t get a signal on her
phone. Lou is still working out how to get some coffee when there is
a power cut. She tries to explain this to the irate customer, but he is
convinced she shut down the power herself to get him out of the
shop. The irate customer, now suffering from caffeine withdrawal,
turns apoplectic. He breaks a leg off one of the tables and threatens
to smash the whole place up if he doesn’t get his coffee.
That might be an extreme example, but you can see that we
started off with a simple goal, but no obstacles. As we started to
layer on the obstacles the story gained potential.
Let us tell you about one of Paul’s first animations. This was
intended to be a two-minute short that was going to be animated with
clay on a friend’s dining room table. The story was simple. There
was a Buddhist monk trying to meditate. As he sat down, a chicken
wandered past and started clucking. The monk’s eyes open, and we
can see that it’s irritating him. He wants to meditate and the chicken
is putting him off. We have an obstacle, the chicken. He needs to get
rid of the chicken in order to meditate. What follows is a descent into
violence as the monk tries to get rid of the chicken, eventually killing
it with a huge hammer—such is his journey to inner peace.
This is a demonstration of one of the simplest stories you could
ever tell. It would have been only two minutes long, but there was
still a central character and an obstacle for him to overcome. Without
the chicken, you would just be watching a monk meditate. That
would be easy to animate, perhaps serene to watch, but wouldn’t
have been very entertaining.
Now that you are starting to understand the importance of
obstacles in stories, it’s worth spending some time and thinking
about the different types of obstacles that can appear in your stories.
These obstacles can range from a small obstacle within a scene to
the huge obstacles that go across an entire movie, and they fall into
two main categories. These are the obstacles that come from
outside a character and obstacles that come from within.

External Obstacles
To emphasize the importance of external obstacles, it is worth
thinking about the history of animated film. Television shows such as
sitcoms have their roots in theater and radio; they rely very much on
the spoken word, whereas animated movies started off in the era of
silent film. If you look back at the early animations of Max and Dave
Fleischer or Newman Theater’s Laugh-O-gram’s (some of Walt
Disney’s early animations), they had no dialogue. It was possible to
put some speech bubbles or dialogue text on the screen in movies
such as this, but the stories were visual and, as such, the obstacles
that the characters faced had to be physical. With the advent of
sound in movies, dialogue was now possible, but the physical
aspects of the storytelling remained and animation is still dominated
by stories with external obstacles for the characters to overcome.
This goes back to our section on “why animation?” (see Chapter 1),
characters talking would be easier and cheaper to film in live action
than it would be to animate them.
There are a wide range of external obstacles that characters can
face, and, like our previous coffee shop example, it is often worth
layering on more than one type to keep the stakes high and your
story interesting. But what are the different types of external conflict?

1. The opponent. As the name suggests, this is a character in direct

opposition to the character you are following in your story. This
can be an archvillain or just someone who is causing a small
problem for your character. It is obvious that the Joker in Batman:
The Animated Series is an opponent, but so is the slow-moving
sloth in Zootopia when Judy Hopps is trying to get some
information in a hurry.
2. Natural. Characters in animation will often face a natural obstacle.
This can be anything from the desert in Rango, the stormy ocean
in Moana, or even some rain if you’re Barry in Bee Movie.
3. Created. Some of the obstacles that stand in our characters’ way
might not be natural. These obstacles can be created by the
opponent, for example, the thorns that Maleficent magically
produces to stop Prince Phillip in Walt Disney’s Sleeping Beauty
or they can be created by people or characters that we never see,
like the road (or “river of death”) in Watership Down. Other
created obstacles can also come in the form of things like a magic
spell or potion that somehow limits the character’s abilities, like
Tiana being turned into a frog (in The Princess and the Frog).

Internal Obstacles
Great animators have always had the ability to portray a wide range
of emotions in their characters using both facial expressions and
body language. These, however, were often simple or extreme
emotions, making internal conflicts difficult to portray. We can see
Wile E. Coyote’s pain when he realizes he’s about to plummet into
the canyon, but it might be more difficult to portray an inner conflict,
showing how he feels as a carnivore struggling to live on a bird-only
diet when plant-based proteins are readily available.
In recent years, changes in technology have allowed modern
animators to portray subtleties in emotion never imagined before.
Just watch some of the facial expressions in Missing Link, these are
getting close to the range and depth of emotion that live-action
actors can portray. While most of the conflict in animation remains
external, these advances in technology allow for more internal
obstacles to play a part in storytelling.
There are two main types of internal obstacle.

1. Fears. Most of us have fears and ghosts from our past that haunt
us and hold us back in some way, and the same can be true for
 animated characters. Whether it is Scooby Doo and his fear of
ghosts (always a hindrance for a ghost hunter) or Shrek not being
able to get over the fact that when all is said and done, he’s an
ugly ogre and he doesn’t want to let people in emotionally.
With this type of obstacle, it is important the fear be appropriate to
the story. A fear is irrelevant if it doesn’t challenge the character
on his journey. If, for example, your character has a fear of public
speaking, it is only relevant if they need to address an audience to
achieve their goal.
2. Promises. This device is used to a much lesser extent, but can
still be a useful way to make life difficult for your character. In our
coffee shop example earlier, Lou’s promise to look after the
manager’s children make it difficult for her to go out and get some
more coffee. A promise that limits your character’s ability can be
useful, but it can also be frustrating for the audience if not used
wisely. If breaking the promise is going to make a character’s life a
lot easier, there has to be a really strong reason for them to keep
their promise. The last thing you want is the audience screaming
“just break the promise!” at the screen.

Bonus Material
Some of you might have seen Chris Graves and Trey Parker’s
student film American History (if you haven’t, try and track it down—
it’s great!). If you have seen it, you might be saying that there aren’t
any obstacles in that film. And you’d be kind of right—although you
might consider the characters who get killed to be obstacles to their
killers. But while American History is a pseudo-story, it falls more
under the category of art house documentary than a story in the
truest sense of the word.
While this might seem like an exception to the rule, we would argue
that you can write a great animation without obstacles, but you can’t
tell a great story without them, and ultimately most animations are
stories.

Thinky Time #5
Obstacles are so important to storytelling, that we ask ourselves on a
nearly daily basis, “What obstacles can this goal throw up for our
characters?” This exercise will help you to tune in to the obstacles
that you see in animation.

1. Watch an episode from any animated TV series.

2. Identify the character that has the most significant goal in that
episode.
3. List all the obstacles that the character needs to overcome in
order to achieve that goal.
4. Once you have that list, look at the aforementioned categories and
see which they fall under.

The more you do the aforementioned exercise, the more you should
notice that animation tends to focus more on external obstacles than
internal ones. As we said, it’s a visual medium.
 Chapter 4
CENTRAL CHARACTER

Most stories are primarily about one character. There can be lots of
characters within a story, but there is usually just one primary (or
central) character. What about movies like Disney’s Beauty and the
Beast? Surely that must have two central characters, the Beauty and
the Beast? Both their characters are named in the title. Well yes, the
story is about both Belle and the Beast. But Belle is the central
character. Don’t get us wrong; when you watch a movie or TV show,
you will engage with and follow lots of characters over the course of
the story, but usually there is still one main character.
Some of you, at this stage, may well be thinking of TV shows and
movies with more than one central character. We ask you to put
those thoughts on hold for a moment. We will come back to those
exceptions in a little while. For the moment, we would like you to
think about stories where there is only one central character. Some
are easy to spot. There are no prizes for guessing who the central
characters are in The Bugs Bunny Show, Hong Kong Phooey,
Shrek, or Kubo and the Two Strings (note: it’s not the two strings). If
there is one character’s name in the title, you can pretty much guess
who the central character is.
Some titles are not so straightforward. What about South Park,
Flushed Away, or Hotel Transylvania? These aren’t obvious from the
title, and sometimes, in movies like Hotel Transylvania, it’s not
obvious when you watch them either.
 Identifying the Central Character
There are four basic questions you can ask that will help you identify
the central character:

1. Who has the main goal that you follow through the story?
2. Who is the most proactive character in the story?
3. Which character spends the most time on screen?
4. Who changes or learns the most by the end of the story?

You might find that when you ask these questions, you get a few
different answers as you go down the list. That’s fine. But you will
find that the same name will be the answer to the majority of those
questions. Going back to Beauty and the Beast, Belle is the answer
to the first three questions, but the Beast is the answer to the last.
Conclusion, Belle is the central character in that story.
Who is the central character in Hotel Transylvania? Let’s go
through the four questions. Dracula has the act two goal of trying to
get Jonathan out of the hotel and then has the act three goal of
bringing him back again. His overarching goal is to protect his
daughter. So, Dracula wins hands down on the goals. Dracula is
proactive all the way through the movie in trying to achieve these
goals, but he is also proactive in running the hotel. Another point to
Dracula. Dracula spends the most time on screen (and is the first
person we see) so again Dracula wins. Lastly, Dracula learns that
humans aren’t all bad, so Dracula changes the most in this movie as
well. As you can see, Hotel Transylvania is one of the best examples
of a movie with one central character as he is the answer to all four
questions. The more you can achieve this in your own scripts,
especially in the early days while you are learning the craft, the more
successful your scripts will be.
You also might be thinking, what if the main characters in the story
are allies? Surely then you’re rooting for both characters. That’s true,
you are. But those characters will still be different in some way. If two
characters think exactly the same thing about everything in the story,
then one of them is redundant. Even in the closest alliance there will
be conflict and differences of opinion. In these cases, one of the
characters is still the central character while the other takes on a
supporting role. In Kung Fu Panda, all of the warriors work together
to defeat Tai Lung, but it is clearly Po’s story—even if the title didn’t
give it away. For a further example of characters working together to
achieve the same goal, look at the case studies on Zootopia and
Paw Patrol in Chapter 9.
We hear lots of objections to the one central character principle
when people pitch us ideas, enough for us to question ourselves
about how important it is. Like we said, this is about tools not rules,
so you don’t have to stick to this principle, but what happens when
you don’t have a central character?

The Importance of One Central Character

When people watch an animated film or TV show, they are
temporarily leaving the real world behind and going into another
world. This happens in all fiction, but often more so in animation than
live action. Even in a very realistic animation, you are still watching
an artist’s impression of the real world, not the world itself.
Let’s look at Family Guy. On the surface, Family Guy is pretty
much a standard family sitcom in the same vein as live-action
sitcoms such as Everybody Loves Raymond, The Middle, or Leave it
to Beaver. But Family Guy is animated, so it looks different. Most of
the characters are human and they might look approximately like
humans, but these are caricatures of real people, not actual people
(see Figure 8). We also have a baby that is unlike any that you will
see in the real world and a talking dog. As the viewer immerses
themselves into this different world, they need something to latch
onto, to be their guide in the world around them. It might seem like
all of the characters are doing that job all at the same time, and they
do all contribute, but it’s easier to view this world through one
person’s eyes. We start to feel that character’s emotions and we
start to root for that character. If the viewpoint shifts back-and-forth
from one character to another, that emotional engagement starts to
get watered down. The viewer is starting to think: Wait, do I think
this? Or, do I think that? Live-action movies and television usually
stick to one central character as well, but there are exceptions in
movies such as Magnolia, Pulp Fiction, and Love Actually. These
films shift viewpoints multiple times, but in the wacky world of
animated stories this is much harder for an audience to follow and,
therefore, it is much harder to find exceptions. It would seem that the
more unusual the world of the story, the more important it is to stick
to the fundamentals of storytelling—and having one central character
is an important fundamental.

Figure 8 Family Guy, “Blue Harvest”, September 23, 2007.

Now let’s get back to Family Guy. Those of you who watch Family
Guy might be thinking, “but wait a minute, I know for a fact that there
is more than one central character in that show.” You are right, and
now that we have covered the basic principles of what makes a
central character and why they are so important, we’re going to
examine one of the complexities of defining central characters.

A Plots and B Plots

An episode may have more than one plotline. These are called an A
plot and a B plot if there are two of them. Two is the most common
number, but it can be more (you could also have a C and a D plot).
Each plotline is effectively its own story, and therefore will have its
own central character and goal. Although you might be watching one
episode of a show, you might be watching more than one story at the
same time and each story will have its own goal.
Sometimes the two plots will overlap and interact with each other,
but they can also be completely separate. It is important to
remember that even when the two plots interact, they might be part
of one bigger story, but they are still two different plotlines.
You will notice that one of the plots is called the A plot and the
other is called the B plot. The A plot is the main drive of the episode
and is the one that will take up the most screen time.

Central Character Case Study: Family Guy

“Absolutely Babulous”
In the Family Guy episode Absolutely Babulous, we follow two
plotlines. One in which we see Peter doing his best to fit into the
world of Lois’s parents and the other where we see Stewie trying to
win a prize. In this case, Peter’s storyline takes up the most screen
time and is therefore the A plot (this is common in Family Guy as
Peter is the “family guy” in the title).
In this case, the A plot and the B plot are almost completely
separate. Peter hardly interacts with Stewie in this episode, and they
are rarely in the same scenes together so the two plotlines are easy
to separate from one another.
 The A plot is triggered when there is a fire at the family home and
the Griffins are forced to go and live at the Pewterschmidt’s house
(Peter’s father-in-law). Peter is forced to live in the world of his in-
laws, a world of the rich and privileged. Peter does his best to fit in,
but fails and ends up finding a place in the big Pewterschmidt house
to drink alone. Then his mother-in-law (the Bab in the title) joins him.
It turns out, she wasn’t born into a rich family and misses being the
girl she once was. Peter and Babs end up getting drunk together,
and Babs rediscovers her old blue-collar self. But then, wanting to be
true to her roots, Babs leaves Lois’s father and goes back to the wild
life she once lived. Lois blames Peter for her parents’ separation and
now Peter has to heal that rift. This gives Peter his goal.
So, Peter has the goal and is most proactive in this plotline; he is
also in every A plot scene so has the most screen time too. In this
case, nobody learns anything (except maybe that Peter will never
get on with his father-in-law!) so Question 4 would be left blank.
Peter is the answer to three out of the four questions and is clearly
the central character in the A plot.
In the B plot, Stewie gets a medal for taking part in a preschool
sports day. Then he discovers that all the trophies and medals he
has ever received (including this one) have been for participation
only; he didn’t actually win them. Stewie is devastated; he only had
to take part to get the medal and now feels that he has never
accomplished anything.
Stewie resolves to achieve something for himself and sets out to
win the Annual Quahog Pie Cook-Off. It’s clear whose goal this is—
Stewie wants to win the Cook-Off. But as we continue to try to
identify who the central character in this plot is, it starts to get a little
more tricky. Questions 2 and 3 ask, respectively, who is the most
proactive in this story and who spends the most time on screen?
Brian is helping Stewie throughout the story and is nearly as
proactive as Stewie. He is also in all of the scenes, and the two
characters share roughly the same amount of screen time. The
answers to Questions 2 and 3 could be Stewie or Brian. If we were
scoring it, we could give them half a point each. Then we get onto
the last question. Who has changed or learnt the most? Stewie
doesn’t win, but he does come fifth. He wins a ribbon and learns
what it feels like to achieve something and not just participate. It’s
Stewie again. Stewie is the answer to two of the questions and gets
a half point in the other two. Stewie is clearly the central character in
the B plot.

Thinky Time #6
Choose an episode from a long-running animated show that
normally contains more than one plotline. If in doubt, we recommend
The Simpsons, Rick and Morty, or South Park (if you accidentally
pick a rare episode that has only one plotline, abandon it and try
another one). Watch the episode and try to answer the following:

1. What are the various plotlines within that episode? Are there two
or more than two? Which of these is the A plot?
2. What are the goals for each plotline?
3. Who are the central characters for each plotline?

By this stage, with your knowledge of goals, obstacles, and central

characters, the answers to this should be relatively easy. This is still
a worthwhile exercise to do. The more this thought process becomes
part of your subconscious, the easier it is to write it yourself.
 Chapter 5
THE THREE-ACT STRUCTURE

The three-act structure is something that writers love to talk about.

We debate its value, when to use it and when it does not work.
People will try to find movies that don’t use it, to prove that it’s not
necessary while others will claim that it is a rule that must be
adhered to. Some will argue the exact way in which to use the three
acts, insisting on precise moments where the acts change. Every
one of these stances is valid, but none should be stuck to with a
sense of dogma.

The Importance of the Three-Act Structure

The three-act structure has been the main story structure in use
since both TV and film began and animation is no exception. Since
this one system of storytelling has been incredibly successful over
the history of onscreen viewing, it is probably worth understanding it
if you are going to be a writer of animation. Once you understand the
three-act structure, it is so prevalent you will see it everywhere.
We were discussing the three-act structure with a musician/DJ
once. He had been successful in the world of Dance Music and now
wanted to spend his time writing. He considered himself an artist and
believed in breaking down rules and doing things creatively that had
never been done before. We had a conversation that went
something like this.
DJ
 If the three-act structure is the
way things are always written you
should just tear up the rulebook.

The DJ mimes tearing up a piece of paper.

DJ (cont.)
Find a different way to do it! Every
time there’s a rule in creativity,
smash it down, do something different.
US
Can we ask you a question? You’re a
Pretty successful musician and DJ,
right?
DJ
Yup!
US
How many of your songs are in 4/4
time?
DJ
Huh?
US
How many of your songs use a rhythm
of four beats to the bar?
DJ
All of them . . .
US
Why did you stick to that rule? Why
didn’t you just tear up the rulebook?
DJ
Cos that’s what people dance to . . .
 US
The case for the defence rests . . .
If you’re a musician, you’ll know that not every song composed has
four beats to the bar. Classical music, rock, jazz and country, for
example, all use unusual rhythms. There will even be experimental
albums that use unique time signatures, or even ones that do not
use rhythm at all. If you know nothing about music, talk to someone
who does or do an internet search on 4/4 Time Signature (also called
Common Time). The key piece of information you need is that most
popular music is written in 4/4, or Common Time. If you want to be a
successful writer of animation, you should probably avoid the three-
act structure as often as Lennon and McCartney avoided 4/4 time. (If
you want to examine this further, look at The Beatles songs that are
not composed in 4/4 time and compare them to the success of the
ones that are.)
Because the three-act structure is fundamentally important to
storytelling, it holds a special place in this book. While most of the
other “tools in the toolbox” will each have a chapter to itself, the
three-act structure will go across four chapters. We will look at how
the three acts work together to tell a story and then we will look at
each act separately and show you how to use them in a story.
In this section, we will be using a lot of examples from well-known
movies. That does not mean that the three-act structure is only used
in feature length productions. It is just as common in a ten-minute
animated series and sometimes even fits into animated shorts.

How Does the Three-Act Structure Work?

What we need to do now is break down how these three story “parts”
work together to give us the most powerful stories. But what is the
three-act structure?
 The three-act structure gives us the changes in direction
that a story takes, that work as a cohesive whole, in order for the
characters to have completed a satisfying story journey.

Let’s break that down and look at each part of that sentence
separately.

The Changes in Direction That a Story Takes

You could think of these as the beginning, middle, and end of a story,
but they are more than that. In act one, we see a character going in
a particular direction in life and then something happens. This event
changes the character’s goals or intentions and the story changes
direction. Act one ends and act two starts. The character pursues
this new direction until another major event changes the direction of
the story again. This signifies the end of act two and we go into the
final act.
For example, in act one of a story, we might see a retired
superhero enjoying the easy life; he no longer fights crime and is
trying to get his golf handicap down to zero. Then, an archvillain
escapes from prison and wants revenge. The direction of the hero’s
life has now changed. He has gone from pursuing a life of leisure to
being a superhero again as he tries to protect himself from the
machinations of the archvillain. When that change in direction
happens, we move from act one to act two. After the hero battles the
villain for a while, it turns out that the villain has a huge bomb that
will destroy the city. Now we move from act two to act three as the
hero’s goal changes from trying to save himself, to trying to save the
city. These changes in direction are how the story takes us through
the three acts.

That Work as a Cohesive Whole

All three acts in a three-act structure work together. In How to Train
Your Dragon, Hiccup’s overarching desire is to be a valued member
of the tribe, despite being smaller and weaker than the other Vikings.
In the first act, Hiccup wants to kill a Night Fury because no other
Viking has ever killed one. In act two, Hiccup is starting to befriend a
Night Fury dragon that he calls Toothless. Now that he has made
friends with a dragon, his goal changes. His act two goal is to
complete “dragon training” by taming the dragons instead of killing
them. In act three, Hiccup’s goal is to save the dragons and the
Vikings by uniting them and defeating Red Death, the Queen of the
dragons. Each of these acts has a distinct goal, but they are made a
cohesive whole by the theme of Hiccup wanting to be a valued
member of the tribe. A goal he only attains at the end.
Sometimes movies and TV shows work as a series of different
short stories, but that is not the three-act structure. The Simpson’s
Treehouse of Horror episodes are a perfect example of three
separate short stories linked together but they are not the three-act
structure.

In Order for the Characters to Have Completed a

Satisfying Story Journey
Over the course of the story, we will see the central character’s life
change as they go through a series of challenges that relate to a
specific theme or event in that character’s life. These challenges are
not always played out in three acts. You can find stories that have
two acts or four acts, but a two-act story will often feel like
“something” is missing and a four-act story is often a step too far and
can seem confusing. There is just a kind of magic that works when
we tell stories over three acts. The changes in direction at the end of
act one and act two seem to create a synergy that lifts the story to a
higher level.
For clarity, we should state that these acts do not necessarily
equate to the placement of ad breaks in broadcasting. Production
executives, particularly when referring to one-hour TV shows, will
often say that the story is four acts. This refers to the four parts of
story when broadcast with three advert breaks in the body of the
episode. In storytelling terms, this is usually still a three-act story
structure with a break at the end of act one, in the middle of act two,
and then at the end of act two.

When to Break the Rule

At the beginning of the book, we told you this was about “tools not
rules.” Then we told you all about how important the three-act
structure was, so by now you might be thinking this one is a rule. No,
it’s just a very useful tool and one that you will probably use a lot. So
much so, that we would say that it is worth mastering before you
start writing stories that are not in the three-act structure.
Shows as popular as The Simpsons, Family Guy, and SpongeBob
SquarePants often steer away from the three-act structure. Even a
movie as successful as Toy Story 3 (see Chapter 24) tells its story in
four acts—hardly a subversive art house movie—but there are two
things to remember about these exceptions. First, they are written by
very accomplished writers, who have written a lot and have an
incredible story instinct. Second, whether they are aware of it or not,
these shows still use an act structure, it’s just not always three acts.
Remember the concept of the story changing direction? These are
still act changes, whether there are five, six, or two of them. Often,
the more “wacky” shows have more act changes; this is one of the
reasons they seem bizarre! (If you want to check this out yourself,
choose a couple of episodes of Rick & Morty at random and see how
many direction changes are in the episode. You might hit on one with
three acts, but chances are there will be more.)

The Three-Act Structure in Animation

Now one thing you may have noticed is that most on-screen stories
use the three-act structure, so you might be wondering if it works
differently when applied to animation. Well it does and it doesn’t.
There is no set rule that the three-act structure should be used in a
different way when applied to an animated story, but when you dig a
bit deeper, you find that animation tends to use act structure in a
distinct way. As we go through each act in turn, you will find more of
an emphasis on the “physical, tickable goals” for each act. By
keeping these the focus of your story, you are more likely to maintain
the fast-paced, visual style associated with animation and keep the
drive of your story going. It is this form of act structure we will focus
on as we proceed.
Now we have looked at how the three-act structure works as a
whole, we are going to move on to look at each act separately. To
understand the next chapters, and to use them as effective tools,
especially in animation, you need to have a solid grasp of how goals
in storytelling work. If you skipped the chapter on goals, we
recommend you read it again now (it is a short chapter!).
 Chapter 6
ACT TWO

This might seem like the wrong order, but we’re going to examine the
second act before we get to the first one. Act two is the central drive
of your story and can often make up as much as half of the total
screen time. It is the backbone of your story, and you need to get this
act to work or the rest of the story will fall flat.
Act two obviously follows act one, and we know from the previous
chapter that means that there has been a change in direction for our
lead character. But what does that change in direction mean? It
normally means that our central character is now pursuing a specific,
physical, and tickable goal. The start of that pursuit signifies the end
of act one and the beginning of act two.
Just to clarify, a character might have a goal or an emotional need
from the beginning of the story. They might have several goals in life,
but

A strong act two follows a central character pursuing a specific,

physical and tickable goal.

In Moana, this is when Moana sets off to get Maui to return the heart
to Te Fiti. This is physical as it requires an arduous journey. It is also
specific as she has been asked to take a particular item to a specific
person. And it is definitely tickable; she can’t tick that box until the
heart has been returned.
 In Kung Fu Panda, act two begins when Po starts his training to
become the Dragon Warrior. Kung Fu training is definitely physical.
It’s specific; he hasn’t set a goal to be “really good at Kung Fu,” he is
to become the Dragon Warrior. And we know it’s tickable as the
moment is symbolized by the presentation of the Dragon Scroll. No
Dragon Scroll, no Dragon Warrior.

The Functions of Act Two

Now that our central character is working toward a specific goal, let’s
look at the three main functions of this act:

1. To show our central character actively pursuing their goal

2. To raise the stakes for our central character in the story
3. To increase the pace of the story by showing our central character
facing increasingly difficult situations and overcoming them

Let’s look at each of the above points separately.

To Show Our Central Character Actively Pursuing

Their Goal
This one sounds simple, but there is an art to getting this right. The
key word here is “actively.” It’s very easy to have other characters
present information or opportunities to your central character, but the
more they need to do things for themselves, the more the audience
will be invested in the story.
When Moana sets off to complete her goal, she only has one
companion with her. A stupid chicken. An animal that is great
comedy relief in the story, but, at least for act two, is more of a
burden than a blessing. Then, when she finally meets Maui, he
doesn’t want to help her pursue her goal. He gives her more
obstacles, not assistance.
A powerful thing happens when we see a character overcome
obstacles for themselves. As an audience, we bond with them. We
start to see things from their point of view. This in turn gets us to
engage with the story. We start to root for the character, which
makes us share both their triumphs and defeats. Much of this is lost
if we make their journey too easy.

Raise the Stakes for Our Central Character

As we move into act two, something must be at stake for our
character. If there are no consequences to not achieving the goal,
then there is nothing to engage the audience. Moana must return the
heart or the darkness will continue to poison the island. If Po doesn’t
become the Dragon Warrior, then Tai Lung will exact his revenge. If
Woody doesn’t get Buzz back to Andy’s before he moves house,
they will never see him again.
Once the character crosses into act two, their life can never be the
same. They will either achieve their goal and their life will be better
or they will fail and their life will be worse. It cannot be that they
could just abandon their goal and everything will go back to how it
was before.
It is important to note here that sometimes this can be a simple
emotional stake. Animation is often targeted at children or family
audiences so we might not always want to use life or death as a
threat to our character. In 101 Dalmatians, Cruella De Vil wants to
make a fur coat out of Pongo and Perdita’s puppies—a seriously
high stake! But in Rugrats we see the characters experiencing the
everyday life of small children. In this show, we see characters
dealing with stakes such as getting the cereal you want for breakfast
or worrying about your booster shot. While they might seem like
great adventures in the babies’ minds, they are usually safe from
physical harm.

To Increase the Pace of the Story by Showing Our

Central Character Facing Increasingly Difficult
Situations and Overcoming Them
We have a clearly defined goal and the stakes are set. As act two
progresses, the character will face a series of obstacles to achieving
that goal. These obstacles should increase in difficulty as the story
moves forward. This increase can come from the obstacles
becoming more problematic, more hazardous, or through the
introduction of a deadline. Sometimes all three.
In the second act of Coco, Miguel’s goal is to get the blessing of a
family member so that he can return to the land of the living before
sunrise—if he fails, Miguel will become one of the dead. We have
our first deadline—Miguel must attain his goal before sunrise. Then,
as we move through the act, the physical obstacles to the goal
increase. Believing his great-great-grandfather, Ernesto, is his best
chance to receive the blessing, he sets off to find him. But Ernesto is
very famous in the Land of the Dead, and getting to him is tricky.
Then, when Ernesto turns against him, things get harder. Next,
Miguel discovers that Héctor is his real great-great-grandfather, who
was murdered by Ernesto. This is a complication for Miguel, and the
stakes in the story have just gone up. Now, if he returns to the land
of the living without a photo of Héctor, then H éctor will be forgotten
and cease to exist. Unfortunately, the evil Ernesto now has the
photo. As Héctor starts to weaken, nearly forgotten in the land of the
living, Miguel’s final challenge is to retrieve the photo and get the
blessing before Héctor disappears. The obstacles get bigger, but the
tension is also increased by the weakening of Héctor (see Figure 9),
which gives us a very visual ticking clock that runs alongside the act
two obstacles.
Figure 9 Coco, October 20, 2017.

It’s important to place these challenges in the right order. If the

difficulties the character is facing get smaller as they progress, the
story will slow down and the audience will lose interest. The number
of challenges that the character faces will dictate the length of the
story. In a very short story, you may only need a couple of simple
challenges; if you are writing a feature film, you will need several,
and each one could be quite complex.
The best way to see how this works is through an exercise.

Thinky Time #7
We know what it’s like when you read a book like this. You don’t
really want to do the exercises and you might read them but not
really engage with them. We encourage you to do all of the Thinky
Times to get as much as you can from this book. But if you were to
do just one, we implore you to do this one. Poor act two plotting is
probably the biggest weakness in animation writers today.
If you have your own idea for a story that you want to plot out here,
then use that idea. If not, we have provided a story idea in the
following text.
Let’s just say that you’ve started working on a show that’s a
medical drama with robots. It’s just like ER but all the patients and
doctors are robots. The producers have asked you to write an
episode centered around a robot that needs some kind of a
transplant. After some brainstorming, you decide that in your story
there is a robot that needs a new processor. The team has located a
donor robot, but it’s in a different robot hospital on the other side of
Robot City. Let’s say our main character is a new junior robot doctor
called B73. Your act two goal is to retrieve the processor and bring it
back to the hospital before the damaged robot shuts down
completely. We will imagine that this is for a ten-minute episode and
you will need the plot to escalate three times. Now, plot out act two
using the following four steps.

1. Come up with five potential challenges that B73 might need to

overcome as he tries to bring the processor back. If nothing
happens on his journey, you haven’t got much of a story. These
challenges can be things that go wrong, people that create
problems for him, or even opponents trying to stop him for some
reason.
2. Choose the three challenges that you like the best or excite you
the most.
3. Put the three challenges into order from the easiest for B73 to
overcome to the most difficult. If they all seem roughly equal and
you’re not sure which order to put them in, try building some of
them up. If you thought that B73 might take a rocket bike to the
hospital and it broke down, what happens if you evolve it a little?
What if the rocket bike got stolen? What if it got stolen with the
needed processor on board?
4. Once you have three story “beats” (these are the incidents that will
make up the rhythm of your story) and they’re in an order you’re
happy with, play the story out in your mind. How does it feel? It
might need some tweaks, but it should feel like a pretty good
story.
Look back at this last four-step process. You started with the bare
bones of an idea, you did a short exercise, and suddenly you have
the backbone of a solid story. This may seem simple, but it is
powerful. We use this process on nearly every story we write.

The End of Act Two

Act two ends when the story turns in a new direction. Often, this can
be in the form of a new goal, but just as often it can involve the
central character facing disaster and giving up on their act two goal
altogether. It can also be both of those things at the same time.
In the previous chapter, we saw that in How to Train Your Dragon
Hiccup’s goal for act two was to tame the dragons. When his father
chains up Toothless, the dragon Hiccup has befriended, and plans to
use him to find the dragons’ nest, Hiccup has to do more than just
tame the dragons if he is going to save his friend, so his goal
changes. His new goal is to unite the dragons and the Vikings and
defeat the biggest dragon of all, Red Death.
In contrast to this, in Sing we see that Buster Moon’s goal in act
three is the same as it is in act two—to put on a great show. These
two acts are separated by the moment when Buster gives up on his
dream entirely. At the end of act two, not only do the contestants
think he’s a fraud when they discover that he hasn’t got the promised
prize money, his whole theater is destroyed by a flood. While his
goal doesn’t change, at the end of act two, he is as far away from
achieving his goal as possible.

Challenges of Act Two

Act two is usually the longest of the three acts and is often difficult to
sustain. The constant need to increase the stakes and make the
problems more challenging make it hard to plot, especially in a
feature film. The way to tackle this challenge is to make sure that
you get the specific, physical, and tickable goal right. Ask yourself
the question, “Does this goal create enough for the characters to
do?” Be brutally honest with yourself; if the answer is “no,” keep
thinking until you are sure your act two goal will provide you with
enough story material.

A Word of Warning
It’s easy to fall in love with a great opening you have in mind, or a
brilliant finale. Don’t be tempted to try to engineer an act two that
accommodates that show stopping scene you’ve got planned. Get
act two right first! Chances are that great scene will still work by the
time you get to the final draft, it might need to change slightly, but in
our experience that change will make the whole thing better.
 Chapter 7
ACT ONE

Act one is the story’s setup. It gives us all the information we need to
make sense of everything else that’s going to happen. In a feature, it
usually takes up about a quarter of the total screen time, so for a
two-hour movie the first act will usually last about a half hour. In a
ten-minute TV show, ideally act one will end at around two-and-a-
half minutes into the episode, although it often ends up being a little
longer as it’s hard to establish the whole setup in less than three
minutes.

The Functions of Act One

1. It introduces your central character and most of the other main
characters that will recur throughout the story.
2. It sets up the world of your story.
3. It reveals the main problems that exist in the character’s life and
creates sympathy for him or her.
4. It states the main goal of our character and the specific goal of act
two. As soon as our character embarks on the act two goal, act
one is finished and we’re into the central core of our story.

Let’s look at each of these points in a little more detail.

It Introduces Your Central Character and Most of the

Other Main Characters That Will Recur throughout
the Story
The audience need to know who the central character is as soon as
possible. In Chapters 4 and 10, we will look at some devices that will
help you to create an audience connection with your central
character, but you can often tell who it is just by the way they are
introduced. When you watch animated movies, make a mental note
of how they introduce the main character. Watch the camera angles
and the shots they use. Do they start with the feet? Or maybe a
close-up of the eyes? If it’s on the screen, it’s on the page; so use
this cinematic language as much as you can.
Most stories have more than one character. Some of these
characters will recur throughout the story and some will appear in
only certain scenes. Ideally, in act one a story should introduce as
many of the recurring characters as possible before the act two goal
starts. In the first act of Toy Story, we meet all of Andy’s toys, we
meet Andy and his family, and we’re introduced to the sinister kid
next door, if only from a distance (but we could probably guess that
he would come back later).

It Sets up the World of Your Story

In animation, your world can be anything. It can be under the sea or
in outer space. The characters can be humans, talking vegetables,
or literally anything you can think of. These worlds can be complex,
but they also need to be consistent and, most importantly of all, they
need to be understood by your audience.
There are three key elements to consider about the world of your
story:

1. The community
2. The environment
3. The genre

The community we have touched on in the previous point. These are

the characters that inhabit your central character’s world at the start
of the story. In Toy Story, it is all the toys in Andy’s toy box. In Beauty
and the Beast, it’s all the people in the village, but it’s also all the
characters that live in the castle as the castle will become the
community for much of the story.
The environment of the story refers to the place all the characters
live. Is this a world of Superheroes or Pirates? Do they live under the
sea? Are they toys? Is it medieval times? Maybe medieval times with
a few modern accessories? Are the subtleties of the world more
complicated than that? It could be that the story is set in prehistoric
times and the characters are cave people, but the worlds of The
Croods and The Flintstones are significantly different. The audience
needs to understand the rules and intricacies of the story world by
the time act one has finished. To go back to our caveman example,
The Croods inhabit a relatively realistic stone-age world when
compared to the world of the The Flintstones. See Figures 10 and 11
for a comparison. Once that world has been established, the writers
need to stick to the rules that they have created for that world. If the
sitcom-like scene that we see in Figure 11 turned up in act two of
The Croods, the audience wouldn’t buy it; it just isn’t part of the world
established in act one.

Figure 10 The Croods, March 22, 2013.

Figure 11 The Flintstones, “Hot Lips Hannigan”, October 7, 1960.

Genre is a big subject. There are plenty of books just about this
one subject. There are great advantages to mastering genre, but you
don’t need to understand it all to use genre well. The audience
understands genre, even if they don’t realize that they do. We are
exposed to genre as soon as we start watching TV and film. Imagine
the opening of a movie. We see a desert landscape, dotted with
cacti. The camera moves in on a dusty wooden shack with a horse
tied outside. Tumbleweed blows across the screen and vultures
circle overhead. Just a few images and a few seconds of screen time
and we can work out that we’re probably in a Western. Just by
watching TV shows and movies in the genre you are writing for, you
will start to absorb the language of these films.
This might seem like a lot of information that needs to be conveyed
to establish the world of your story, but this is animation and
animation is a visual medium. It is amazing how fast the audience
will pick up on information that they see. If we go back to The
Flintstones and look at the original series, first broadcast in 1960, we
can see how quickly we understand quite a complicated premise. In
the first episode, they didn’t have lyrics in the theme song yet, so we
have no words to tell us what the story is. Remember, this is the first
ever episode, so audiences don’t know what to expect. The opening
image is of a man who seems to be driving home from work, but he’s
dressed like a caveman and all the cars are made from rocks and
logs. He drives through the city and we see an environment that
seems a little bit like a modern world, but it has a stone-age twist—
we see a dinosaur being used as a fire engine and a tailor shop with
another dinosaur acting as the stairs to the entrance way. Less than
thirty seconds in and the audience will already understand that this is
a modern story set in a mock prehistoric world. If they haven’t
worked out that it’s a comedy yet, they are about to find out the exact
type of comedy it is. At the end of the credits, we see the caveman’s
wife waiting for him with the dinner she has made. He kisses her on
the cheek and then sits down with his food to watch some TV. Not
that acceptable in the twenty-first century, but in the 1960s this was a
standard setup for a sitcom. In less than a minute with no dialogue,
we know the world, we know the genre, and we can guess that the
caveman and his wife will be the main characters.

It Reveals the Main Problems That Exist in the

Character’s Life and Creates Sympathy for Him or
Her
Most stories start with a problem. It doesn’t have to be a big problem
yet, but things aren’t usually perfect for our central character. If they
are, they don’t stay perfect for long. Watching a group of people
being happy and just getting along is great in real life, but most
people won’t pay to watch it. Whatever the difficulty or challenge, it
gives our character some conflict to work against—and conflict
drives story. It also creates sympathy for the character, especially if
it’s a situation we recognize. We wouldn’t like to be in that
predicament ourselves so we start to bond emotionally with the
person who is in it.
In the opening of Toy Story 3, Andy is going off to college and the
toys are all facing the prospect that he doesn’t want to play with
them anymore, but also that they are about to be split up. Some will
be put in the attic and some will be sent to daycare. In Beauty and
the Beast, we learn that Belle is not supposed to read or have an
imagination. The local villagers think she is odd and the local
muscular—but vacuous—hunk wants to marry her. It’s clear that she
wants adventure but her destiny is to settle down and have children,
probably with a guy that doesn’t understand her. By the end of her
first song, we understand a lot of Belle’s problems and this creates
sympathy for her.
These difficulties are set up very quickly and help us to relate to the
characters. You may also notice that the problem at this stage of the
story relates thematically to the main issue that they will face later.
Belle gets her adventure and discovers a magical castle. Woody sets
off to bring his friends back together again—with someone who will
play with them. This is kind of a chicken-and-egg situation; which
has the writer planned first? Was it the predicament at the beginning
of the story or the main drive of act two? Whenever you watch a
movie or an episode of an animated TV series, observe how these
things are connected. Think about the main issue in the central
character’s life at the beginning and see how it relates thematically,
to the main drive of the story.

It States the Main Goal of Our Character and the

Specific Goal of Act Two
We have already seen the importance of the act two goal. It is also
important to be aware that our central character may also have an
overarching goal that spans the length of the story. This is often less
specific (and ‘tickable’) and can be more of an emotional need for
our character. You might also notice that it will relate to the problem
that exists for the character at the beginning of the story (referred to
in the previous segment). We’re getting into a complex theoretical
area here, so let’s look at an example to clarify.
At the beginning of Kung Fu Panda, Po works in his adoptive
father’s noodle restaurant. This might not seem like a problem, but
Po really wants to learn Kung Fu; he wants to learn it so much that
he literally dreams about it. His father however, is expecting him to
learn the secret family recipe and take over the noodle bar. His
father even tells him that he will be fulfilling his destiny by taking over
the restaurant. To drive the point home, the writers create an image
of how Po sees his future (see Figure 12). Po’s father tells him that
“we all have our place in this world” and Po’s is waiting on tables.
This is a problem people can relate to. Most people watching will be
thinking, “yeah, I’d rather do Kung Fu than work in the noodle place.”
The writers have established a problem and an overarching goal.
The problem is that his father expects him to pursue a career that he
doesn’t want, and his overarching goal is to learn Kung Fu. Later,
when Po is selected to train to be the Dragon Warrior, we have a
new specific goal that launches us in to act two.
Figure 12 Kung Fu Panda, June 6, 2008.

Notice how the problem, the overarching goal and the act two goal
work together. At the beginning, Po dreams of learning Kung Fu.
This is fairly vague as a goal; he doesn’t say what level he wants to
be or where he wants to learn it, but it doesn’t matter at this stage.
This is Po’s emotional need, not the physical, tickable goal required
for act two (there will be more about emotional need in Chapter 11).
The big problem for Po is that he must work at the noodle bar so he
can’t learn Kung Fu. It might also be worth adding that being a
panda might be another problem for Po; pandas do not seem to
possess the qualities you would expect in a great martial artist.

Challenges of Act One

There is a lot of information to set up. This means that it’s easy to fill
up with content, but can be difficult to make entertaining. And, if you
don’t make it entertaining, no one will still be reading (or watching)
when you get to act two.
This is where goals can help. Try setting a mini physical, tickable
goal that drives your central character until they reach the act two
turning point. This can keep the visual elements of act one moving,
without getting completely weighed down by the setup of your story.
(Note: this tool is not unique to animation, but it is employed in anima
tion a lot more than in live-action film and television.)
 Chapter 8
ACT THREE

The final act. Like act one, this act makes up roughly a quarter of the
total screen time in a feature film. This may vary in shorter forms, but
as this is the most exciting part of your story, you don’t want it to be
too short or too easy for the lead character. In this act, you will see
them face their final conflict or the biggest obstacle so far.

The Functions of Act Three

1. To be the most exciting or dramatic part of your story.
2. Provide a satisfying ending that makes everyone glad they
watched your movie or show.

Now, let’s look at those two points in a bit more detail.

To Be the Most Exciting or Dramatic Part of Your

Story
If you have created a great act two, it can be hard to make this even
more exciting or dramatic. The key thing to remember is that act
three starts with a change in direction to the story. When you plot out
your three acts, the change in direction for your story should
automatically do at least one of the following three—maybe even all
three:

1. Make your character face the biggest challenge or obstacle of the

story so far.
2. Increase the consequences of failure.
3. Tighten the deadline.

As your character moves into the final act, the drama will increase if
the obstacle your character faces is bigger. In Hotel Transylvania 2,
this is where Dracula’s father, the icy-cold and intimidating Vlad,
turns up. In Kung Fu Panda, Po must face the fearsome Tai Lung on
his own. In the Triplets of Belleville (Belleville Rendez-vous in some
territories), this is the big escape sequence at the end. In each of
these cases, we see the central character facing the biggest
obstacle so far, they will sometimes be facing it alone and will usually
appear outgunned.
This act change should also increase the consequences of failure.
In Hotel Transylvania 2, when Vlad arrives, we move from Dracula
desperately wanting his grandson to be a vampire to lives being at
stake. In the Triplets of Belleville, Madame Souza goes from wanting
to find her son to breaking him out of a Mob establishment and
having to escape their henchmen.
The tension can also be increased if the time that our hero has left
to achieve their goal decreases. This can be a literal ticking clock,
like a time bomb counting down or a metaphorical version of it. We
see this in movies such as Shrek or Beauty and the Beast, whether
it’s Shrek needing to get to Fiona before she marries Lord Farquaad
or the Beast earning the love of another before the last petal falls.
The deadline can also be something less tangible. In The Curse of
the Were-Rabbit, we see Victor Quartermaine hunting down Wallace,
and in the Triplets of Belleville we see the Mob henchmen closing in
on Madame Souza. In both cases, although there is no definite
deadline, the villains are getting progressively closer to permanently
foiling our hero, and, therefore, the tension is increased. Anything
that makes the success of our character more urgent will increase
the drama of the final act.
Provide a Satisfying Ending That Makes Everyone
Glad They Watched Your Movie or Show
We’re at the end of the movie. The central character has achieved
their goal, or maybe failed if it has a downbeat ending, and we’re
about to see a new beginning. In the final scenes, we normally get a
glimpse of what life in the future is going to be like for the main
characters. We see all the plotlines and issues resolved. But these
don’t necessarily give us a satisfying ending. How does your hero
defeat the villain or overcome their biggest obstacle? If your
character just has the ability or strength to do it, the act three
challenge probably isn’t big enough and the ending might just seem
convenient.
If the ending to your story isn’t having the big impact you would
like, you can often make it stronger by using the tool we call
“callback and payoff.”
Callback and payoff is a storytelling device that refers to using
something that has happened earlier in the story that pays off in the
final scenes. This can work in a number of different ways. It can be
an item that we see, or a piece of information that the audience is
given; it can even be something that the character is trying to learn
how to do, but hasn’t yet succeeded at. The important thing is that
when it first appears, the callback device shouldn’t seem overly
relevant to the story; then, when this “pays off” later, it should take
the audience by surprise—ideally followed by them all thinking, “Of
course! I should have seen that coming!”
In The Incredibles, we hear early on in the movie of the dangers of
wearing a cape. Mr. Incredible wants a cape on his new suit but
Edna, the suit designer, tells him that he can’t have one. She regales
him with the stories of heroes who have come to a sticky end when
their capes snagged on something. It’s a funny scene, and, to the
untrained eye, it just seems like the comedy is the reason that the
scene is there. But then, near the end of the movie, Syndrome’s
cape gets sucked into a jet engine bringing about his demise. As a
member of the audience, we mentally callback to the information that
we had from Edna when the cape/jet engine scenario pays off.
Using the callback is often as simple as going back through your
story to see what has happened so far. Is there anything that has
appeared that will be useful in the end? It is amazing how many
times that the required “thing” is already there, nestled in the story
ready to be called-back to.

Bonus Material: A Cure for Coincidence

Coincidences happen in real life all the time. We might run into a
next-door neighbor while on vacation or see an old school friend that
you were just talking about but hadn’t seen for years. These things
happen. The problem is, they can’t happen so much in stories;
audiences don’t tend to believe them. Just the r ight person turning
up at just the right time might happen in the real world, but an
audience watching this in an animated story can feel cheated.
Callback and payoff is a cure for that. If you need that coincidental
event at the end of your movie or episode, go back and set it up
early on in your story. If done well, your “coincidence” evolves from
being a bit too convenient to a clever and satisfying plot turn.

Challenges of Act Three

In act three, the writer is walking a tightrope, trying to keep the
challenges big enough to keep the audience on the edge of their
seat while at the same time keeping it believable that the hero
succeeds.
While we recommend plotting act two first, remember that whatever
you plotted is not written in stone; you will find yourself going back-
and-forth between the acts trying to make the script work as a
cohesive whole. Plotting a good story is like trying to make a
sculpture out of jelly, it doesn’t quite behave. Chances are, your
script will need constant molding and remolding as things change.
Just say, you’ve decided that the best way for your villainous pirate
captain to be defeated is to have him eaten by a crocodile; if there
haven’t been any crocodiles in the story so far, then that would come
too much out of the blue. You would need to thread in a crocodile
plot to make it truly satisfying. Watch Peter Pan and imagine how
unsatisfying the ending would be if that was the first time the
crocodile appeared. You can see a similar thing, again with a
crocodile, in the Aardman animation A Matter of Loaf and Death.
Once you know the ending you want, go back through the script and
plot the necessary changes to make it work.
 Chapter 9
THREE-ACT STRUCTURE CASE
STUDIES

To see how the three-act structure works in different forms, we are

going to work through an in-depth study of both Disney’s Zootopia
(known as Zootropolis in some territories) and an episode of Paw
Patrol. Zootopia is one of the more complex stories you’ll find in
animation; it takes place in a fantasy world with a highly original and
intricate social structure. It is also a densely plotted conspiracy
thriller and contains deep themes about prejudice and the damage it
does to society. Paw Patrol on the other hand uses short and simple
stories for a young audience but is hugely successful.

Three-Act Structure Case Study 1: Zootopia

Act One
Let’s look at the four functions of the first act as they work in
Zootopia.
First, the characters. In the opening scene, we meet Judy Hopps, a
rabbit, and it’s clear from the beginning that she is going to be our
central character. We learn very quickly that she wants to be a cop in
Zootropolis, but we also learn that her parents don’t want her to be a
cop and encourage her to not have any goals. Here we see Judy’s
problem and her overarching goal working together to set up the
direction of the story. Later, when we get to act two, we will see how
achieving the act two goal links in with these plot points.
 Next, we learn that one of Judy’s character traits is that she doesn’t
know when to quit. This is something that, later in the story, will drive
her on against impossible odds.
As act one progresses, we also meet the police chief, the mayor,
and the assistant mayor, all of whom are key characters. More
importantly, we meet Nick Wilde, the con artist fox who will start off
as Judy’s opponent but will become her ally.
Next, the movie sets up the world in which the story is set, and this
script does it with brilliant efficiency. Zootopia and, more specifically,
the city of Zootropolis are perhaps the most complicated worlds you
will see in any movie —not just an animated one. But we learn about
the history of predators and prey, and we learn about the different
districts of the city and how the creatures manage to coexist, from
Sahara Square to Tundra Town. More importantly, we see it all
visually. If you watch the scene when Judy arrives in Zootopia
Central Station, you see everything you need to know about how this
world works (see Figures 13 and 14).

Figure 13 Zootopia, March 4, 2016.

Figure 14 Zootopia, March 4, 2016.

We also learn about genre in the opening as well. In the opening

scene with the school play, we see Judy’s blood-soaked portrayal of
the history of Zootopia and it’s funny. This is a comedy. We also see
the dramatic scene where she tries to stand up to the local bully,
Gideon Grey, so this is going to have some drama. A little later, but
still in act one, we see her doing some detective work when she
spots Nick Wilde’s pawsicle hustle—so it’s a detective movie too.
Third, we can see the problems that Judy Hopps is going to have to
overcome in her quest to be a Zootopia cop. There is a prejudice
against her being a rabbit—a rabbit has never made it as a cop. Her
parents don’t want her to be a cop. She seems to be the smallest
and weakest cadet at the police academy. When she becomes a
cop, the chief doesn’t want her there and he makes her work as a
meter maid. None of this is an easy journey—fortunately, Judy
doesn’t know when to quit!
Lastly, the act two goal. We know from quite early on that Judy
Hopps wants to be a cop. That is her overarching goal within the
story, but this goal leads us to a more specific goal. The goal that will
provide the real action. This is going to be a missing person mystery.
Let’s look at how act one ends:
CHIEF BOGO
I will give you forty-eight hours . . .
JUDY HOPPS
(triumphantly)
YES!!
CHIEF BOGO
That’s two days to find Emmitt Otterton . . .
JUDY HOPPS
Okay . . .
And that’s it! Judy Hopps must find Emmitt Otterton in forty-eight
hours. As soon as we know the specific goal for act two, act one
ends and act two begins. But think of how specific this goal is. We
learn early on that there are a lot of missing animals in Zootopia; the
goal could be to crack the case of the missing animals. That would
seem like a perfectly valid goal, but, normally, in storytelling, the
more specific the goal, the better it is. What’s more specific than
crack the case of the missing animals? Find one particular animal in
a set time frame. Remember the tip about the “tickable” physical
goal? This goal is really easy to tick off. At the end of forty-eight
hours, either Emmitt Otterton is found or he isn’t, and Judy will either
be able to tick that goal or not. That’s what makes this a great goal
for this story.
Before we go onto act two, we want you to think about how the
writers of Zo otopia achieved all these things so quickly and in an
entertaining way. Earlier we said that you had to understand goals to
grasp the three-act structure. This is why. During act one, we were
watching Judy trying to achieve her goal of becoming a cop, we were
engaged in the story, and we weren’t just watching information being
presented to us. Judy Hopps is overcoming a series of smaller goals
on her journey to becoming the first bunny cop. Whether she is
dealing with the local bully’s prejudice, fighting a rhino in the
academy boxing ring, or trying to give out 200 parking tickets before
lunch, we were watching Judy achieving mini-goals and overcoming
difficulties in order to achieve her main overarching goal. The
problem is, she never quite achieves it—not till much later-on
anyway. As we hear from her parents when they see she is on meter
maid duty: She’s not a real cop! Despite everything she’s been
through.

Act Two
Act one ends when we know the physical goal for act two. But act
two also starts with something at stake. Not only must she find
Emmett Otterton, she is told she must do it in forty-eight hours or
resign. Remember, one of the functions of act two is to raise the
stakes. Zootopia does that straight away. Judy’s lifelong ambition is
to be a cop, she’s finally got her chance, but if she doesn’t find
Emmett in two days, she must resign and she will never achieve her
dream. The stakes are high.
This increase in stake is important. A story is always stronger if
your character can’t turn back from the goal. The moment your
central character crosses over into act two, it should be difficult or,
better yet, impossible for them to go back to life the way it was
before.
Let’s focus on this for a moment. What if Judy doesn’t achieve her
goal? Forty-eight hours are up and she hasn’t found the missing
otter? Judy could resign, then presumably she would go back to
work on her parents’ farm and live a simple life free from crime and
excitement. Maybe she could plead with Chief Bogo to keep her job,
and she would have to agree to be a meter maid for the rest of her
life. As a viewer, neither of these outcomes are satisfying, and you
just don’t want them to happen, which makes you invested in Judy’s
act two goal.
 Now often, especially in longer forms, the stakes are raised more
than once. As Judy’s investigation continues, her life is in danger
several times; from Mr. Big’s polar bear henchmen, who are going to
“ice” her, to the jaguar, who goes “savage,” and not forgetting the
timber wolves on security when she sneaks into the mysterious
compound. Losing her job is a high stake, losing her life is even
higher.
It is worth noting here that while the threat to life is a common stake
raiser, it is not the only way to raise the stakes. In Toy Story, for
example, the biggest stake perhaps is that Woody will never see
Andy again. A stake that goes up when the family is about to move
home. Another important factor when raising the stakes for a
character is that a lot of animation is written for a very young
audience and the possibility of a character dying isn’t always
appropriate.
The other main function of act two is to show our protagonist facing
increasingly difficult challenges and overcoming them. If our goal for
act two is easy to attain, then the story won’t be engaging. In
Zootopia, we know that finding Emmett is going to be difficult; there
are fourteen missing predators and the police so far have drawn a
blank on all of them—this mystery has so far defeated the entire
police department. But then, Clawhauser gives Judy the case file
and points out that there are no leads and no witnesses, and she
doesn’t have access to the computer system yet, so she has no
resources.
Judy’s first challenge is where to start. She has one photo of the
missing Emmett so she scrutinizes that, which gives her the first lead
—she has discovered the identity of the last person to have seen
Emmett. Unfortunately, it’s Nick Wilde, her opponent in act one.
Judy’s next obstacle is coercing Nick to help her. Once she has Nick
on her side, the obstacles keep coming. They find out the license
plate number of the car, they trace the car, they break into the car lot,
they get caught by Mr. Big’s henchmen, they escape from a savage
jaguar, Chief Bogo tries to get her to resign early, and, eventually,
they have to sneak into a secret compound guarded by timber
wolves. Finally, for act two anyway, they escape the compound while
they’re locked in a containment unit with the timber wolves closing in.
Act two of Zootopia gives us a master class in taking one big goal
that goes across the whole act and breaking it down into a series of
challenges that both raise the stakes and provide our character with
difficulties to overcome. And at the end of the act, Judy Hopps has
found the missing Emmet in forty-eight hours, but not just that, she
has found all fourteen missing predators. Which takes us into act
three.

Act Three
At this point in the movie, it would seem that Judy Hopps has
achieved all her goals. She cracked the case and is accepted as a
police officer. She is even congratulated by the new mayor. But
things haven’t worked out how Judy imagined. Her investigation has
created panic in Zootropolis, and she has lost her best friend in the
city. She found the missing person, but Emmett Otterton isn’t like he
was before. He has “gone savage,” as have the other missing
predators. This creates a climate of fear as the prey animals feel like
prey again and the predators are being persecuted. Judy gives up on
her dream and goes back to the farm. She tried to be a good cop but
“made life so much worse for so many innocent predators.” Act three
is about her finding out why the predators have gone savage.
Now, recall the two main functions of act three: this must be the
most exciting and engaging part of the story and must provide a
satisfying ending for the audience.
This has already been an exciting movie, so how do the writers of
Zootopia increase the tension in act three? First, they take us into
the assassin’s lair. Now, this isn’t an assassin in the traditional sense
of the word; this is a family film after all. But we go into an
underground laboratory in a graffiti-covered, disused subway station.
Everything about this location makes it seem more sinister than
where Judy has been before. Then we meet Doug, who is the
chemist who makes the compound that turns the animals savage
and we discover that he is also a sniper. What follows is a chase on
a subway train that leads to the final confrontation with the true villain
of the film, Bellwether, the new mayor. This is a conspiracy that goes
all the way to the top.
In the final part of the conflict, Judy and Nick appear to be in real
trouble. But they outwit Bellwether and manage to record her
confession just in time for the police to turn up and arrest her. We
could spend a whole chapter going over the ingenious ways that the
writers of Zootopia used callback and payoff to set up this ending,
but we don’t want this to detract from how the three-act structure
works within the movie. If you like analyzing the intricate details of
story, then we recommend watching and rewatching Zootopia; there
are very few animated features that are as well plotted.
In the end, Judy has exposed the conspirator. She has made up
with her best friend Nick Wilde, and, what’s more, he’s become her
partner on the force. Judy Hopps has become a great police officer
and has made the city safer for everyone.

Overview
Whatever your tastes are in movies, it’s hard to fault the structure of
Zootopia. We have one overarching goal that goes from the
beginning to the end of the movie—Judy Hopps wants to be a police
officer. In order to attain that goal, we follow her through a series of
three quite large goals. In the first act, we see her overcoming her
physical limitations to become the first rabbit on the police force. But
Chief Bogo doesn’t take her seriously, so she is only a meter maid.
In act two, she gets her first real case and must find a missing
person in forty-eight hours. Then, in act three she sets out to find out
why the predators are going savage. The story changes direction at
each act break leading to Judy finally becoming a cop, but not just a
cop, a great cop and one that is respected.

Three-Act Structure Case Study 2: Paw Patrol “Pups

Go for The Gold”
Paw Patrol is a phenomenal success and is also a great example of
a show that uses goals and the three-act structure. It charts the
adventures of a young boy called Ryder and a team of rescue
puppies. The show follows a format that involves a general
introduction to the episode, culminating in a situation that requires a
rescue (act one). Act two consists of the Paw Patrol team attempting
the rescue, but then a new development occurs that increases the
stakes and changes the rescue scenario, moving us into act three.
The episodes finish with the rescue being complete.
That may be quite simplified but understanding and being able to
analyze the “DNA” of a show is a powerful tool and will be covered
later in Chapter 20. But let’s see how that format plays out over the
selected episode. This episode, “Pups Go for The Gold” is from
season 5 of Paw Patrol.

Act One
We open on a prospector, called Uncle Otis, who discovers a huge
gold nugget. In this opening scene, we also see his friendship with a
beaver who helps him to uncover the nugget. While this friendship
doesn’t seem essential at the start of the episode, it does become
relevant later. One of the functions of act one is to introduce all the
main characters. Uncle Otis and the beaver are key to this episode,
so they are both established in act one. There is also a scene that
establishes the show’s core cast. Ryder and the Paw Patrol puppies
are playing a game as they try to find a rubber chew toy called
Chewington.
These two scenes also help us to establish the world in which Paw
Patrol takes place. This is a world inhabited by humans but it’s also a
world where the animals take on human-type characteristics. The
Paw Patrol puppies talk and the beaver interacts with Uncle Otis as
a friend, thumping his tail to a beat that Otis can dance to. The chew
toy scene also makes it clear that while the Paw Patrol puppies talk
like humans, they still play like puppies—another relevant part of the
Paw Patrol world.
In the next scene, we learn that Uncle Otis is going to take the gold
nugget into town because he has a surprise for his niece, who is the
mayor. It’s worth noting here that the niece is the only character in
the episode that doesn’t appear in act one, but she is still mentioned.
But now a problem occurs. The mining cart that Otis takes into town
derails on some old rickety rail tracks. We now know what the main
problem will be for our characters—a runaway mining cart. Next, we
are introduced to our final two characters, a pup called Everest and
her hiker friend who are out bird watching. The hiker spots a “yellow-
bellied-sap-sucker” and Everest spots the runaway cart, which she
now calls in to Ryder.
Paw Patrol uses a “transition” device on the act break. This is a
powerful tool in an episodic series and is especially popular in
children’s television. It makes the stories easier to follow, but also the
kids love knowing it’s coming and it gives a structure to the story that
the audience recognize. When Ryder gets the call, he summons the
Paw Patrol to the “Lookout,” where the team suit up for rescue and
get briefed on their mission. This is where the specific goal of act two
is stated—to rescue Uncle Otis and stop the mine cart before it
crashes.
With a show like Paw Patrol, which is essentially a team-based
show, it can sometimes be tricky to pick out who the central
character is. In Paw Patrol, it is usually Ryder. While the whole team
is invested in the goal and each puppy involved in the rescue will
have their own part to play, it is Ryder who is overseeing the whole
rescue and coordinating the team.
 We said that one of the challenges of act one is setting up all the
information you need for the episode, while keeping it entertaining.
This can be especially difficult in shorter forms that require all the
information to be put across in only a few minutes. Look at how
much information the writers of this episode have established in a
very short period of time. Next, look at how they have used “mini-
goals” to do that. First, Otis wants to find gold, then he wants to get it
into town. The Paw Patrol team are trying to find Chewington. By
setting up mini-goals and challenges for the characters in each
scene, you can make act one engaging rather than a series of
exposition scenes.

Act Two
The goal is now established. In Paw Patrol, the goal is always
established very clearly as Ryder tells the team what their mission
goal is during the transformation sequence.
In this episode, as the Paw Patrol team try to rescue Otis, the first
thing they do is try to pull Otis to safety, but he doesn’t want to leave
his gold nugget behind in the cart. The first difficulty, Uncle Otis is
uncooperative. But then, because of his hesitation, Otis gets whisked
up into a tree and needs to be caught by Everest. The first part of the
goal is now complete. Uncle Otis has been rescued but they still
must stop the mining cart before it crashes, but now the mining cart
is heading straight for Otis’s cabin; there is something new at stake.
Now, look back at the previous paragraph and do a “but” count. In
our summary of the second act, we have used the word “but” three
times for a sequence that only lasts a few minutes of screen time.
This can be a powerful tool in working out where your twists and
turns are. If you’re working on a story, count how many times you
need to use the word “but” in your summary (the words “except,”
“unfortunately,” and “then” are also helpful). Unless you’re using
those words to summarize, it’s unlikely that you have enough
obstacles in your story.
 In the final stage of act two, Rubble, the builder puppy, builds a
blockade to protect the cabin from being destroyed by the mine cart.
Unfortunately, when the mine cart hits the blockade, the gold nugget
is launched into the air. The nugget hits a tree and bounces back up
the hill and starts rolling down chasing Everest and Otis. The first
goal is complete, the mining cart has been stopped and Uncle Otis is
rescued (at least from the first danger); the direction of the story has
changed, so we move onto a new problem and the third act. The
Paw Patrol team now need to stop the rolling golden nugget.

Act Three
The runaway nugget is rolling downhill chasing Everest and Otis, so
now the stakes have changed as well. As Everest points out, the
nugget could squish them. They need to get out of its way.
Unfortunately, when they do, they see that the nugget is now
heading toward the beaver family. These aren’t just any random
beavers; at least one of them is Uncle Otis’s friend from the first act
so the stake is personal. Next, and the final part of the emergency,
Ryder calls in Marshall, the fire dog. Marshall uses his fire hoses to
soak the ground in front of the beaver’s dam turning it into mud. The
nugget rolls and bounces toward the dam but sinks into the wet
ground that Marshall has just soaked. The nugget has been stopped.
Ryder and the team help Otis take the gold nugget to his niece for
her special surprise. He chips off a small piece of the nugget to
make a gold pendant for her necklace. But this is a huge nugget,
what is he going to do with the rest of it? Remember those “old
rickety rail tracks” from act one? Uncle Otis wants to donate his gold
nugget to repair the rail tracks. All the story strands are tied up neatly
and quickly in the final scene. The Paw Patrol has saved the day and
everyone lives happily ever after. For this episode at least.

Overview
Look back over the three acts of this episode, but think about the
following things as you do:

1) Do a “but” count, but also include “except,” “unfortunately” and

“then.” This was only a ten-minute episode of a preschool series,
but look at how much actually happens. This is animation and in
animation you want to move the story along quickly.
2) Go through act one and make a note of how the elements of the
story are introduced in act one and how they each pay off in the
rest of the episode. The gold nugget, beaver friend, the rickety
rails, the Paw Patrol team, the niece, and the surprise.
3) If you can track down and watch the episode, time how long each
act lasts. We mentioned that acts one and three will each last
approximately a quarter of the episode time, while act two should
last half the total length. In this case, those proportions are
different. Paw Patrol sets up a lot in act one, so act one is longer.
These are tools, not rules, and each show will have their own
requirements.

Summary
In seeing how the three-act structure works, it would be easy to think
that you can now write a story just by following the formula. In one
respect you can, if you have a great idea but you can’t seem to make
it engaging, then applying the three-act structure to your idea will
usually strengthen your story—there is a reason why this structure is
so prevalent in film and television. But, this process does still require
a lot of working and reworking to write a story that makes logical
sense, fulfills the requirements of the structure, and remains fresh
and exciting. If you’re starting out, this will be tough at first, but the
more you work with the three-act structure, the more it will become
second nature and the stronger your story telling muscles will
become.
Thinky Time #8
The next time you watch an animated movie or TV show, try to
identify the following:

1. What are the act breaks? Is it a three-act structure?

2. What is the physical, “tickable” goal in the second act?
3. What are the obstacles the character must overcome to attain that
goal?
4. Is there an act one and an act three goal as well?

Each show or movie has its own format. Most movies and TV shows
have three acts but you may find that the animation you have chosen
to analyze only has two acts, or maybe four acts. If so, look out for
how the writers have used goals to drive each act.
 Chapter 10
EMOTIONAL CONNECTION

We have discussed physical goals and their importance in driving

the story. The next important ingredient in the story is emotion.
Emotion gives us the reason why your character wants to achieve
their goals, but it also gives us the reason the audience wants them
to achieve those goals, and this is what makes a story successful.
An audience doesn’t watch a movie or TV show to see lots of action,
although they might enjoy an action-packed genre; they watch to be
engaged and experience a range of emotions with the characters on
screen. Once you imbibe your character with emotion, it creates a
connection that keeps the viewers watching.
When a viewer starts to watch a movie or TV show, there is an
internal dialogue going on while they try to find their feet within the
story. This isn’t always going on at a conscious level, but they will be
asking themselves questions like “who is this about?,” “who do I
like?,” or “who do I dislike?” The earlier in your script that you answer
these questions, the more the audience will engage with the
characters on the screen and the more effective you are being as a
storyteller. There is no one way to get the audience to engage with
your characters, but there are six tools that can help.
You will see these tools used time and time again in animation;
sometimes it will be just one or two of them, but often you will see all
six used in the same story. It is important to note that most animation
contains at least one of the first two.
 Give Them Skills and Abilities
People have always loved a great story and some of our oldest
known stories are the myths and legends. These were stories that
captivated an audience who wanted to hear about incredible heroes,
whether these were the Greek legends of Hercules and Achilles or
the English stories of Beowulf and Robin Hood, America has the
great Frontiersmen or heroes of the Wild West. Wherever you are, all
cultures have great mythic heroes. What made these characters so
fascinating to their audience? They were setting out to attain great
goals, just like we covered in some of our previous chapters, but
they also had incredible abilities and this has always held a
fascination for the viewer, reader, or listener.
This is an especially important feature of animation, where
exaggeration and fantasy are more easily accepted.
In many ancient cultures, the hero’s skills were often strength or an
ability as a warrior, but this could also include tricksters such as
Hermes or Loki. These heroic characters dominate in the adventure
and superhero genres. The characters in Batman: Hush, for
instance, are only slightly removed from the gods and warriors of
legend (see Figure 15).
Figure 15 Batman: Hush, August 6, 2019.

These godlike characters have skills that will make an audience

empathize with your characters today, but we can also look at much
more diverse abilities to fascinate our audience. Tramp, in Disney’s
Lady and the Tramp lives off his wits using incredible street smarts
as does Aladdin. Bart Simpson is a resourceful trickster, and we love
characters like Speedy Gonzales and Road Runner because of their
incredible speed.
Lightning McQueen in Cars is a perfect example of how a
character’s ability can make them attractive to an audience. When
we first meet Lightning, he is not particularly likable, he is self-
centered and arrogant and can’t get on with his team, and he also
doesn’t want to be sponsored by Rust-eze because he wants
something more glamorous. It would seem that there is no reason to
like Lightning McQueen at all, but he is a great racer. We see his
ability on the race track and we start to engage with him; in fact, he
is so good at racing that we want to see more of him. His skill and
ability gives us a good enough reason to follow him into the rest of
the story.

Make Them Funny

This is almost the opposite of the previous point. A character who is
good at everything is rarely funny. Occasionally, you get a quick-
witted wisecracking character that can make the audience laugh, so
their skills go hand in hand with their humor. Bugs Bunny from the
Looney Tunes series is the classic archetype of this character, never
outsmarted by Elmer Fudd or Yosemite Sam and never short of a
good gag in the process. But usually, flaws are what makes a
character funny. This is such a universal tool of comedy that you
could almost draw a graph showing that the more inept a character
is, the funnier they will become.
 In the opening of Minions, we can see that the Minions themselves
are not nice characters; in fact, they go looking for the most
despicable individuals to follow. We can also see that they are not
very skillful either; in fact, they end up killing everyone that they work
for. They are however, very funny. Not because they have great one
liners or a sarcastic wit, but because they are so sweetly stupid.

Bonus Material
Being skillful and being funny are not mutually exclusive qualities; a
character can be both. In The Lego Batman movie, Batman is
Gotham’s greatest superhero, but he is also self-centered, arrogant,
and a terrible father to his adoptive teenage son. He is skillful in one
area of his life, but not in others, and it is these character
weaknesses that provide much of the comedy. Dracula in Hotel
Transylvania has all the skills you would expect of the legendary
vampire, but he struggles to exist in a world where the monsters try
to live side by side with people, and, like Batman, he’s not a good
father. They both have some incredible abilities and some flaws and
weaknesses.

Whether it is Merida from Brave with her skill in archery or Bugs

Bunny with his zappy wit and trickery, characters that are skillful or
funny appear time and time again in animation. As always, there are
exceptions to the rule. Sometimes you might want to create a story
where the lead characters are not funny and have no exceptional
skills and abilities. In these cases, the following four become even
more essential.

Get Your Character on the Screen as Soon as

Possible
The simplest way to get an audience to latch on to a character is to
get them on the screen as quickly as possible and give them as
much screen time as you can. Often, the central character will be the
first character you see in a movie. If they are not the very first
character you see, they may be the first character to speak, or
maybe they are the first character whose face you see. Sometimes,
an animation may open with a prologue that gives us some
backstory or a scene with a villain, but we can normally tell that the
characters in these scenes are not going to be the lead. Take the
opening of Ratatouille. In the pre-credit sequence, we hear a voice-
over and then the first character we see is Anton Ego, clearly a
villainous character described in the script as “gaunt” and as having
“fish-belly white skin.” Anton is unlikely to be the character we follow
in the rest of the movie. But then, who is the next character we see?
Ratatouille himself, jumping out of the window nearly filling the
screen. He even gets a FREEZE FRAME so the audience can take
him all in. We know this is who we’re going to follow for the rest of
the movie.

Unwavering Resolve
In Chapter 4, we discussed how proactive the central character
should be. Unwavering resolve takes this a step further. If we see
that a character won’t give up, no matter how many times they get
knocked down, this is something that an audience is attracted to.
Just watch Madame Souza in The Triplets of Belleville as she uses a
paddle boat to follow her son’s kidnappers across the Atlantic Ocean
(Figure 16). One of the greatest examples of this character trait
comes from Judy Hopps in Zootopia who goes as far as to state in
her dialogue, “I don’t know when to quit!”
Figure 16 The Triplets of Belleville, August 29, 2003.

Sometimes we do see characters give up on the pursuit of their

goals at some point in a story, but it is important to highlight here that
this moment usually comes a long way into the plot, after they’ve
been knocked down and bounced back quite a few times, and this
moment often forms the end of act two.

A Little Niceness Goes a Long Way

Make your lead character nice in some way. It doesn’t mean they
have to be sickly sweet or an all-round nice guy or gal, but by giving
your character some likable qualities, the audience will start to like
them too. In the opening of Hotel Transylvania 2, Dracula is dancing
with his daughter at her wedding and asks, “Is it everything you ever
wanted, my little poison berry?” This is a vampire talking, but he
cares about his daughter and wants her to be happy. Throughout the
movie, we will see him put his grandson in danger and mislead his
daughter, but this act of kindness near the opening shows that deep
down he is worth caring about.
Any time we can see a character demonstrate kindness near the
opening of the movie, it will engage your audience. Once the
audience has connected to the character, then you can start to
reveal more of their negative aspects. In The Incredibles, we see Mr.
Incredible take time out from a car chase to help a little old lady get
her cat down from a tree. Not long after this, he rejects Incrediboy
and seems disconnected from his family, but the audience has
already latched onto him emotionally so his negative behavior is
more readily accepted.
Watch out for these acts of kindness. While not always present in a
movie (Gru in Despicable Me is very sparse on the kindness front)
that first act of kindness will help the audience engage with that
character.

Jeopardy, Hardship, or Adversity

Giving your character hardships or adversity will immediately create
sympathy for them. The audience will relate to them because they
want to succeed and get out of the predicament they are in. In An
American Tail, we know immediately that Fievel has a difficult life; he
lives in poverty under permanent threat of being attacked by cats.
Whatever happens later in the movie, we sympathize with him and
want him to succeed.
Also, Fievel doesn’t have this difficult life because he did something
to deserve it, he was born into it. In Rango, the title character—a
domesticated lizard—becomes lost in the desert after his terrarium
falls out of his owner’s car. The more undeserved these hardships
are, the stronger the bond your audience will have with your
character.

Bonus Material
When dealing with a well-known brand or franchise, some of these
guidelines can be bent a little. If the audience is ready to watch
Shrek the Third, you can guess that a lot of them will have seen
Shrek before and already like him. You will notice, though, that
generally filmmakers don’t take that risk. They will still employ some
of these techniques in the sequels for anyone not familiar with the
character and to strengthen the audience’s bond.
 Chapter 11
THE EMOTIONAL GOAL

Now you understand how important a physical goal is to your story

and you understand the necessity of having one central character.
But what about that character’s emotional journey? What about their
happiness or overcoming emotional hurts that need healing? These
character journeys are often an intrinsic part of an animated story but
they are not as essential as the physical goal. Watch an episode of
Tom and Jerry, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, The Road Runner
Show, Bugs Bunny, or Wacky Races. Each episode of these classics
contains a physical goal, but very little emotional journey.
Understanding and employing emotional goals within your stories is
an important part of storytelling. While the physical goal gives us the
“what” of the plot, the emotion gives us the “why.” It tells us why the
character is behaving in a certain way, and it gives us the biggest
“why” of all—why we, as the audience, should care. In Flushed
Away, we follow Rodney, a domesticated pet rat, who is flushed into
the sewers and is desperately trying to get back home. Rodney’s
goal is to get back to his Kensington house and live in luxury again.
But on this journey, Rodney sees what it’s like to have friends and
family and realizes that his domestic existence is lonely and that he
would rather have friends and family than luxury. As a viewer, we
can see that he’s lonely and we want him to be happy, so we engage
in the story and feel satisfied when he lives “happily ever after.”
Without this emotional healing, the “happily ever after” is missing.
 While the physical goal is something that the character knows they
want to achieve, the emotional goal in the story usually comes from
something missing in the person’s life. This is often something they
don’t know, or even believe, is missing until near the end of the story.
Unlike the physical goal, it is not something that we can just tick off
when achieved. Whereas a physical goal should be more specific
than just “being happy,” the emotional goal is usually about just that
and is therefore much harder to define.
The character has the emotional need from the beginning of the
story, and even though they don’t necessarily know they have it, the
audience probably does. Belle in Beauty and the Beast knows she
wants more than her provincial life; in fact, she sings the words, “I
want so much more than they’ve got planned.”1 But Rodney in
Flushed Away has no idea that he’s lonely; he’s never known
anything else. Missing Link gives us an even more complex
emotional need. Lionel Frost, the lead character, can’t make friends,
but he thinks he can make up for this by becoming respected. Lionel
thinks his emotional needs will be fulfilled if he is accepted into the
Optimates Club, a fellowship for “Adventurers, Explorers and Great
Men” but the viewer can see that the men in that fellowship aren’t
really that great. It will take the journey of the story for him to
discover that all he needs is a true friend.
The emotional need often evolves out of a character’s past.
Sometimes this is stated clearly. In Despicable Me, we learn that
Gru’s mother always used to crush his dreams when he was a little
boy. In ParaNorman, we can see that Norman is treated like a weirdo
by others. In Cars though, we don’t know why Lightning McQueen is
as arrogant and self-centered as he is. Whatever the cause, the
negative behavior that the central character demonstrates has, in
some way, helped them in their life, at least up until the start of the
movie or show that you are watching. In short, they feel they have no
need to change it. This is the same with real people. If someone is a
miser, then chances are they experienced poverty or scarcity as a
child and now the hoarding of money gives them a feeling of
security. It would be hard to convince someone with that background
and character trait to suddenly start spending money freely.
It is often said that it’s the journey not the destination that’s
important, but in an animated story the destination is just as
essential as the steps that happen along the way. With an emotional
goal, the character will be taking steps toward their character change
throughout the story. But ultimately, the full change won’t come until
they reach their destination. In Flushed Away, Rodney doesn’t know
that he wants a family until he is back in his Kensington house.
Lionel Frost doesn’t know that all he needs is a friend until he sees
how much he has hurt Link.
Although the character’s emotional change at the end of the story
may seem sudden, this can only happen if the right plot points have
been threaded throughout the script. The emotional goal comes with
complexities that we don’t have when we plot out a physical goal.
For a start, physical goals are normally clearly stated so the
audience knows exactly where the character is heading. The
emotional goal lies in the background of the story so the viewer will
not be so consciously aware of it. The same is true for the character.
For example, in Frozen, Anna’s physical goal is to bring her sister
back to Arendelle. By the end of the adventure, she will also learn
what true love is, although she has no idea that she needs to learn
this lesson as she pursues her physical goal.
If you are writing a movie, the character change is likely to be a big
one. This is the way that the character has always been, so it will
take lots of mini-lessons along the way to change the character’s life.
In a TV show these changes and life lessons are often smaller.
When George in Peppa Pig is reluctant to go to the dentist, he learns
pretty quickly that he will be okay. When Lionel in Missing Link
abandons his dream of joining the Optimates Club, it takes a lot
more to chip away at his life’s ambition and teach him that all he
needs is a friend.
 Making the emotional goal work within a story is a fine balance. If
there are too many life lessons on the character’s journey, the story
can seem moralistic and the character can seem dim and irritating
for not understanding what he needs to do sooner. If there are too
few lessons, the character change, when it happens, will not be
convincing. Getting this balance right takes practice. Fortunately,
there are four tools that can help with this plotting:

1. Defining the destination

2. Establishing where the character is emotionally at the beginning of
the story
3. Creating the stepping-stones
4. Showing both new behavior and old, negative behavior

Let’s look at each one of these separately.

Defining the Destination

When you set out on a journey, it’s helpful to know where you are
going. Once you have the core of your idea, think about what your
character needs to learn, what healing needs to take place in their
life, or what they need to change about themselves in order to be
fulfilled. This won’t normally be “tickable” like a physical goal would
be, but like a physical goal it will be specific. Examples of this type of
life lessons include to have friends (Missing Link and Flushed Away)
and to think of others before yourself (Cars) or that beauty is found
within (Beauty and the Beast). Once, as a writer, you know your
specific destination, it is much easier to plot out the next steps.

Establishing Where the Character Is Emotionally at

the Beginning of the Story
We know how the character is going to change at the end of the
story, so now we have to think about their starting point. It might
seem obvious, but this is normally the opposite of where they’re
going to end up. If your character is going to end up realizing they
need friends, they must start the story thinking that they are perfectly
fine being alone, and this must be played out near the beginning of
the story so the audience can see the problem.
This is perfectly illustrated in the second scene of Missing Link
when Lionel Frost demonstrates to his assistant, Mr. Lint (and to the
audience at home), why he has no friends. In the first scene, Lionel
Frost, in his attempts to photograph a mythical beast, puts Mr. Lint in
a lot of danger. Now Mr. Lint is protesting.
MR LINT
I’m a human being!
FROST
(indifferent)
One of over one and a half billion . . .
MR LINT
It’s no wonder you can’t keep anyone around . . .
Mr Lint exits, leaving Frost on his own.
We see clearly here that Frost doesn’t care about other people and,
as a result, is on his own.

Creating the Stepping-Stones

We now know our starting point, and we know where we’re heading.
All we need to do now is create little stepping-stones along the way
to join up these two story points.
To do this, we need to think about what lessons the character
needs to receive along the way. In Flushed Away, Rodney gets that
glimpse of family life with Rita. This is something he seems to enjoy.
In Missing Link, we see Frost have a real heart-to-heart with Link,
and we can guess that this is the closest thing Frost’s ever had to a
friend. In these scenes, we can see where the characters are
heading, but we also need to see them moving away from that
destination. Our central character hasn’t learnt their lesson yet, so
they will still default to the old negative pattern that they had at the
beginning of the story (at least until they are ready for the final big
change). If a character started off selfish, she will still be selfish. If he
started off obsessed with his looks, he will still be obsessed with his
looks.
We don’t like to mix our metaphors, but another way to think of this
is to imagine weighing scales. Not the digital kind, but the kind that
has weights on either side and tips back-and-forth to wherever the
heaviest weight is. Now imagine a heavy weight on one side of
scales. Now picture adding tiny weights to the other side, the scales
will stay tipped toward the heavy weight for a long time. Eventually,
enough of the tiny weights will outweigh the larger weight and it will
tip over to the other side. Emotional healing in stories works in a
similar way. A character’s emotional need is like a very heavy weight
that won’t move easily. Gradually the life lessons and circumstances
of the story build up until, at last, the scales tip and the character
changes.

Showing Both New Behavior and Old, Negative

Behavior
As the character moves forward in the story, these little weights will
start to have an effect. The character will sometimes appear to be
changing for the better, only to revert straight back to their original
negative behavior. This emotional see-saw effect helps to make that
final big change believable when it happens. These moments also
work as a reminder for the audience; this is where they are going but
they are not there yet. We feel a moment of happiness or relief when
the character seems to be changing for the better, but then
frustration when we realize that, of course, they haven’t changed at
all.
 In Despicable Me, Gru has adopted three orphan girls as part of his
plan to steal his shrink-ray back. By the end of the story, he loves the
three girls but at the beginning he doesn’t care about them at all,
they are just a means to achieve his goal. As he pursues his physical
goal, we see his new positive behavior starting to manifest itself but
we also see him revert to his original, uncaring behavior. When one
of the girls’ toy unicorn gets disintegrated, Gru refuses to replace it,
but then relents and sends out his minions to get one. It appears that
Gru is starting to care, but later that night he refuses to read them a
bedtime story and makes them all sleep in unexploded bombs. He
leaves them by saying, “Good night, sleep tight, and don’t let the bed
bugs bite”—a moment of kindness? But then he finishes by saying,
“because there are literally thousands of them . . . and there’s
probably something in your closet.”

Summary
It is hard to think of a successful animated feature in recent years
that does not contain an emotional goal. Likewise, it has become a
big part of even some of the shortest animated TV shows. Much of
children’s television, for example, has evolved to include these life
lessons. Emotional journeys are challenging to plot, but they are a
worthwhile skill to develop as they are becoming an increasingly
important part of animated storytelling.

Notes
1 “Belle (Reprise)” Beauty and the Beast. Walt Disney Pictures, 1991, Film. Howard
Ashman & Alan Menken.
 Chapter 12
EMOTIONAL GOAL CASE STUDY

Shrek
As the theory of emotion in story is hard to grasp, it is best
understood by seeing one in action. You don’t need to see Shrek in
order to follow this case study, but we still highly recommend that
you watch it at some point. It’s a great film and a perfect example of
how an emotional goal works.
On the surface, Shrek is about an ogre who rescues a princess
from a dragon and they end up falling in love. Alongside that
traditional physical goal lies an elegantly plotted emotional story
about a character who considers himself to be ugly and repugnant to
others, but discovers along the way that if you give of yourself, and
you’re open about your feelings, you will be loved by others.
To analyze how the emotional learning works in Shrek, we need to
go through the four steps outlined in the previous chapter, starting
with how Shrek has changed by the end of the movie.
Because of his road trip with the endlessly positive, open, and
upbeat Donkey, Shrek learns to talk freely about his feelings. He also
learns to believe in and appreciate the meaning of true friendship.
Most importantly, Shrek learns that true love can happen because he
has fallen in love with the princess and she has fallen in love with
him. The proof is that their kiss is indeed true love’s first kiss, as it
breaks her curse and turns her into the person she was supposed to
be. An ogre like Shrek.
 That’s how Shrek ends up, as a positive, well-adjusted ogre. But
how does he begin the story?
Shrek is a loner. He doesn’t trust people. He is used to being
shunned, ridiculed, and attacked by angry mobs. He is closed,
guarded, and values his privacy, so much so that he puts a sign up
outside his house with a scary face painted on it that reads “Beware
Ogre.” Shrek believes that he doesn’t have a problem with the world,
the world has a problem with him. This is the personality and habit
pattern that Shrek has adopted and has served him well in the world
up until now.

Bonus Material
At the beginning of the movie, Shrek is about as unlikable a
character as you will find. So why do we like him as an audience?
Why are we prepared to engage with him and follow him through the
movie? If we go back to the six tools that create the emotional
connection (Chapter 10), Shrek uses five of those tools, including
both of the most important two.
Shrek has skills and abilities. In fact, he’s practically a superhero.
He can singlehandedly defeat a dozen soldiers and he’s chosen by
Farquaad to go and face the dragon. He’s funny, he farts while he’s
bathing, makes candles out of his earwax, and has great comic
delivery (there is a reason they use comic actors like Mike Myers to
voice these characters). Shrek is also the first character on the
screen and has unwavering resolve. Lastly, he suffers hardship and
adversity—nobody likes ogres and we see an angry mob with
torches and pitchforks coming to get him.
The only thing missing is that he just isn’t nice. Maybe he’s a tiny
bit nice—he lets the mob run away instead of killing them—but he’s
not really. It doesn’t matter, the other five tools are so well executed
in Shrek that the audience still like him.
Notice how this description of Shrek at the beginning of the story is
quite different to how he is at the end. The key storytelling point here
is that he’s not just different, he’s opposite. Not opposite in every
way, he hasn’t changed from an ogre to a male underwear model,
but the emotional aspects of his character have changed. Let’s focus
on that a bit more. Shrek hasn’t made a complete change
emotionally. He will remain coarse and probably a bit grumpy, he is
an ogre after all, but the aspects of his character that relate to his
emotional learn have changed. Shrek starts the movie as someone
who is prepared to face a dragon rather than share his swamp with
fairy tale creatures, but he finishes the movie as someone who is
happy to party with those very same creatures. More importantly, he
goes from someone who is guarded about his feelings to someone
who risks ridicule by showing his love for Fiona in front of a church
that is full of people. The film opens with Shrek wiping his butt on a
story about true love’s first kiss and closes with him delivering true
love’s first kiss to Fiona.
So how does Shrek make this miraculous change and, just as
importantly, how does it occur on screen in a way that makes sense
to an audience? Let’s go through the three acts and look at the
stepping-stones that bring about the character change. We will also
look at the new positive behavior as it begins to manifest itself and
how Shrek still reverts to his old negative behavior before the
change really happens.

Act One
The main physical goal that we follow throughout the first act is that
Shrek wants to get the fairy tale creatures off his land. So, he sets off
to see Lord Farquaad to get him to give him his swamp back. But it’s
the emotional moments that run alongside this goal that contribute
toward the character change at the end of the movie.
We have already established that Shrek, at the beginning of the
movie, is a loner who likes his privacy. This is mainly because people
are always running screaming from him and he is harangued by
torch-wielding angry mobs. Then, he meets Donkey, and Donkey
doesn’t run away screaming. Donkey wants to be his friend. This is
the first stepping-stone on his emotional journey. He has met
someone who doesn’t judge him just because he’s an ogre. This
already leads to a moment where, it would appear, Shrek is
changing. Donkey asks if he can stay with Shrek. Shrek’s immediate
reaction is to say no, but when Donkey begs and pleads, Shrek
wavers and says he can stay for one night only. It’s a small change
but at least he hasn’t chased Donkey away. But then, the old Shrek
rears his ogre-like head again and he tells Donkey to sleep outside.
Back at his swamp, Shrek is inside eating his beautifully laid-out
slug n’ slime dinner beside the roaring fire, while Donkey tries to get
comfortable in the cold outside. Shrek clearly feels a little pang of
remorse and is just about to invite Donkey in when he is interrupted
by the arrival of three blind mice and a large gathering of fairy tale
creatures. He tries to get them off his land but spokesman Pinocchio
tells him that they were all evicted from their homes by Lord
Farquaad and have nowhere to go. Eager to get back to his loner
existence, Shrek vows to go a nd see Lord Farquaad and demand
that he gets his swamp back. Notice that at this point in the story
Shrek’s desire to be on his own is so powerful that it drives the
physical goals for both act one and act two.
When Shrek and Donkey arrive at Lord Farquaad’s castle in Duloc,
Lord Farquaad is about to start a tournament. The brave knight who
wins this tournament will go and rescue a princess from a dragon
(the princess that Farquaad wants to marry so he can be king).
When Lord Farquaad spots Shrek entering the arena, he changes
the rules to “Get the ogre!” A massive fight ensues and it’s clear that,
despite the fact that they barely know each other, Shrek and Donkey
make a good team. Another stepping-stone for Shrek, who now has
a friend and a teammate, even if he doesn’t want either of those
things.
 Farquaad sees how strong Shrek is and realizes that sending the
ogre to rescue the princess might be the best plan.

Act Two
The physical goal for act two has now been set. Farquaad will give
Shrek his swamp back if he rescues the princess from the dragon
and brings her to him.
Act two in Shrek is particularly interesting from an emotional point
of view. Often in animation, the physical goal is at the forefront with
the emotional journey going on in the background. In Shrek, the
emotional goal takes on an equal role to the physical goal. Look at
how the rescue from the dragon happens relatively quickly. Compare
this to Moana’s journey to face Te Fiti or the buildup to Wallace and
Gromit’s final showdown with Victor Quartermaine in The Curse of
the Were-Rabbit. The relatively quick rescue gives the writers plenty
of time for the relationship between Shrek and Fiona (as well as the
relationship between Shrek and Donkey) to develop.
Throughout the second act, the following stepping-stones all
contribute to Shrek’s change of character during act three.
When Donkey reveals his misconceptions about ogres, including
the assumption that they grind down people’s bones to make their
bread, Shrek starts to explain. Ogre’s aren’t as straightforward as
everyone assumes; they are like onions, they have lots of layers.
This is a big stepping-stone. Shrek might lose his temper at the end
of this conversation, but at least someone is trying to understand him
and he is trying to communicate his side of the story.
Soon the scary mountain comes into view with the castle on top.
The only way to get to the castle is by way of a very long rickety
bridge over boiling lava. Donkey is scared but Shrek tells him that
he’ll be right there beside him and that they’ll “just tackle this thing
together, one little baby step at a time.” Shrek is giving his friend
emotional support, another indication of new positive behavior. Once
on the bridge, though, Shrek quickly reverts to type. Ignoring
Donkey’s pleas, Shrek starts wobbling the bridge. He then “bumps”
him backward across it with his huge stomach. It’s hard to tell if this
action comes out of friendship or irritation with Donkey, but when
Donkey finds himself on the other side, he realizes that it’s thanks to
Shrek’s bumping that he made it. Throughout this scene, we see
Shrek’s personality swing back-and-forth between new positive
behavior and his older, ingrained response to events.
As we go into the rescue sequence, the physical goal for act two
takes over. While there are some glimpses of the emotional aspects
of the story during the rescue, Shrek, Donkey, and the rescued
Princess Fiona are soon on their journey back to Duloc.
When Princess Fiona realizes that the sun is setting, she is eager
to make camp. They stop and Fiona goes into a cave before the sun
sets (for reasons we will find out later). Donkey and Shrek lay
outside, looking up at the stars, and we get another insight into
Shrek’s softer side. Shrek tries to convince Donkey that the stars tell
stories and the constellations are called things like Bloodnut the
Flatulent but Donkey doesn’t believe him. Then Shrek says,
“Sometimes things are more than they appear.” This is a tender
moment between what would now seem to be good friends. It is a
stepping-stone toward Shrek’s character change and a moment of
showing the positive behavior he is moving toward. But, as the
scene plays out, we see Shrek’s old behavior appear again.
Donkey, feeling more relaxed about their friendship, asks what they
are going to do when they get back, and refers to “our” swamp.
Shrek quickly reverts to his grumpy, old self and tells him that it’s not
“our” swamp “and the first thing I’m going to do is build a ten-foot
wall around my land” and rolls over.
Donkey is hurt. They’ve been laughing and chatting and they have
rescued the princess together and still Shrek goes back to this
default behavior. “You cut me deep Shrek,” says Donkey, and
proceeds to give Shrek an accurate analysis of his character. He
suggests that the “wall thing” is just a way to keep somebody out and
asks him if he is trying to hide something. Donkey then adds with
surprising emotional intelligence, “Who are you trying to keep out?”
Shrek responds by shouting, “Everyone!” Then goes on to say that
people judge him before they even know him and adds, “That’s why
I’m better off alone.” The full scene is an important stage in Shrek’s
emotional healing, but as he still thinks he is better off alone; it is
clear he has a long way to go. The wall he wants to build is real and
the metaphorical emotional wall is still firmly in place.
As the journey continues, Shrek is clearly smitten by the princess.
We have romantic music montage as the two spend time together.
We see Fiona creating a type of candy floss out of a spider’s web
and flies for Shrek. She then inflates a frog and a snake to create
two balloons that they carry together, like two love-struck teenagers
at the fair.
Their journey is now nearly over. They are getting close to Duloc
and the moment that Shrek will hand Fiona over to Farquaad. Shrek
is feeling sad, but so is Fiona. As they eat together, Shrek asks if she
would like to visit him in the swamp where she can try some more of
his dishes. She tells him that she would like that and then just as
they are about to kiss, Donkey pops up and mentions how romantic
the sunset is. Fiona panics, it’s that fear of the sunset again, and she
rushes inside a nearby hut.
Donkey can see what is going on between them; he has “animal
instincts” but Shrek is coyly protesting. Donkey tells Shrek to “wake
up and smell the pheromones” and just go inside and tell Fiona how
he feels. But the reality of the situation is dawning on Shrek. She is a
princess and he is an ogre with no experience of love. As Shrek sets
off sadly to collect firewood, Donkey goes inside the hut to find Fiona
and tell her. It is then that Donkey discovers her secret. A witch’s
curse means that by day she’s a “beautiful” princess, but when the
sun goes down, she turns into an ogre.
Meanwhile, Shrek has made up his mind to tell Fiona how he feels.
He is approaching the hut with a sunflower to give her when he
overhears part of her conversation with Donkey. “Who could ever
love a beast so hideous and ugly? Princess and ugly don’t go
together!” She is talking about herself, but Shrek thinks she is talking
about him. He drops the sunflower. His hopes smashed. This time
the stepping-stone moves Shrek away from his emotional
destination, a device commonly used as we approach the third act.
The next day, Fiona, now transformed back into a princess,
resolves to tell Shrek the truth about herself. But the previous night’s
events have now driven him back to being his old self, his emotional
wall protecting him from further hurt. Shrek tells Fiona that he heard
everything. Fiona assumes that Shrek knows her secret, so she
thinks he hates her for being ugly. This almost Shakespearean
misunderstanding means that they are now both hurt and angry with
each other. Lord Farquaad arrives to claim his princess and
proposes straight away. With a glance in Shrek’s direction, she
accepts. Shrek has the deeds to his swamp and the promise that the
squatters have gone from his land. As he heads back to his swamp,
Lord Farquaad and the princess ride away.
On the way back to the swamp, Donkey tries to tell Shrek the truth
about Fiona; this makes Shrek jealous that Fiona and Donkey are
pals, and he’s soon angrily declaring that he is going to live alone in
his swamp. This time he is shouting at Donkey and calling him a
useless, pathetic, annoying talking donkey. Donkey sadly watches
Shrek stomp off and it’s time for a sad music montage. Shrek has
achieved all his physical goals up to this point (although there will be
a new one in act three), but emotionally Shrek is as far away as he
can be from being happy. This is often an essential part of the
emotional journey; a character only changes after they have hit rock
bottom. Up till now they have been clinging on to their original
behavior pattern, the one that served them well up until the story
started, but now they realize how destructive it has been.
We just need the last few stepping-stones, or weights on the scale,
to complete Shrek’s character change. When the montage finishes,
there is a sound outside Shrek’s house. It’s Donkey trying to build a
wall. The two end up arguing and Donkey tells Shrek, “you are mean
to me, you insult me and you don’t appreciate anything I do! Always
pushing me around or pushing me away!” Shrek asks him that if he
treated him so badly, why did he come back? Donkey tells him that
it’s what friends do, they forgive each other. Another weight on the
scale.
Despite this, Shrek feels hurt and his old behavior is in full swing.
He tells Donkey that he forgives him “for stabbing me in the back.”
Then he storms into the outhouse—an echo of the beginning of the
story—shutting him out. The final moments that create the character
change comes in two separate statements from Donkey. First, he
tells Shrek that he’s shutting people out again just like he did to
Fiona “and all she ever do [sic] was like you, maybe even love you.”
So now the truth is out there, Fiona likes or even loves Shrek. But
Shrek’s still angry, he heard her say that he was “ugly, a hideous
creature.” Now it’s time for the final punch, Donkey tells Shrek that
she wasn’t talking about him, she was talking about someone else.
Shrek exits the toilet. All the weights are in place. All the stepping-
stones have been crossed. Shrek realizes that someone might like
him for who he is. This is a big moment, and it takes a little time for
Shrek to shift to his new behavior. He apologizes to Donkey in an
angry way. Then he finally softens and reaches out to Donkey
apologizing with heart. The character change is complete.

Act Three
Shrek has changed now, but for the story to be complete, we need to
see that change in action. We also need to see the beneficial results
of that change. For that, we need the act three goal, the moment
when the emotional story and the physical story come together to
complete the journey. Shrek must stop the wedding and declare his
love for Fiona.
 Shrek arrives in Duloc but the wedding has begun. Shrek admits to
Donkey that he loves Princess Fiona. This is the first time he has
been this open about his feelings, and it shows how he has changed.
But the biggest demonstration of this change is about to come.
Shrek bursts into the church to stop the wedding. He tells Fiona he
wants to talk to her. She is resistant but Shrek perseveres. He tells
her that Farquaad is not her true love. Farquaad realizes what is
going on and taunts Shrek, asking what an ogre would know about
true love? The congregation laugh; Shrek is being ridiculed again.
The old Shrek would have run away and blocked everyone out, but
Shrek is now prepared to show his feelings not just to Fiona but in
front of everyone.
The emotional journey and the physical goals are now complete,
there are just a few loose-ends to tie up. Lord Farquaad gets eaten
by the dragon. Shrek breaks the witch’s curse by giving Fiona her
true love’s kiss. He learns that she’s an ogre too. Now they are ready
to live happily ever after.
Shrek and Fiona marry at the swamp surrounded by singing,
dancing fairy tale creatures, the very ones that he was trying to get
rid of in the first act. He began the story as a loner and an outcast,
closed and distrustful and with no friends. Now he has opened his
heart, revealed his true self, and not only found a true friend in
Donkey but he has also fallen in love.

Thinky Time #9
Choose a movie and complete your own case study of how the
emotional goal works within that movie. If in doubt about what to
choose, most Disney features from the last twenty years have
strong, well-executed emotional stories. Then work through the
following steps:

1. Destination. Watch the movie through once and then work out
which character learns the emotional lesson in that story. Define
 what that emotional lesson is.
2. Starting point. Watch the first act of the movie again and see how
the character starts their journey. What is the scene near the
beginning of the movie that shows us how the character needs to
change in order to be fulfilled? Are they aware of their emotional
need, or are they oblivious?
3. Stepping-stones. Now watch the rest of the movie, and make
notes on the scenes that point the character to the change that
they need to make in their life. Also, note the times that the
character still behaves in their original negative way.
4. Examples of new and old behavior. How many times in the
story does the lead character appear to be making a change for
the better? How do the writers demonstrate that the character
hasn’ t changed yet?
5. Testing the story. Lastly, go through the stepping-stones that you
have written down. Imagine taking out one of those stepping-
stones. Would the story still work? What aspect of the emotional
change is missing?

This five-step process is a good way to analyze a movie, but it can

also work with your own scripts. If you’re unsure whether the
emotional through-line of your movie is working, just run through this
five-step process. If when you reach step five, you feel that the story
isn’t working yet, go through the first four steps again. Have you
clearly defined points one and two? Have you got too many, or too
few of the stages covered in points three and four? Put these on a
whiteboard or index cards so you can see them all in one place.
Once you can see these all laid out clearly and in order, it is often
simple to realize what stages you need to add or take away to make
the story work.
 Chapter 13
CHARACTER AND ARCHETYPE

You will have noticed that this book starts with plot and then moves
on to character, so you would be forgiven for thinking that we believe
that plot comes before character. The truth is that character and plot
have a symbiotic relationship. Some writers are much more
comfortable working out how characters are going to behave,
whereas other writers prefer to think of great plot points and then
manipulate the characters to behave in the way that suits their plot.
Wherever you start, character or plot, if you are going to write great
animation, you are going to need to create strong characters. So,
how do you set about creating these great animated characters?
Archetypes are our biggest power tool when it comes to putting
together a cast of characters that are different to each other. For our
purposes, character archetypes are models of typical characters that
perform a particular function in drama and/or comedy. By putting
archetypes in place, we can usually minimize the chances of
characters performing the same function within the story—unless of
course, you use the same archetype.
To really understand the value of archetypes, we need to go back
in time—way before TV and film. Archetypes have existed since at
least ancient Greece, but we only need to go back to sixteenth-
century Italy and the days of Commedia dell’Arte (meaning “comedy
by artisans”) to see why they work so well.

Commedia Dell’Arte
Around this time, groups of actors across Europe made their living
by traveling from town to town performing for the locals. Now, the
likes of Shakespeare might have been churning out scripts in
England at this time, but most of these acting troupes did not have a
playwright among them, so most of what they did was improvised.
If you think turning up in a town and entertaining people without a
script sounds like a scary way to make a living, you’d be right, but
archetypes made these actors’ lives easier. Over time, certain
character types evolved; this meant that an actor could take on one
of the archetypes and they would know exactly how that character
would behave. Whether they were the lusty old man or the dim-
witted servant, each actor knew how to play their role. They also
knew that none of the other characters were going to behave in the
same way as they did and that the built-in conflicts that existed
between the archetypes would help the drama and the comedy to
develop. There were well over a dozen of these archetypes so there
was always enough for each actor within the company to take one
archetype each; that way everybody on stage would have their own
priorities and viewpoint.
Entertainment has moved on since then and so have the
archetypes. There was a lot of lust and lechery in those days. Today,
we have archetypes in film and television that are as familiar to us as
those older archetypes were then, and we can use these to help us
to create characters for animation.

Archetypes Today
Below are some of the archetypes that we most commonly see in
animation today. While it’s not necessary to populate your story with
every archetype, it is often helpful to avoid duplicating archetypes
within your lineup of characters.
A Step Behind
As the name suggests, this character isn’t too bright, but it doesn’t
mean that they’re stupid. These are the characters who just know a
bit less than the others; this can be through naivety or lack of
intelligence but it can also be because they are new in some way.
Frozen’s Olaf isn’t stupid; he’s just been around for less time than
the other characters and so understands less about the world. These
characters usually have an innocence that gives them a puppy-like
quality which endears them to others. Arthur Christmas (from the
movie of the same name), Mater from Cars, and Butters from South
Park are all examples of characters who are “a step behind.”

Bonus Material
In children’s television, this character archetype can be particularly
useful as they can ask the questions that the younger members of
the audience might want to ask. For example, in Peppa Pig, George
is the youngest of the main characters, which means that he’ll ask
questions about words or concepts that might be complicated for the
younger viewers. This allows the younger audience to understand
what’s going on, without feeling alienated.

Long-Suffering
The Long-Suffering character is often the one with common sense
who can see the chaos that the other characters are causing. This is
a character that can often be perceived as the “boring” one as they
don’t do the wacky things that we all love. But the Long-Suffering
character is a vital part of the comedy as it gives us the audience’s
viewpoint. They are saying what we would probably say in that
situation, but they can do nothing to turn the tide of madness around
them. Lois in Family Guy, Marge in The Simpsons, and Spot in Hong
Kong Phooey all fall under the category of Long-Suffering.

Dreamer
The Dreamer is one of the most recognizable comedic characters,
perhaps because most of us can see part of ourself in that character.
The Dreamer has ambitions and desires and believes that these
dreams are attainable, although when they are a comedic character,
usually they are not (the greater the ability the character has to
achieve their goal, the less funny they are). Flint, in Cloudy with a
Chance of Meatballs, demonstrates the Dreamer archetype perfectly.
Flint dreams of being a great inventor, and when his inventions go
wrong at the beginning, it’s funny, but he becomes less comedic as
his ability as an inventor improves.
Dreamers have a ton of ideas, a strong desire to achieve their
goals, and a boundless energy to try and fulfill them, a combination
that while funny can also be tragic. South Park’s Cartman, Charlie
Brown, and Jack Skellington in The Nightmare Before Christmas are
all Dreamers, but so are more heroic characters like Belle in Beauty
and the Beast and Rapunzel in Tangled.

Pompous or Arrogant
This one is self-explanatory. Whether it’s a puffed-up academic, a
superior liberal, or just someone who thinks they know it all. Brian
from Family Guy, Squidward from SpongeBob, and Cogsworth from
Beauty and the Beast are very different characters, but they all fulfill
this role. These characters make us laugh again and again; they
never learn their lesson, and everybody likes to see a pretentious
gasbag brought down a peg or two.

Uptight
These are characters that range from being a little worried to having
full-on anxiety-ridden disorders. The Uptight can be a bucket of
nerves or a fastidious nitpick but we love to see them get wound up
or wind others up with their controlling obsessions. Fear in Inside
Out, Rex in Toy Story, and Tweak in South Park are great examples
of the Uptight character.
One-Track Mind
This one sounds like it’s all about sex—and it can be! Quagmire in
Family Guy or even Louise in Bob’s Burgers are both One-Track
Mind characters focused on the opposite sex.
It might seem that such a sexual character would not have a
function in children’s content, but sexual drive can be replaced by
other overwhelming desires. A character that thinks only with their
stomach or has another overriding obsession can fulfill the same
role. Scooby Doo’s desire for food, Dug’s (from Up) obsession with
squirrels, and Mr. Krabs’s (from SpongeBob) obsession with money
would be child-friendly versions of the One-Track Mind.

Zanni
This character was so much part of Commedia dell’Arte that we felt it
should keep its Commedia name. These were the madcap clowns of
their day and where we get the word “zany” from—which should tell
you a lot about this character. They were usually servants and can
be singular but often appear as a group, causing mischief and chaos
wherever they go. Lock, Shock, and Barrel from The Nightmare
Before Christmas, the Werewolf Kids from Hotel Transylvania, and
the Minions from Despicable Me are perfect examples of the Zanni in
animation.

The Villain
While we all recognize the Villain, it is a complex archetype to
understand. Sometimes the Villain is purely evil, characters such as
the Wicked Queen from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and the
Joker from the Batman franchise have few redeeming
characteristics. Other times, it can just be in the character’s nature,
Kaa in The Jungle Book, for example, just wants to eat something.
Sometimes the Villain will have their own sympathetic backstory, so
that eventually we understand why they behave the way they do;
Gabby Gabby in Toy Story 4 is one such Villain.
 While the personalities of this archetype can vary—and will often
be combined with one of the other archetypes to complete their
personality—the Villain is the character that is most trying to stop
your central character achieve their goal. While this might sound
obvious, it is important that this character is in direct opposition to
the central character. This means that the Villain wants either exactly
the same thing as the central character or the exact opposite and not
anything between or slightly different to these specific goals. You will
save yourself a lot of headaches by getting this right in your story
setup. But what do we mean by that? Let’s look at some examples.
In One Hundred and One Dalmatians, Cruella De Vil wants the
puppies dead, whereas Pongo and Perdita want them alive. These
goals are in direct opposition. If Cruella De Vil merely wanted to
injure the puppies, or borrow them, these goals are no longer
opposite and will water down the plot. Pongo and Perdita wouldn’t
like what Cruella De Vil was planning, but the story when plotted out
would not be strong enough.
In Shrek, both Shrek and Lord Farquaad want to marry Fiona. In
this case, both characters want exactly the same thing. As only one
character can be married to Fiona, these goals in are in direct
opposition.
We highly recommend writing down the goals of your central
character and Villain at the outset of plotting your movie or TV show.
Make sure that these goals are in direct opposition before getting
into too much detail. Time and time again, we have seen stories
(sometimes by seasoned professionals) that have missed this point,
or cheated them slightly, and they never quite work. It takes a lot of
unraveling to change these goals once the story has been fleshed
out.

Servants of Darkness
These are the characters that, while not the main Villain, will create
obstacles for your central character to overcome. In many cases,
these will be minions or henchmen of the main Villain of your story—
Lotso’s numerous hench-toys in Toy Story 3 are this type of
character. In other cases, these can be obstacle characters that we
come across along the way. Moana gives us a perfect example of
this type of Servant (and we see them introduced in the opening
sequence of the movie). The Kakamora and Tamatoa both provide
obstacles to Moana’s quest, but aren’t in the employ of any greater
Villain.

The Trickster
As the name suggests, the Trickster is one of the trickier characters
to categorize and understand. So, who is the Trickster? Loki, from
the Norse myths, is one of the great Tricksters of legend (you can
still see an incarnation of him today in the Marvel Avengers
franchise). The Trickster is driven by mischief and trickery. As a lead
character, he or she will often get their way by outwitting their
opponents (Bugs Bunny), as a Villain they might ensnare people
through a dishonest trap (King John in Disney’s Robin Hood), or as a
character that’s just along for the ride they might just cause chaos for
the sake of it (the Siamese Cats in Lady and the Tramp).
The Trickster is one of the dominant archetypes in myths, legends,
and folktales of old, but it is still prevalent in animati on today. Nick
Wilde in Zootopia, Dick Dastardly, and Road Runner are all
Tricksters, but so are The Riddler and The Joker in the Batman
series and Prince Hans in Frozen.

Thinky Time #10

Choose a feature-length animation. When you watch it, try to see
which character archetype best fits each of the main characters.
You will find that some characters can be quite hard to categorize.
As the writers have fleshed out the personalities of their characters,
they become more like living breathing people, but the archetypes
are usually still there lurking below the surface. The more you do this
exercise, the more powerful this tool becomes in your own hands.
It is also possible that a character is a mix of more than one
archetype. Many Villains also have a One-Track Mind or could be
Long-Suffering, a character could be both Uptight and Pompous, and
some of the Servants of Darkness work as Zannis or are a Step
Behind. By putting two archetypes together, you can create
hundreds of character combinations
 Chapter 14
ANTHROPOMORPHISM

When creating nonhuman characters for animation, there is a good

chance that those characters will be anthropomorphic to some extent
—in other words, they will have some kind of human characteristics.
All the main characters in Sausage Party, Sven in Frozen, and even
Daffy Duck all have human attributes.
Let’s look at Lightning McQueen in Cars for a moment. He is a race
car. He is powered by gasoline and needs his tires changed. But we
also called him a “he.” Lightning has a gender and he has a
personality. He is arrogant, boastful, competitive, and confident. On
one level, Lightning is a car but he also has some of the
characteristics of a young boy.
Let us introduce you to a new word, although we’re not going to
use it as a word in its own right, we’re going to use it as a suffix. The
word is “-centric,” and in this case we’re going to add it to a noun to
make a new word to help describe your nonhuman character. In the
case of Lightning McQueen, he is a car so he will be “car-centric.”
Now that you know how this works, think of other animated
characters that some of the following words could describe:

Toy-centric
Rabbit-centric
Gnome-centric
Snowman-centric
Vampire-centric
The “-centric” in this case refers to the aspects of your character that
are not human. Gnomeo in Gnomeo and Juliet looks after the garden
and freezes when there is a human about, that’s his gnome-centric
part, but he also falls in love with Juliet—just like his Shakespearian
human counterpart. Dracula in the Hotel Transylvania series acts like
an overprotective father (that’s his human part) but he also drinks
synthetic blood, has canine teeth, and can turn into a bat. He is
vampire-centric; fortunately, he is human enough not to devour a
community, like Kurt Barlow in Salem’s Lot.

Centric on a Sliding Scale or How Anthro Does your

Character Morph? or The Goofy/Pluto Conundrum
While your nonhuman characters will have some human
characteristics, it is important to define exactly how human (and
nonhuman) your character is. What are the rules that surround the
anthropomorphism in your show or film, or in fact for each character?
These rules might not necessarily make logical sense—such is the
wacky world of animation—but they should at least be consistent
and you should be able to define them yourself.
Animation allows us to be outrageously illogical in ways that would
be impossible in other forms of entertainment. Think of the fights that
Peter Griffin has with the big chicken in Family Guy or nearly
anything that happens in Rick and Morty. What about something as
mainstream as the Disney Princess movies? In Frozen, we have a
talking snowman who can push his own nose through to the other
side of his head, and how does Beauty and the Beast’s Chip blow
bubbles in his own tea? It doesn’t matter; good animation allows us
to suspend disbelief more than any other form of entertainment.
What does matter is consistency. The more ridiculous the situation,
the more important it is that you stay consistent. In animation, your
audience will buy into nearly anything as long as your world and your
characters obey consistent rules, no matter how ridiculous those
rules may be.
Let us give you an example from the Mickey Mouse film series
(pretty successful, right?). In these films we have two very famous
dogs, Pluto and Goofy, and a very illogical piece of
anthropomorphism. They are both dogs. Pluto behaves almost
entirely like a pet dog would, and Goofy is also a dog but behaves
pretty much like a human. To this date, neither of us have heard a
small child refuse to watch the films because the rules don’t make
any sense. This is because their characterizations are both strong
and consistent.
Now let’s get back to the anthropomorphic sliding scale, and here
Pluto and Goofy can help us again. If we were to lay out a scale of
dog anthropomorphism in animation, we could put Pluto at one end
and Goofy at the other—going from nearly fully dog to nearly fully
human. Now, where would you put Nana in Peter Pan on that scale?
What about Mutley or Huckleberry Hound? Depending on which
aspects of their characters you focus on, you might put them in a
different place. It would be hard, for example, to decide who is most
doglike out of Scooby Doo and Gromit. Scooby Doo for the most part
behaves like a dog, but he eats huge sandwiches and can kind of
talk. Gromit on the other hand is almost human in many respects (he
can even invent things), but he can’t talk and many of the other
characters treat him like a regular dog. In each case, their
characterizations are consistent so the audience is never confused.

Bonus Material
If you want to see a meta-conversation where animation writers
highlight their own logic (in what seems like an illogical setup), watch
the Love, Blactually episode of Family Guy. When Stewie and Brian
go to visit Cleveland’s wife, Loretta, they discuss the logic of which
characters can understand Stewie based on his relationship to his
immediate family.
 Making Your Anthropomorphism Relevant
Whenever you give a nonhuman character human traits, it is usually
beneficial to make the nonhuman aspects of their character relevant
in some way—no matter where they come on the sliding scale. It is
rare that a nonhuman character behaves entirely like a human.
Whatever the character is—machine, sausage, or horse—it will
usually have some bearing on their behavior or physicality. If they
are on the very human end of the scale, this aspect only needs to be
tiny but it should still be relevant. Why make the characters in Rango
desert creatures, if their creature behaviors are not going to have
any bearing on the story? Where each of the characters are in the
food chain impacts on the story all the way through (see Figure 17).
The townsfolk are afraid of the rattlesnake character, but the ratt
lesnake is afraid of the hawk character—everyone is afraid of the
hawk.

Figure 17 Rango, March 4, 2011.

This is when you need to go back to that word “-centric” again.

When you create an anthropomorphic character, it is important to
know in what ways they behave like a human. But it’s also important
to give them that “-centric” skew. Think about Puss in Boots from the
Shrek movies. He could easily have been a great sword fighter that
displayed no catlike characteristics, but he is a cat and, therefore, he
coughs up hairballs, chases lights, and gives us cute kitten looks. By
taking a character that could have acted in an entirely human way
and giving him the right catlike attributes, the writers have created
one of the great animated characters—he even got his own spin-off
movie.

Creative Variations
The kind of character hybrids we have been talking about aren’t
limited to anthropomorphism. A nonhuman character doesn’t always
need to have human traits; it could, for instance, have animal traits.
Dino in The Flintstones is a dinosaur that behaves like a dog (there
are no human aspects to his character). While most of the furniture
in Beauty and the Beast has human qualities, the footstool acts like a
dog. Or, for a completely different skew on anthropomorphism, look
at The Boss Baby. Here, we have a baby who has attributes of an
adult—a human combined with another type of human.
Animation provides us with never-ending ways to create character
combinations. It is fascinating to see the new and creative ways that
storytellers use anthropomorphism to invent new characters. We
encourage you to do the same.
 Chapter 15
PUTTING YOUR CHARACTER
TOGETHER

Archetypes and anthropomorphism are great building blocks, but

there are five more tools you can use to breathe life into your
characters.

1. Physicality
2. History
3. Speech patterns, mannerisms, and catchphrases
4. Skills and ineptitudes
5. Likes and dislikes

Let’s look at each one of these in turn.

Physicality
How big or small is your character? What about fast or slow? Strong
or weak? If your character is anthropomorphic, this might influence
your decisions. The sloth in Zootopia is very slow, as you might
expect, but you could also go against expectations and create a
bloodhound character with no sense of smell.

History
Where did your character grow up? Have they had jobs or been to
school? Think of the Town Mouse and the Country Mouse from
Aesop’s Fables; they are both mice but their respective histories
affect their outlook on life. When you look at your character’s history,
you are defining everything that the character has done up until we
meet them on screen. In some cases, this history will become part of
the story, but often it is just there to give the character an extra
dimension. Mr. Pricklepants in Toy Story 3 considers himself to be an
actor; we don’t know what he’s acted in before meeting him, but his
acting past influences nearly every line of his dialogue.

Speech Patterns, Mannerisms, and Catchphrases

Your character’s history may influence this. If your character grew up
in The Bronx, then that will affect how they speak. But the character
might also have a mannerism that is independent of their history.
Watch how Bo Peep is always adjusting Woody’s hat in Toy Story 4.
Maybe your character has a catchphrase like “What’s up, Doc?” Not
every character has an individual speech pattern, a mannerism, and
a catchphrase, but consider which ones might be effective as you
write down your ideas.

Skills and Ineptitudes

What is your character good and bad at? Shrek is very strong but
has no personal skills. Nick Wilde in Zootopia isn’t strong but is quick
thinking and devious. It is often tempting to leave out the ineptitudes,
but a character that has both strengths and weaknesses is more
realistic and engaging.

Likes and Dislikes

These can be big or small. Shrek’s dislike of company sends him off
to face a dragon. Captain Hook hates (and fears) the crocodile
because it ate his hand. But these can be small things too. Wallace
from the Wallace and Gromit films loves cheese, particularly
Wensleydale. Ken in Toy Story 3 likes clothes, and he doesn’t like it
when other people mess them up.
In each case, these tools are about asking yourself questions and
then answering them. Be as specific as you can when answering
these questions. Usually, when writing for animation the more
specific you can be with your answers, the stronger your character
will become. Beans in Rango isn’t just a lizard, but she’s specifically
a desert iguana, whereas Rango himself is a chameleon.

Thinky Time #11

Put a complete character together. If you are working on a specific
project that needs a character, then by all means use this exercise to
develop the character you need. If not, use this like a blank canvas
that might inspire a new story idea. We will assume that for this
exercise your character will be anthropomorphic. Now go through the
following steps:

1. What is your character? A robot, a bumble bee, a magic wand?

What word are you going to put before “centric” when you
describe them?
2. What main archetype do they fall under?
3. Are they a mix of two archetypes? If so, what’s the second
archetype?
4. Describe them physically.
5. Where were they born? What has their life been like up till the
start of the story? What, if any, jobs have they done?
6. Give them a speech pattern (this could be a dialect or accent
based on their history) or a mannerism.
7. Give them one thing that they are good at and one thing they are
bad at.
8. Give them something that they like and something that they
dislike.
9. Finally, if you haven’t already, give them a name.
Once you have completed the process, try to think of five interesting
scenarios that you could put this character in. These scenarios will
reveal more about your characters as they come to life in your mind.
You might find that these ideas form the basis of a two-minute short,
or even a whole feature film. That’s great if they do, but it’s not
essential. The main point of this exercise is to get you thinking about
characters in a new and exciting way. (Note: if you need to create a
human character, just miss out Stage 1.)
 Chapter 16
COMEDY

If you’re writing for animation, there’s a good chance that at some

point you are going to need to be funny. Much of animation is
comedic. Some is primarily comedic such as the old Looney Tunes
or more recently BoJack Horseman and Family Guy. But even some
of the less comedic adventure films are filled with comedy. The
Frozen movies, for example, focus on adventure but there is plenty
of comic relief throughout the stories. Occasionally, you get an
animation that has no comedy at all. The 2018 Watership Down
miniseries, for example, was a dark political and social commentary
with no room for comic relief, but these are few and far between in
animation.
There’s an old adage that says, “you can’t teach comedy.” We
would disagree with that. Obviously, we all have our natural talents
and some people are just funnier than others and we would agree
that a funny instinct can’t be taught, but comedy, like any other part
of writing, has its own set of tools that you can use to improve the
abilities you have. Most top comedians might look like they’re just
funny the whole time and are great to be around, but for most of
them this is an ability they have crafted over a lifetime. Comedians
analyze jokes, films, and other comedians; they try to work out what
makes them funny and how they themselves can be funnier.
Comedians make comedy look easy, but that’s an illusion.
You might be able to guess then that there is a lot you can learn
about comedy. There are volumes written on it, and you can spend a
lifetime studying it. If you’re planning on making a living writing
animation, we would recommend you invest time in learning all about
comedy and how it works. There are many writers who say that they
don’t need to, they are just funny, while that may be true, why not
invest some time to become even funnier?
We imagine now that there is a question forming in your head. If
there is so much you can learn about comedy, what can we teach
you in such a small section of one book? An excellent question,
because we can’t teach you everything about comedy, but we can
teach you what we feel is the most valuable and useful tool in
comedy.

The Drop
“The drop” gives us the terminology that helps us to define the
undefinable—what is funny about a moment, a scene, or a joke. It is
not an exact science, but the more practiced you become at using
“the drop,” the more precisely you can apply it. So, how does it
work?
There are three main categories that we can use to help us get
better laughs in scripts. Often a drop will fit into more than one
category, so use these definitions more as a guideline than a “law of
comedy.”

Drop in Expectation
A drop in expectation is the difference between what the viewer is
expecting to happen and what actually happens. Let’s take the
sequence in the first Kung Fu Panda movie when Po is trying to get
into the arena to see the Dragon Warrior being selected. At one
point, he straps himself to a chair that is loaded with fireworks and
intends to blast his way over the wall. The audience at this point
knows something is going to go wrong, but they don’t know what that
thing is yet.
 Po then gives us a big buildup. He lights the fuse as he declares
that he loves Kung Fuuuuuuuuuu! But the fuse to the fireworks fizzle
out. He hasn’t gone anywhere. It’s anticlimactic. Then the chair tips
forward and he falls on his face. Most people were probably
expecting this to have ended in a big explosion, with Po emerging
from the smoke covered in soot. So, this is different from
expectation. But the difference between what we expected to
happen and what has happened isn’t huge, so it’s only a small drop
and is only a little bit funny. What happens next turns this sequence
into comedy gold.
Po is laying strapped to the chair, face down in the dirt. His father
holds up Po’s apron and suggests they get back to work. Po slowly
starts to get up. The audience at this point expects that the comedy
is over, only then do the fireworks ignite. Po is blasted along the
ground face first into the wall. As he can’t go forward, he is dragged,
face first, back-and-forth along the wall. As if the indignity wasn’t bad
enough, the fireworks then blast him high into the air, hundreds of
feet above the arena. Finally, the fireworks fizzle out leaving Po with
nothing to keep him in the air, so he plummets down to the arena.
In this scene, the audience probably expected that something was
going to go wrong. They might have been thinking, “I bet those
fireworks are just going to explode.” The thing that made this funny is
the difference between the expectation and what actually happened.
The gap between that expectation and the reality is “the drop” in that
scene.
A drop in expectation can also come from a character’s reaction.
An overreaction to a small event can be funny, but an underreaction
to a big event will also give us a laugh. Wile E. Coyote is great at
giving a long-suffering look to camera just before he plummets into a
canyon (Figure 18), a serious understatement for the pain that is to
follow. We can also get that drop in expectation by getting a different
result from what we are expecting. When Wile E. Coyote hits the
ground, he is never seriously injured in the same way that Po is not
hurt by his escapades with the fireworks. In real life, the results
would have been much different.

Figure 18 Fast and Furry-ous, September 1949.

Drop in Status
A drop in status happens when a character’s status is diminished in
some way. We can see a great example of this in Moana.
Throughout the film, Maui has been pretty sure of himself; there’s no
doubt about it. He thinks he’s great! Maui and Moana go and retrieve
his magical fishhook from Tamatoa, a giant monster crab. Their
mission is a success, but when they end up on the beach, the magic
from the fishhook has given Maui a shark’s head. As Moana does
her best to suppress a giggle, we can see that Maui is embarrassed
by the situation and his status has been dropped. The sequence
continues as the writers find new ways to humiliate Maui; he turns
into a starfish, a fish, and a chic ken. When he eventually seems to
have his human form again, he falls over as he now has a fish tail
instead of legs.
While the drop in status will work with nearly any character, it works
particularly well with characters who see themselves as high status.
This sequence of events would be funny if it happened to Moana, but
it is particularly funny because it happens to Maui. Maui doesn’t just
think he has high status, he thinks he has the highest status out of all
the characters so the drop in his dignity is greater.
This device is particularly successful when used on villains.
Everyone enjoys seeing the bad guy’s (or girl’s) status being
dropped. Nearly every funny thing that happens to Wile E. Coyote is
funny because he is the villain and his status is lowered. Look at the
terrible things that happen to Cruella de Vil and her henchmen
Jasper and Horace. Jasper and Horace getting kicked in the rear by
a horse does not have the invention of the Kung Fu Panda firework
scene, but it’s still funny because the audience love to see a villain’s
status being dropped.

Drop in Normality
The drop in normality is the difference between what we would
consider “normal” and what actually happens. In the movie Hotel
Transylvania, Dracula has opened a hotel for monsters. Much of the
humor in the early part of this film comes from the difference
between what would happen in a “normal” hotel and what happens in
the monster hotel.
Most people have stayed in a hotel, so they know what is normal.
They know what bellhops look like and how they behave, they also
know about the signs that you hang outside your door that say, “do
not disturb” or “clean up this room.” Hotel Transylvania subverts this
and gives us the monster version of these hotel norms. The bellhops
are zombies whose arms fall off when they pick up the heavy cases,
and those door signs are heads who actually shout out “do not
disturb.” We have a drop in normality by giving the hotel a monster
twist.
Because of the ability to create fantastical worlds and images, this
type of drop is probably used in animation more than any other form
of entertainment. Whether it is the huge sandwiches that Scooby
Doo eats, the stone-age twist everything gets in The Flintstones, or
the car-centric world of Cars, we can see skewed normality
throughout the whole world of animation.

How to Use the Drop

One of the scariest pieces of feedback you can ever get in writing is
“this needs to be funnier.” This note comes with a few variations, “not
funny enough” or even just “funnier?” being two of them. Whatever
the wording, one of the “powers that be” has read your script and
decided that your witty line of dialogue or slapstick moment is not up
to scratch.
Sometimes when you get this note, it is easy to address, and you
just think of something funnier—problem solved. Often though, the
solution is not so obvious. The note does not tell you why they don’t
think it’s funny enough, and they rarely suggest something that will
solve your problem for you. So how do you make the line funnier?
This is where you apply the drop.
You now know that the drop is the difference between what
represents the status quo and what actually happens within the
scene. It’s not scientific, so you can’t measure it, but you can usually
tell whether you are making a drop smaller or larger. We’ll show you
how, using that oldest of comedy devices—the banana skin.

Slipping on a Banana Skin

It’s hard to tell why a banana skin is considered such a funny thing to
slip on, but it is perfect to illustrate our purpose. Let’s go into the
scene:
Jim walks confidently down the street.
 ANGLE a banana skin on the sidewalk, we can see Jim walking
straight towards it.
ON Jim’s face as he <WHISTLES HAPPILY>
ANGLE the banana skin as Jim steps onto it.
ON Jim’s face as alarm registers.
WIDE SHOT of Jim as he slides on the banana skin.
JIM
Wargghghghg!!!
Jim <COLLIDES> with the wall and falls in a heap on the ground.
We have a small scene now that could be considered reasonably
funny. Then we get that notorious note, “Can you make this funnier?”
So how do we do that? This is a simple example so you might
already have some ideas, but to use this as a diagnostic tool that
you can apply anywhere, we need to understand the core of the gag.
To do this, we ask some questions:

1. What type of drop is this?

2. Does this fall into more than one category of drop?
3. Who is being dropped in the scene?

Let’s look at each question in turn.

What Type of Drop Is This?

We can’t say that it’s a drop in normality. If we see a banana skin on
the floor in an animation, it would be normal for someone to slip on it.
We would also expect it, so it’s not a drop in expectation either. This
just leaves a drop in status. Which it definitely is. Most people, if they
walked down the road and slipped on a banana skin, would feel at
least a little bit foolish, because their status has dropped. Now we
know what kind of drop this is.
Does This Fall into More Than One Category of
Drop?
From the aforementioned analysis, we can see that it doesn’t. For
the moment anyway, but we’ll be coming back to that.

Who Is Being Droppe d in the Scene?

In this scene there is only one character, Jim, so it’s pretty easy to
answer. You will find sometimes, though, that it takes some thought
to work out who is being dropped. It can be more than one character,
but usually one character is being dropped more than the others.
Now we understand the core of the joke. Jim is suffering a drop in
status. So now we just need to make the joke funnier.
To make a joke funnier we increase the drop.
As this is a drop in status, one option is to make Jim’s drop in status
bigger. We need anything that will increase the indignity that he
suffers. Status works two ways, so we can either increase Jim’s
status at the start of the scene or drop his status to lower as a result
of him slipping on the banana skin.
What if at the beginning of that scene Jim has just announced that
he is the greatest evil genius that has ever walked the planet. In fact,
he is so great, he’s going to change his name to Lord Jim Giant-
Brain and everyone will bow to his great intellect. Now when he slips
on the banana skin, his status has dropped more than when he was
just plain old Jim. Next, imagine that at the end of the scene, he
collides with the wall and falls backward into a big pile of dog poop.
We could probably say that his status has dropped more now—it’s
hard to have high status when you’re sitting in dog poop.
Let’s just say that this scene is from a show that already exists and
that Jim is a regular character in that show. We’ve entertained the
idea that we could change him to Lord Jim Giant-Brain, but we can’t
change his character that much within the format of the show. We
could look at other ways to increase his status. What if he’s just told
his boss where he can stick his job, and that he’s his own man and is
perfectly capable of going it alone? Pride comes before a fall and
this might work within the show that Jim is in, particularly if the boss
is watching.
We’ve increased the drop in status. But can we increase the drop
even further? Let’s look at the other way to increase the drop.
Remember, there can be more than one type of drop happening at
the same time.
The drop in normality is used a lot in animation, but can we apply it
here? This is quite tricky as we’re looking at a pretty normal situation
—at least in comedy animation terms. The only way to make this a
drop in normality would be to make it surreal in some way. Could the
banana skin take on an anthropomorphic form, get up, and ask Jim
how he would feel like if he got slipped on? We could maybe watch
Jim desperately try to get up as a banana skin calls all his banana
skin buddies over, and they all start slipping about on Jim as he
desperately tries to get up and get away. This might suit some
shows, but it would need to be appropriate to the world of that show.
It might work in a cutaway sequence in Family Guy or in a strange
dimension in Rick and Morty but is unlikely to fit into a more
“realistic” world like we see in Doc McStuffins.
What about a drop in expectation? There could be a possibility
here. Let’s now imagine that Jim has slipped on the banana skin,
he’s hit the wall, and he’s seen the pile of dog poop that he’s heading
toward. Jim is desperately flailing his arms around, his eyes wide
with fear as he is doing everything he can not to fall into the doggy
doo. We have now set up the expectation of where Jim is going to
end up. Now we can subvert that expectation. Let’s look at a revised
version of that scene. It’s on the script pages seen in Figure 19.
Don’t worry about the details of the script format yet; we’ll be looking
at these script pages again in Chapter 18.
Figure 19 Jim and the Banana. Script Sample.
 You’ve read it? Great! We’re reasonably sure that most people
weren’t expecting a car chase or a pig sty when they first saw the
banana skin, and, then, when he was about to fall, most members of
the audience were expecting a <SPLAT> into the dog mess. So, this
is all a drop in expectation. This new turn of events doesn’t take
away from the drop in status; if anything, that might be bigger, but by
adding the drop in expectation we have increased the drop and
created a bigger laugh.

When the Drop Is Too Much

Now that you understand how to adjust the drop, it is important to
know that a drop can be too big as well as too small. If the drop is
too small, then you end up with something that is not funny, or even
worse, nearly funny. Nearly funny comes with an uncomfortable
reaction as people want to laugh but feel like they’re not quite getting
it. We know how to make that drop bigger now. But if the drop is too
large, you can get the equally uncomfortable reaction of people just
being put off by your joke. If the drop is too big, the joke will be too
tragic, too dark, or possibly considered sick.
To make things more complicated, the level of drop that can be
tolerated will vary depending on people’s tastes or the parameters of
the show or movie for which you are writing. What might be a great
drop in a show like Rick and Morty could have parents taking to
social media to get your show banned if you use it in Curious
George. Some people are fine with what might be called a “sick”
joke, while others are more easily offended. You need to find a drop
that is appropriate to the project you are working on.
For example, Figure 20 shows Kenny from South Park just after he
has been killed in a game of dodgeball. In contrast, Figure 21 shows
Yosemite Sam just after he has been shot in the face with a
cannonball. Yosemite Sam is surrounded by smoke but other than
that he just looks a bit grumpy. He has been hit by a cannonball,
whereas Kenny has been hit by a dodgeball and is a bloody,
splattered mess in a way that you could never show in a children’s
program. In each case, the damage—and the drop—is appropriate
to the audience.
Figure 20 South Park, “Conjoined Fetus Lady”, June 3, 1998.
Figure 21 Bunker Hill Bunny, September 23, 1960.

Figure 21 also gives us a great example of all three types of drop

being used at the same time. First, there is a drop in expectation; the
image of Yosemite Sam when the smoke clears is difficult to predict.
Second, there is a drop in status; Yosemite Sam is a high-status
character, he thinks a lot of himself, so seeing him grumpy and
covered in soot makes it harder for him to maintain his dignity. Lastly,
it is also a drop in normality; it clearly isn’t the normal type of
damage you would expect from a cannon fire—we don’t even know
what happened to the cannonball.

Thinky Time #12

It’s hard to improve on gags that have already made it to the screen
as they have been written by seasoned writers and animated by
some of the best in the world. But you can still use existing
animations to practice your ability to change the drop.
Either,

Choose a moment from a family animation that makes you laugh.

Work out the core of the joke and then increase the drop until it
becomes a darker joke that would only work for a grown-up
audience.

Or,

Do the opposite. Choose a dark or twisted joke from an animation

geared toward an adult audience. Work out the core of the joke and
then decrease it to make it appropriate for a family audience.
 Chapter 17
COMEDIC SITUATIONS

OR WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM

SITCOMS

So far, we have talked about how to increase (or decrease) the

humor in an individual joke. Having said that, we would advise
against attempting to add humor to a situation that just isn’t funny—
the comedy needs to be there in the first place. We see time and
time again, writers trying to add a joke to a scene that they feel
needs something to make it more interesting. This often involves
someone falling over or the attempt to add one-liner-type gags by
one of the characters. At best, these are painful to read; in the worst
cases, they can just look desperate.
These problematic scenes that need “something extra” are the kind
of problems that can give a writer a knot in their stomach.
Fortunately, there is a solution. Unfortunately, it involves a bit more
than just tacking on a physical or verbal gag. It involves reverse
engineering the situation to make the comedy organic to the scene.
Sometimes this involves a major story restructure, and other times it
can just be a matter of tweaking the set up to the scene.
 Some of the best comedy writers in the world are sitcom writers. A
successful sitcom writer spends all day, every day thinking about
comedy, comedic situations, and jokes. Sitcoms are also produced
quickly compared to most movies and TV shows, so the writers get
the feedback of seeing their writing on the screen quickly. But what
can we learn from them?

A Situation Comedy is a Comedic Situation

Question: Why isn’t Friends the best sitcom ever?
Answer: Because it isn’t a sitcom. Not really, not in our opinion
anyway.
Well it sure looks like one. Friends fits into the regular twenty-two-
minute time slot of a sitcom. It uses a few standard sets, like the two
apartments and Central Perk. It even has the invisible character,
Ugly Naked Guy, one of the standard motifs of a sitcom. And most
importantly, it’s really funny. Friends is one of the greatest comedy
shows of all time, so why isn’t it a sitcom? It might seem obvious
once we say it, but the situation isn’t inherently comedic.
The situation in Friends is a bunch of twenty-something friends, all
trying to make it in the world. That’s a pretty regular situation; it just
happens to produce a lot of comedy. But Friends is the exception,
rather than the norm, and that exception highlights what that norm is.

A comedic situation is usually a character or group of characters,

struggling in a situation that is inappropriate for their personality,
skills, or ability.

In Friends, the characters’ skills are a “little bit” inappropriate for their
situations, but not in a big way. Often their lack of skill is no more
than a regular person in that situation—perhaps one of the reasons
we can all relate to it. Let’s look at some of the more “standard”
sitcoms to see how those inappropriate skills work in various
situations.
 Frasier follows a psychiatrist who, while giving advice to others, is
so neurotic that he struggles in his relationships with women, his
father, and his brother.
Two and a Half Men follows a father and an uncle, who each
struggle in different ways to bring up Jake. Alan, the father, is in an
inappropriate situation because he is forced to stay with his brother
who is a womanizer, a gambler, and a drunk. Charlie, the uncle, is in
an inappropriate situation exactly because he is a womanizer, a
gambler, and a drunk and he now has an impressionable child
staying in his den of sin.
The Big Bang Theory, at least at the start, is about four guys and a
girl. The guys are intelligent but with no common sense or street
smarts. The girl who interacts with them is worldly wise, but has no
idea how to deal with the geeks that have moved in across the hall
from her. Leonard and Sheldon would be in an appropriate situation
if they lived with other college professors, but they don’t. Penny
would be in an appropriate situation if the guys across the hall had
six packs and liked to party, but Leonard and Sheldon haven’t and
they don’t.
The most traditional sitcoms revolve around families. From Leave it
to Beaver to Modern Family. We see this in animated sitcoms too.
Look at Bob’s Burgers, Family Guy, King of the Hill, or The
Simpsons. In these sitcoms, the comedic situation isn’t always
obvious. These can look like regular situations to us, and one of the
reasons the family sitcom is so successful is that we can all
recognize and relate to the situation the characters are in. In each
case, however, the characters are less equipped than most of us at
dealing with the scenarios that arise. The parents can be too stupid,
too awkward, too selfish, or too mean to deal with kids who are too
stupid, too mischievous, too sexually active, or just downright bad.
Now that you see how the sitcom works, you will see that this setup
isn’t limited to twenty-two-minute episodic TV shows. We also see
this in movies—especially animated movies. In Ratatouille, we see a
rat trying to be a great French chef, in Zootopia we see a bunny
trying to be a cop in a world half filled with predators, and in
Madagascar we see zoo animals having to make it in a real jungle.
The model that we see in sitcoms exists right across animation. It’s
not always the lead characters with the inappropriate abilities. In
Road Runner, it’s Wile E. Coyote, who is outgunned in his situation,
in Top Cat it’s Officer Dibble, and in Bugs Bunny it’s Elmer Fudd. It’s
almost like a mathematical formula; the less ability or skills that a
character has, the funnier it becomes. Before you go and create a
cast of completely idiotic characters (although that can work), let’s
look at how you can have skillful characters with inappropriate
abilities.
In Cars, Lightning McQueen is a very capable character. In fact,
he’s a great racer, likely to win the Piston Cup. The problem is, while
his arrogance makes him great out on the race track, it doesn’t serve
him well in a small humble town. Doc, the wise old car, has seen his
kind before and is always one step a head of him. Lightning might
seem like he has all the abilities he could want but he can’t escape
the town of Radiator Springs until he has served his time.
The sitcom paradigm doesn’t end there. The comedic situation
doesn’t just apply to the setup for a TV series or the premise of your
movie. You can apply this to an individual scene or even a two-
minute YouTube short.
Do you remember back in Chapter 15 we talked about giving your
character “skills and ineptitudes”? This is when these can pay off.
Sometimes you can have a character that is inept at pretty much
everything, which can work well in purely comedic terms. Mr Magoo
uses this exact premise; he can’t see and so causes chaos
everywhere he goes. Often though, we want to give characters
abilities for the journey they are on, without giving them the skills
they need in other areas of their life. In LEGO Marvel Super Heroes:
Maximum Overload, Spiderman has all his spider powers that make
him a great hero, but he suffers from teenage angst. Hiccup in How
to Train Your Dragon is a talented blacksmith and can “talk to the
dragons” but he is socially awkward as well as being skinny and
weak compared to the other Vikings.
By engineering situations that your character isn’t equipped for, you
can make a scene that isn’t funny, funny.

Bonus Material
It is important to note here that comedy is mostly about suffering of
some kind. The characters that we are watching on the screen rarely
know that they are involved in a joke. Comedic characters are often
desperate or obsessed with something without the abilities to attain
what they want in life. Occasionally, you get a wise cracking
character that is always making jokes but these are the exception
rather than the rule. Watch as Bugs Bunny gets out of life-
threatening scrapes with ease, but also be aware of the suffering his
opponents endure as he does so. Comedic suffering is usually subtle
(if the suffering is too much, the situation moves from comic to
tragic). In Hotel Transylvania, for example, Dracula tries desperately
to stop his daughter from falling in love with a human; this makes
him more agitated than a tortured soul, but ultimately he is still not
happy.

Family in Sitcom
We mentioned earlier that family is the most common situation in
sitcom. For every Scrubs or Seinfeld, there are dozens of shows like
The Middle, Black-ish, 8 Simple Rules, or Fresh off the Boat. This
might seem like nonfamily sitcoms are a bit of an anomaly, but the
reality is that family is often still present even when it is not so
obvious. Let’s look at Scrubs for a moment and imagine that there is
a kind of pseudo-family there. What if we said that Dr. Cox
functioned as a father, Nurse Carla a mother, and JD, Turk, and Elliot
like their kids? In Seinfeld, if we think of Jerry and Elaine as pseudo-
parents, when we watch their behavior on-screen, we can see that
George and Kramer are the kids of the show.
Most sitcoms contain a kind of metaphoric family that the show
revolves around. Even in Friends, the sitcom that’s not a sitcom,
Monica and Ross for the most part act like the parents while the
other four are their errant children. If you want to look at how
stereotypical the family is in Friends, Monica cooks and Ross is the
character with a stable job—and just look at how difficult their
metaphoric kids are!
When thinking about your cast, think about their familial roles within
your setup. If your story involves a real family, this can be obvious,
although you can still play against expectations. You could have
immature and dysfunctional parents with children who are mature
before their time. In this situation, the metaphorical roles might be
switched. In Rick and Morty, Rick is Morty’s grandfather but the
relationship is more like one of older brother. So even though Beth is
Rick’s daughter in the show, her metaphorical role is as his mother.
If your setup doesn’t involve family, can you use the metaphorical
family in your cast relationships? The cast of Scooby Doo are a
bunch of friends and their dog, but Daphne and Fred are like the
mother and father with Velma being their bookish kid and Shaggy
and Scooby their children that need a bit more guidance.
It is not necessary for the whole family to play lead parts in the
story. In ParaNorman, the parents are in the movie, but take a back
seat for most of act two. In Wallace and Gromit, there are only two
primary characters. It might seem like the relationship is that of a dog
and his owner, but Gromit is more like a long-suffering father doing
his best to keep his adventurous child out of trouble.
Remember, each of the family roles can vary too. Children’s
personalities vary as do parents. A father, for example, might be a
strict disciplinarian, but equally he could be a hapless dreamer
instead, or what about a browbeaten and world-weary wraith? These
are all stereotypes that if pushed too far will be obvious and corny,
but using this tool can give you new insights into the relationship
between your characters.

Thinky Time #13

Watch an animated TV show that isn’t about a family. Try to identify
the metaphorical family relationships in that show. Which one is the
mother, the father, or the kids? Are all the family roles present or are
some missing? If you dig deep enough, you might find some
extended family. Is there a metaphorical grandparent in there?
Next time you watch an animated movie, look for these same
family-type relationships. Remember, in animation the relationships
are simple, so even the metaphorical family relationships are only
just under the surface.
 Chapter 18
THE SCRIPT

When we are writing a script, we are creating a story, that much is

obvious. What we are also doing is completing a technical document
that will be the guideline for lots of different departments that will be
working on the story. When the script is delivered, it will go to the
director, producer, and voice artists, but it will also go to the people
who will be designing the sets and props, the people creating the
sound effects, and, if it’s a new show or movie, it will go to the
character designers. Each department will be reading the script, but
they will be focusing on the aspects that matter to them. Your script
must be written in such a way that each department can easily
access the information they require to do their job.
As a result of these script requirements, a system has evolved that
is used on most animations. Today, scriptwriting applications
complete most of the formatting automatically, and while these
applications can be costly, they are worthwhile due to the amount of
time saved when writing. When we were first writing, we were told
that a script should always look like it was typed on a 1950s
typewriter (the format did, after all, evolve from the old Hollywood
studio system). It is interesting to note that despite the advances in
technology, that still holds true. Most scripts are still delivered in
Courier font—just like you get on classic typewriters.

Directing on the Page

We will now look at some of the fundamentals of formatting your
script. While this section will cover the basics, you will find a
comprehensive glossary of script terms in Appendix A. We
recommend that you read through that glossary at least once so that
you are aware of the range of script formatting techniques that are
available.
When you write a screenplay, your primary job is to tell a great
story, but you are also, to a lesser extent, a director. We can already
hear various directors we know protesting. We can hear the words
“don’t tell us how to direct your script” echoing throughout the
animation studios of the world, so we feel we need to clarify. The
director is responsible for the entire visual look of the story. While
you might be “directing on the page,” there is a good chance that the
director will overrule you and do their own thing—some might do it
out of principle, but that’s a whole other issue. For the most part,
directors have spent a lot more time developing their visual sense of
story than writers have, so we need to trust them. If you are a
director, and you plan to write/direct, then obviously you can direct
with as much detail as you like on the page. For the rest of us, what
we need to do is portray the way you imagine the story being told. By
including various camera angles and shots, you are showing one
possible way that the story could be realized on the screen (and
hopefully inspiring the reader to visualize your screenplay as they
read).

Bonus Material
From our experience, there will always be a creative tension
between writers and directors. Both are creative visionaries and it’s
unlikely that they will ever have exactly the same vision. If you allow
this tension to build into conflict, this conflict might affect the quality
of the project, but it will definitely affect how much you enjoy the
process. Our advice is to pick your battles. If you fight every single
point, you will be known as someone who is difficult to work with. A
simple home truth is that you are not right about everything. Get
used to it. If you feel a story point is essential, explain your
reservations about the direction the director wants to take things.
The director has been brought in for their visual expertise, but you,
as the writer, are there because of your story expertise. It is
important that everyone is working toward the greater good of the
project and that any creative tension makes it better.

This next section refers to the two pages of script that you can see in
Figure 19. We suggest reading through that now and then we’ll look
at the key points one at a time. You will have already read this script
once in Chapter 16, but this time we’ll be looking at the technical
aspects of the script format rather than the story content.
The first thing you will see at the top of the page is the scene
heading. These always start INT or EXT, meaning internal or
external (inside or outside). This is followed by the location and DAY
or NIGHT (occasionally there will be a variation such as SUNSET).
Everyone now knows that we’re starting a scene and where and
when that scene will take place.
In the next paragraph, we have some stage direction (or action)
that tells us what’s going on in the scene and who is in it. In the
layout of the script, we don’t always give a camera angle or give the
details of a shot, but we can still direct to a degree. Notice how
separate shots are given their own paragraph. They are not always
listed as shots, but the nature of the separate paragraphs means
that we see them separately as we play the scene in our heads.
Depending on the description, you might visualize a close-up, or a
wider shot. You probably pictured the third paragraph, which says
that “Jim’s eyes widen,” as a close-up, even though it doesn’t
mention a close-up in the description.
You will see that the first time Jim’s name appears in the stage
directions, it is in capital letters. This is usual in a movie script, and is
there to make it easier to find the character’s description (which
should follow their first appearance), essential when trying to keep
track of who is who in a movie with a large cast. This is not
necessary for regular characters in an episodic TV format as
everyone will already be familiar with the characters—although it
might still be used if you are introducing a new character for that
episode.
You will see that certain words or phrases appear in <POINTY
BRACKETS>. These refer to visual and sound effects that need
special emphasis. The sound team will put in the background
sounds, for example the hum of traffic, if they feel like the scene
needs it, but you should emphasize the various <CRASHES>,
<BOOMS>, or <FLASHES> that are necessary for your story.
Next, you will see that the character and the dialogue are set
inward from the other paragraphs. This makes it clear which parts of
the script are stage directions and which parts involve the characters
talking. Remember, animation is a visual form, so you will be aiming
to have a lot more stage direction than dialogue. If you look at the
third line of dialogue, you will see a set of parentheses between the
character name and the dialogue itself. These parentheses are used
to give direction on how the line of dialogue is to be delivered. These
should be used rarely and caut iously. In the same way, we don’t tell
a director how to direct, we don’t usually tell an actor how to act. We
have added SLO MO as this will be a required audible effect, but it
can be used to add words like “angry” or “whispered.”
Lastly, you will see at the end of the script the words DISSOLVE
TO. This is known as a transition and comes before a new scene
heading (in this case, the new scene heading would be on the next
page). So, why isn’t there a transition before the other scene
headings? CUT TO is the most commonly used transition; in fact, it
is so commonly used that there is no need to type it between each
heading. If there is no transition, a CUT TO is assumed.
One of the reasons for the standard script format is to get a rough
idea of timing. When this was created for the movies, the guideline
was that one page of script was equal to one minute of screen time.
So, the script for a two-hour movie would be 120 pages. Animation
tends to tell stories at a faster rate than live action, so this isn’t
universally true. We’ve worked on crazy, fast-paced shows where
fifteen pages of script would equal ten minutes, as well as more
sedate preschool shows that averaged around eleven pages for a
ten-minute script. Script length will give you an approximation of film
duration, but it’s not an exact science and will vary from project to
project.
That’s the basics. Remember to check Appendix A for the
comprehensive list of script terms.

Being Professional
It is important to get the technical aspect of writing your script right; it
is also important to get the grammar and spelling right. These things
might seem like pedantry but there are two reasons why these things
are important.
First, you want to appear professional. There is an old story about
the band Van Halen. They had it written into their contract that they
demanded a bowl of M&M’s backstage, but with all the brown
candies removed. This for a long time was considered to be rock
stars just being rock stars and seeing what they could get away with.
When asked about this some years later, they gave a surprising
reason for the demand.1 It turns out, they had a very technical
contract that was required for one of the biggest productions that had
ever been on stage. They said that checking the candy bowl for
brown M&M’s was a very quick way to see if the venue had read the
contract in detail. If the venue had missed that clause, what else had
they missed? This is similar to a reader looking through your script
for the first time. If a writer has got the format wrong, what else have
they got wrong? Are they professional at all? How much do they
know about screenwriting? You seriously do not want to draw
attention to yourself by getting something as basic as the format of
your script wrong.
Second, you want to keep the reader in the story. A script should
draw the reader in, and get them to play the movie or episode in their
head as they go through it. If a writer has done something as simple
as put a full stop where there should be a question mark, or maybe
put an apostrophe in the wrong place, it yanks the reader out of the
story momentarily. They might stop and read back through the line
thinking, “is that a question? Yeah, I think it is . . . . Okay, should
have had a question mark.” In that brief moment, the reader has
come out of the story and you have an uphill struggle getting them to
immerse themselves in your world again.
Now that you have a foundation in understanding the script format,
we highly recommend reading as many existing scripts as you can.
There are quite a few that are free to download online.

Notes
1 Dave Lee Roth Interview “Brown M&M’s,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=_IxqdAgNJck
 Chapter 19
DIALOGUE WORKSHOP

Live-action TV shows started with simple sets and one or two

cameras. In the early days, camera technology meant that there was
little variety in the shots and the restrictive sets kept movement to a
minimum. These early technological limitations meant that the shows
were dialogue heavy and more like theater than a movie. Nowadays,
of course, we can go in for close-ups and swap scene settings more
easily than in a play, but the dialogue-driven theatrical foundations
are still there. Dialogue-driven scenes and stories are rare in
animation. Although sound has been available for nearly 100 years,
animation has its roots in the era of silent film.
The comedy duo Laurel and Hardy (seen in Figure 22) were one of
the most successful acts to make the transition from silent films to
talkies. There was a good reason for their success, they were comic
geniuses. One aspect of that genius was how they adapted sound
into their films. Sound when it came along was a novelty, so most
filmmakers overused it creating movies that were dialogue heavy.
Laurel and Hardy, however, added dialogue and sound effects where
needed to complement the visual aspect of their silent films, without
ever relying on the “talkie” aspect to tell their story. While both
storytelling and technology have advanced, that principle is still
important today. (Incidentally, you can still learn a lot about writing for
animation by watching and studying Laurel and Hardy.) In animation,
we want the dialogue to complement what we are seeing and not
dominate the visuals.
Figure 22 Laurel and Hardy, “Busy Bodies”, October 7, 1933.

Based on this, one of the first principles of dialogue in animation is

that it should be brief. This is not the medium for long, unbroken
monologues. Some scenes in animation might seem dialogue heavy,
with a character saying a lot, but these “monologues” are normally
broken up by action. And, if it’s on the screen, it’s on the page, so the
dialogue will be broken up with descriptions of stage directions. This
brevity might make dialogue in animation look simple, but to get to
that perfect line of dialogue can take some time.

The Dialogue Exercises

Sometimes dialogue will just flow and come out perfectly as you type
it. Sometimes it just doesn’t seem to work at all. After a number of
years of repairing and rewriting our dialogue, we have developed
some tools to help when things just don’t seem to work.
 We will be coming back to brevity in dialogue, but for the moment
we need to get writing. Dialogue is best worked on through practice
rather than theory, so there are more exercises in this chapter than
many of the others. We suggest you use this as a process. We have
given you an example to work through, but if you’re having trouble
with a scene of your own, feel free to apply these steps to that scene
instead. Often, you will approach dialogue with some of it already in
your head, but sometimes you will just have a vague idea of what
needs to be said or done within the scene. We often approach a
scene by writing out the most basic, functional dialogue (as can be
seen in Figure 23) and then refine and develop the scene using the
tools in this chapter.
Figure 23 Boring Functional Dialogue. Script Sample.

As we progress through the chapter, we are going to keep rewriting

the same scene of dialogue. As we do each exercise, we’ll be adding
new things to make the dialogue more interesting and the scene will
evolve as you go through the process. As the dialogue exercises
create a sequence of tools that can be applied to a scene, we have
given these their own identity and are not part of the “Thinky Time”
exercises.

Dialogue Workshop # 1: Getting Down the Basics

In this first exercise, we want you to write a brief dialogue scene
between two characters who are friends. We never want pointless
chatter between characters so we’re going to give them an objective.
You can use something you already have in mind if you prefer, but, if
not, let’s just say that your characters are both tow trucks (Bert and
Tina) and they have a particularly heavy dump truck that they plan to
pull to the repair shop. These are friends and work colleagues, so
they are not enemies and they plan to work together to achieve their
goal.
We hope you write your own scene here, but to show how simple
and functional the dialogue can be at this stage, please refer again
to Figure 23.
Nice and simple. Nothing clever, but the dialogue is dull. The
important thing is that we have a start. It’s easier to change
something that’s not right than it is to create something perfect right
off the bat.
Now, let’s look at how we can improve it.

Objectives and Obstacles

In Chapters 2 and 3, we talked about the importance of objectives
and obstacles. These are the essential building blocks of a story, but
they can also be used in a more subtle way to bring your dialogue to
life. In our tow truck scene, we have an objective (to get the dump
truck to the repair shop) and we have an obstacle (a heavy dump
truck), but what if we give our characters little micro-objectives?
Sometimes, these motivations can be an aspect of the character’s
personality that is always present. Scooby Doo is motivated by his
appetite. In Frozen, Sven’s love of carrots makes him try to eat
Olaf’s nose, giving an extra comic dimension to Olaf’s introduction.
Tina, in Bob’s Burgers, is obsessed with boys, an aspect of her
character that affects her behavior and her dialogue.
In other cases, it might be something that exists for just one scene.
Near the beginning of Hotel Transylvania we see all the monsters
check into the hotel. There is a lot going on in that scene; the main
objective is for Dracula to greet all the guests as they arrive, but
there is one set of mini-objectives that stands out in that scene.
Murray, the mummy, arrives and clearly likes to be the life an d soul
of the party—he wants to be “the man!” Frankenstein, on the other
hand, wants to bring Murray down a peg or two and uses his
disembodied legs and butt to make it look as though Murray has
farted. This isn’t the core of the scene, and Frankenstein’s
desperation to bring Murray down is not a usual part of
Frankenstein’s character, but it gives us some great comedy and
makes the scene more memorable.
Whenever you hear actors talking about their character’s
motivation, this is what they’re referring to. It is not just the
character’s primary goal but also the things that influence the smaller
details of the character’s personality.

Dialogue Workshop # 2: Character Motivation

So, you have a new dialogue tool. First, you wrote a basic functional
scene, with no pressure to make it good or interesting. Now, we want
you to rewrite that scene but give your characters each a mini-
objective or motivation that is separate from the main motivation of
the scene. If you are working with the tow truck scene, what if Bert
and Tina are freshly washed and the dump truck has just been filled
with stinking trash? Neither of them want to be the one to be the
truck that must push from behind as this will cover them in the dump
truck’s smell and dirt. What if Bert is getting old and is worried about
breaking his drive shaft? What if they’re brand new and still working
out how to tow a truck?
Once you have given both Bert and Tina a character motivation,
what if you give one to the dump truck too? Up till now he’s been an
inanimate truck. But what if he’s afraid to go to the repair shop, like a
kid frightened of the dentist?
Think of some character objectives that create conflict between the
characters or extra obstacles for the characters and then rewrite the
scene. It doesn’t matter at this stage how long the scene goes on for;
just have fun with it and allow as many ideas as possible to pour out
onto the page.
The dialogue in your scene should be coming to life a bit more
now. So, let’s take it to the next level.

Character
We have now given our characters a motivation, next we need to
know what they sound like. You may already have your character’s
voices in your head. This usually happens at a subconscious level
when you hear the character as you type. This might mean that you
have already started writing character-driven dialogue in the first
stages of this chapter.
What we are going to do now is consciously increase how
characterful the dialogue is. If you are writing for an existing show,
this requires watching and listening to the characters over and over
again, letting the voices, the speech patterns, and the attitudes of
these characters become part of your thought process. If, however,
these are characters you have created yourself, it’s time to make
some decisions.
 There are three main areas that we can focus on to add life and
personality to your characters:

1. Status. This doesn’t necessarily mean official status like

someone’s the boss or a higher rank in the army (although it can).
Each character in a scene has a perceived status relative to the
other characters. One might always take the lead or feel like
they’re in charge. Sometimes this status is resented and
sometimes it’s accepted. In Toy Story, Woody has a higher status
than the other toys, and everyone’s fine with that. In Moana, Maui
has a higher status than Moana and he’s a pain!
Status can function on lots of levels. You might have a high-
status and a low-status character in the scene. Equally, you might
have two high-status characters competing for top status. Bugs
Bunny and Yosemite Sam are both high-status characters but
Bugs always makes Yosemite look like a fool. Maybe you have a
low-status character that brings down the status of high-status
characters around him; going back to the silent era again, Charlie
Chaplin’s tramp character often played this part.
2. Speech Patterns. All characters, and real people for that matter,
have some kind of speech pattern, and in animation this is often
exaggerated. Occasionally, an animated movie will go for very
naturalistic voices (see Fantastic Mr Fox), but usually they’re more
wacky than that.
A bit like music, some writers have a better ear for speech
patterns than others, but there are things everyone can look out
for. Does the character have a catchphrase or even particular
words they like to use? Think of “What’s up Doc?” or “Yabba
Dabba Doo” or “Beep Beep!” Is there an inflection or dialect that
the character uses? Foghorn Leghorn is from the deep south and
uses words and phrases that are quite different from Dracula, who
is from Transylvania. If the character isn’t human, does that affect
how they speak? Donald Duck sounds kind of like a duck,
 whereas Yogi Bear doesn’t sound anything like a bear.
Look out for a rhythm, speech patterns, and inflections and try
to include them in your dialogue. If you don’t know what they
sound like, it is often helpful to cast the character in your head.
This is kind of like training wheels, a good way to get you going.
3. Attitude. Like real people, characters’ attitudes will vary
depending on circumstances. Any character (no matter what their
base line personality might be) could be happy, frustrated,
impatient, or angry within a particular scene. What is the
character’s attitude, both normally and within the scene you are
writing? Can that attitude be exaggerated? What is the reason for
that attitude at that time? Can the attitude increase or change
within the scene?

Dialogue Workshop # 3: Voice and Attitude

In the last workshop, you worked with the characters’ motivation.
Now we’re going to take that scene and add a new layer, giving the
characters more “character.”
First, think about their status. What if we have it that Tina likes to
think she’s in charge and wants Bert to do as she says? What if Bert
doesn’t really want to do the job at all and won’t listen? What if one
of them lacks confidence? Or, they both think they’re in charge.
Maybe you could try giving them the personalities of Laurel and
Hardy—they’re both dumb but one thinks he’s more intelligent than
the other.
Once you have assigned some kind of status to the characters, it’s
time to think about a voice. Cast the characters in your head by
assigning an actor or existing character to each part. What if Tina
was voiced by Rebel Wilson and Bert was voiced by Josh Gad? How
would this change if the voices were Sarah Silverman and Dwayne
Johnson? These don’t need to be the people who are actually going
to play the parts; it’s just a creative tool to give the characters vocal
consistency. As you write more, they will soon start to take on a life
of their own.
Next, give the characters an attitude within the scene. Maybe Tina
is getting really impatient with Bert. What happens if Bert is anxious
or the opposite, overconfident?
Once you have assigned status, voices, and attitudes to the
characters, rewrite the scene again, breathing more life into the
characters. At this stage, it is important not to edit down yet; that
stage will come later. For the moment, just get as much personality
as possible into the characters and the scene.

Bonus Material
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs might have been the first ever
animated feature film, but we can still learn a lot about dialogue from
watching it. We have in this movie seven very similar characters (see
Figure 24 ). They’re all miners, they’re all approximately the same
height, they all wear hats, and six of them have a beard. Despite
these similarities, each of the seven dwarfs has a unique and easily
identifiable personality. In most cases, these are defined by their
names but we also see it in their action and dialogue. Some of these
characteristics are an attitude—Grumpy, Bashful, and Happy. Some,
like Dopey, Sneezy, and Sleepy give us more of a physical
manifestation of their characters. Doc, the unofficial leader of the
team, is the only one that doesn’t have a character attribute in his
name. To dig a little further, we can also see status playing a major
part in their relationships. Grumpy is clearly competing with Doc to
be the leader, whereas innocent, naive Dopey has the lowest status
of them all.
Figure 24 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, December 21, 1937.

Action
At the beginning of this chapter, we spent some time telling you that
animation was primarily a visual form and that, for the most part,
dialogue should complement the action rather than dominate a
scene. Since then, we have given you a series of exercises that
have increased the amount of dialogue without adding to the visual
elements in the scene. Now it’s time to make your scene more
visual.
In animation, even the most dialogue-heavy scenes tend to be
interspersed with action. This action might be huge and dynamic and
be the subject of the scene. In Batman Hush, Batman and Superman
are having a conversation as they battle with each other (shown in
Figure 15). Sometimes, especially in an exposition scene, the action
might be more subtle. There is a scene in Kung Fu Panda that
shows how subtle the action can be and still make the dialogue
interesting.
 The scene (Figure 25) shows Shifu (the red panda) talking to
Oogway (the tortoise) in the opening act. There are thousands of
candles lighting up the temple and Oogway is happy to blow them
out one by one. Shifu, getting impatient, blows them all out at once.
The candles provide a physical aspect to an otherwise dialogue-
driven scene.

Figure 25 Kung Fu Panda, June 6, 2008.

Bonus Material
For a masterclass on interspersing action with dialogue during
exposition, watch the breakfast scene in the Oscar winning Wallace
and Gromit: A Close Shave. Any conversation set around a meal has
the potential to be very static, but as you watch the scene play out,
imagine the stage directions that would be necessary to describe the
action in the script. Notice how many of the dialogue lines would be
broken up by action. In addition, by making Gromit silent, all of his
communication must be achieved visually. Remember though, a
character doesn’t have to be silent to give them lots of nonverbal
communication. Body language and gestures go a long way.

In our tow truck example, there is already something physical that

Tina and Bert need to accomplish. If, however, we were to jump back
in our story to the scene before, we might have a scene where Tina
comes to get Bert and tell him the details of where the broken-down
dump truck is. In its most simple form, other than Tina driving up and
maybe pulling away at the end, this might be a scene with very little
action. For a scene like this, in animation, we need to give the scene
a visual element to make it more interesting (we’re trying to avoid
what we call “talking heads”). In this scene, we could add that Bert is
being washed at the time and keeps getting water hosed over him as
he tries to speak. Or, perhaps he is having his tires changed or an
embarrassing oil leak repaired that he doesn’t want Tina to see.
These don’t change the purpose of the scene, but they do make it
more interesting to watch.
Whatever physical element you add to a scene, the action needs to
break up, and be interspersed, throughout the dialogue. As a
guideline, we try to avoid having more than three exchanges of
dialogue without any action in between.
Some writers tend to imply some action at the top of the scene
before the dialogue starts and assume that the director will fill in the
action when they animate it. They might, for example, write that two
characters are playing tennis, but then not describe the rally as it
develops throughout the scene. This is lazy writing. If it’s on the
screen, it’s on the page, and dialogue scenes should include the
necessary stage directions, as well as any sound effects and
“grunts” or “panting” in the dialogue that will bring the tennis in the
scene to life.

Dialogue Workshop # 4: Keeping it Visual, Increasing

the Action
Now it’s time to rewrite that scene again, adding another layer of
interest to the dialogue. In this pass, you will be filling out the action.
You need to keep the characters active, constantly moving or doing
something. This can involve driving around, trying to work out the
best way to push the dump truck. Pushing or pulling the dump truck
and not getting anywhere. Other lines of action could include a
close-up of the tow truck hook attaching to the dump truck or a low-
angle shot of the wheels as they start to roll. You might need to add
extra dialogue to make sense of this. If you still haven’t got enough
action, you might need to add a new element to the scene, like an oil
patch on the road that causes one of them to slip.
Once you’ve added the action, go through and make sure that it is
peppered all the way through the scene. You should never have any
long exchanges of dialogue without any action. Remember to add
any sound effects or physical reactions in the dialogue as well. If one
of the characters is revving their engine, that’s a sound effect. If they
are straining, a “Grrrrrr” or something similar needs to be included in
that character’s dialogue.
Lastly, go through the scene and see if any of the lines of dialogue
can be replaced with a facial expression or a gesture. Silent
communication can make a scene much more interesting.
Once you have finished, read it back. You should now have quite a
dynamic scene—certainly one that’s a lot better than when you
started. But you’re not quite there yet.

Making it Brief
You now have a scene with lots of ideas in. But, so far you’ve been
generating ideas without editing and chances are there are bits you
can cut out. Remember this is a dialogue workshop and dialogue in
animation should be relatively brief. So now it’s time to edit the
scene down. This is your chance to make it dynamic and snappy.
The first and easiest edit to make is to take out any duplication. As
you’ve been concentrating on generating ideas, it is highly likely that
you have repeated your wording or, if not the exact wording, the
meaning of the words. This is common and many writers do this
intentionally to get the ideas flowing, but they need to be whittled
away when you write the final version of your script.
Next, we need to take out anything that’s not necessary to the
scene. This might seem obvious, but to do this we must understand
what those necessary elements are. It would be easy to look at this
scene and say, “well, the only essential thing is that they get the
dump truck moving.” In this case, we could do the scene with no
dialogue at all. Bert and Tina could turn up, one hooks up their hook
and pulls while the other one pushes and off they go. If that’s all
that’s required in your story, it would be possible to write that as a
very short scene. But we want more from the scene than that.
When we write a scene, particularly one that is heavy on dialogue,
we rarely just want to portray the most basic information. We might
for example, want to establish more about the characters or the
relationship between them. This could be anything from a physical
aspect, to an attitude or maybe establishing their relative status. In
Kung Fu Panda, when Shifu goes to see Oogway for the first time,
we can see that although Shifu is higher status than the Furious Five
(he’s their teacher), Oogway has an even higher status than Shifu.
We also learn that Oogway is old, wise, and more patient than Shifu
and that they are old friends. On the surface, the audience is
learning about the threat of Tai Lung, but they are also picking up
aspects of character that would be missed if the scene was too
short.
It can also be that a scene is there to provide information that is
important to the plot. Scenes that just contain information are
notoriously dull to watch, so the writer might want to add a comedic
element to the scene to make it more entertaining. In which case, the
parts of the scene that are necessary to the comedic aspect of the
scene should be kept in (as well as the exposition that was the
reason for the scene in the first place!). In the scene with Oogway
and Shifu, the blowing out of the candles does not give us any
information about Tai Lung, but it is essential to see the comedic
aspect of Oogway’s patience and Shifu’s impatience.

Dialogue Workshop # 5: Making it Brief

We now want to boil our truck scene down to its essence.
1. Start by highlighting all the repeats you can find in the scene. You
might like the rhythmical aspect of some of the repeats, but
highlight them anyway. You’re not going to delete them yet; you
just need to be aware of them.
2. Next, work out what the real essence of the scene is. We know it’s
about towing the dump truck, but what else is it about? If it’s about
Tina being in charge and Bert being insubordinate, write that
down. If it’s about Bert being old and about to break down and
Tina trying to look after him, write that down instead.
3. Once you have established the essential goals and character
aspects of the scene, go through and cut out anything that does
not contribute to those elements. Look out for long exchanges of
dialogue with no action and cut those down as well.
4. Now, go through your highlighted repeats and delete whichever
ones you want to get rid of. Be brutal!
5. Keep cutting until you have reduced your scene to two script
pages.
6. If you haven’t already, start reading your scene out loud. This
might sound simple, but it is one of the most powerful tools when
it comes to writing dialogue—after all, dialogue will ultimately be
spoken.
7. Next, keep a copy of the two-page version of the scene, and then
try to cut out another half a page. If you’ve done this, can you cut
it any further?
8. Finally, read through your favorite version of the scene and check
for typos.

Congratulations, you’re done! What you should have now is a

dynamic, zappy scene that is much better than you imagined it could
be when you wrote the boring functional scene at the beginning. You
also have a process that you can use to write great dialogue in even
the most difficult scenes.
 Summary
If you find that your dialogue is just writing itself, then go with the
flow. These are great moments, and often your first instinct will be
the right one. Sometimes, however, writing a good scene can be like
pulling teeth. In those times, come back to this dialogue workshop
and take the scene through the process we have outlined. You will
notice that this process involves making the scene longer in the first
exercises only to cut lots of your brilliant ideas out later. The
temptation is to think it will save time if you edit as you go along. This
nearly always stifles creativity and makes the scene less effective
(and the process more difficult). The idea generation in the first four
exercises is an important but separate process to the editing in the
last exercise. To get the best results, you need to switch off the
editor part of your brain while you’re generating the ideas and then
switch on your brutal script editor alter-ego once t he ideas are on
the page.
 Chapter 20
WRITING FOR AN EXISTING SHOW

Ultimately, you may be aiming to create and write your own shows or
maybe work in feature films, but most animation writers at some
point in their careers will work on preexisting shows. It is a great way
to hone your skill as a writer, earn a living (while you hone your skill
as a writer), and get to know people in the business. It is also
creatively rewarding. Whereas the principles in this book will equip
you to write a movie, your own show, or an independent short,
writing for an existing show requires an understanding of a format
that already exists.
If this is a show you have been commissioned to work on, the
production company will provide you with most of the information you
need, but if you’re planning on writing a spec script you will need to
find out this information for yourself. Sometimes just being a fan of a
show, or watching it over and over again, will help you to absorb that
show’s “DNA.” It’s possible to take in most of the information you
need through this kind of repetitive viewing—especially when it
comes to picking up the character voices and speech patterns.
There is also a process that you can work through to analyze a show
and understand it at a deeper level.
To do this, it is best to watch several episodes from a series and
you will need to watch at least one of the episodes several times to
complete this analysis. We suggest that the first time you watch it,
you just enjoy the show and see how much you can pick up from that
first viewing. What genre is the show? Who is it aimed at? Do the
episodes stand alone or are there story elements that continue
across the series?
At this stage, you should also think about why the show is
animated. What are the fantasy and hyper-reality elements of the
show? Is it just to do with the aesthetic and artistic style?
For example, Rick and Morty could (at least in theory) work as a
live-action show, but the budget required for the various dimensions
they travel to and creatures they meet would be massive. See Figure
26 for an example of a scene that would require a high budget in live
action, but is standard in Rick and Morty. There is also an aesthetic
element to Rick and Morty; how many actors would be able to deliver
the same kind of comedy as the cartoon versions of the characters?
This is a show that is animated not just because of the fantasy and
hyper-reality, but also for aesthetic reasons.

Figure 26 Rick and Morty, “Vindicators 3: The Return of Worldender”, August 13,
2017.

Once you have watched your chosen episode once and you have a
general idea about the show, a deeper analysis of the show can
begin. Let’s look at the various elements of the show you will need to
understand.
 Length
The first one is a simple one. How long is the show you’re planning
to write for? What you need is the length of the “body” of the show.
The body is the viewed material that is specific to that episode. We
don’t count title music, end credits (if they’re the same in each
episode), or any ad breaks.
Next, check that all of the episodes are the same length. If the
show is on network television, chances are the length will be pretty
much the same for each episode (within a few seconds or so). If the
show is online or on a streaming service, this may be less rigid so
you may need to watch a few to work out the average.

Target Audience
Try to identify the show’s target audience. In a show like South Park
that’s aimed at adults, you can estimate the target audience just from
the show’s humor, but things get more complicated when we look at
children’s programming.
A kid’s show isn’t just a kid’s show. Each program will be carefully
aimed at a specific age group and that age group might be more
specific than you expect. A show might be grouped into the
preschool bracket, or maybe the age group of five- to seven-year-
olds, for marketing purposes, but the writing will actually be targeted
toward a very specific “sweet spot.” For example, Aardman’s Timmy
Time, Jake and the Never Land Pirates and The Adventures of
Paddington are all preschool shows, but each is aimed at a different
year within that narrow age range. Try running an internet search for
TV shows aimed at three-year-olds, four-year-olds, and then five-
year-olds, and you will find that the result of each search will be
different.

Bonus Material
Whichever age group you are writing for, you will need to absorb and
understand what is allowed and what is expected for that age group.
Look out for what language can be used. In an animation for grown-
ups the broadcaster and the time slot will dictate the level of
profanity allowed. In a children’s show, you will need to think about
the complexity of language used. What about dangerous behavior?
Preschool shows tend to avoid anything dangerous that a small child
might copy, whereas a superhero show aimed at a slightly older age
group will be packed full of danger.
It is impossible to outline every guideline for each age group, not
least because this will vary by territory and broadcaster. It is also
changing all the time. Now that you are aware of these elements, it
will be easier to discern these factors when watching a show. Don’t
let the fear of getting things wrong tie you up in knots. You don’t
need to get it exactly right. People on the production team will give
you feedback if you go outside what is expected for the audience.
The key thing is to get the right tone to demonstrate that you
understand the series.

Type of Animation
The main forms of animation used in film and television are currently
2D, CGI (3D), and stop-motion. There is a belief that the type of
animation that the show or movie uses will have an impact on the
writing. While this is true to some extent, animators in every medium
are incredibly creative at reducing the limitations of their chosen
medium. For example, in CGI it is much more expensive to create
new characters and sets than 2D, where it is a lot cheaper. But in
recent CGI shows that we have worked on, directors have redressed
sets and shot the scenes from different angles to create the illusion
of new sets even when we didn’t have any. They’ve even given a
character a “head transplant” so that a new character could make a
guest appearance.
 It is more important to use the guidelines given by the production
company, or by watching and analyzing the show, than it is to limit
your writing based on what you think the animation technology is
capable of. The show’s budget and the team’s creativity will be the
final decider, not the perceived limitations of the medium.

Plotlines
See Chapter 4 and specifically Thinky Time #6 on how to identify the
plotlines in an episode. But this time, pay attention to which
characters you are following in each plotline. If you watch several
episodes, is it, for example, always the same character driving the A
plot, but different characters driving the B plot? Do they change it
from episode to episode? Do they always have the same number of
plotlines?

Characters
The next task is to identify the core characters within the series.
Look at the characters that the A and B plots focus on. Once you
have watched an episode of a series a few times, you should be
getting a good idea of the personalities of the core cast—how they
behave and how they sound will start to be second nature to you.
Also, check online to see if there are any fan wiki sites dedicated to
the show. You can glean a surprising amount of information this way.

Bonus Material
Be aware of what outfits, clothes, or uniforms that the characters
wear. Changing clothes in animation is not like changing clothes in
real life. An actor can spend ten minutes in wardrobe and come out
looking completely different. In animation, a change of clothes
usually requires a considerable investment of time and money as it
entails constructing and rendering a completely different model. This
is much easier in 2D animation, but it is still rare to see many outfit
changes in 2D shows. Movies like Toy Story 3 might make the
investment for the Barbie and Ken fashion show sequence, but most
series won’t be able to afford that. Try to avoid pitching ideas that
require the characters to wear outfits that don’t already exist.
One tip that can be helpful is the use of hats or masks. If you really
want a character to change appearance, it is much easier for the
animators to add a hat or mask than to construct a full costume
change. You might, for instance, be able to write a costume party
episode just by using masks, hats, and accessories when the cost of
full costume changes would have been prohibitive.
Most animated series start with a relatively small cast of core
characters that will expand as stories and budget allow. In animation,
due to the cost of designing and rendering, it is rare that new
characters appear for just for one episode. The cost of creating
characters will vary depending on the technology used in the show,
2D characters are much cheaper to create than a fully rendered CGI
character, but no new character is free.

Bonus Material
This character information should give you a hint about a golden rule
of writing a spec script for a show:

Do not introduce a new character unless guest characters are part of

the
show’s format, or you have been specifically asked to do so—no
matter
how good you think your character or idea is!

Breaking this rule, will single you out as a beginner. New writers
often think that they have had such a great idea that the production
company will be falling over themselves to include this character in
the series. The reality is, it is unlikely they will have the budget to
add that character and that the introduction of new characters will
almost always be allocated to an experienced member of the writing
team. Get the basics of the show right with the characters you have!

Act Structure
By now, you will be getting a handle on how the show you are
watching works. You know the length, the number of plotlines that
appear in each episode, the core cast, and the central characters.
Now it’s time to dig deeper. How does the act structure work in the
episode?
First, separate out the different plotlines (see Chapter 4 for details).
List the scenes for each one separately so that you can see each
plotline in isolation. Sometimes, when the plotlines intersect, you
may have a scene that contains important story beats from more
than one plotline. In this case, you list that scene in each of the
plotlines in which it occurs—so it may appear more than once in your
act breakdown.
Once you have each plotline listed separately and broken down
into scenes, you need to identify the following:

1. How many acts does each plotline contain? If necessary,

please refer to Chapter 5 to help with identifying the act breaks.
2. How soon are the goals stated? Do the characters state their
goals clearly, or are they just implied? How soon do we know what
the big goal for the episode will be? This is particularly important
for the A plot.
3. Is the goal in the B plot (or C plot) as clear as the goal in the
A plot? Depending on how much screen time the A plot takes, the
subplots may have goals of their own. If the smaller plots have
only a minimal amount of screen time, they may be very simple
and just be a running joke.

Now you really have a clear idea of how this show is working. Just
two more things to go.
 Sets
You may not have noticed this, but the show you are watching
probably has a limited number of sets. Like characters, sets are
expensive to build (even if they are only being drawn or constructed
inside a computer). Most shows will have several core sets that are
used—in the same way that a sitcom does—but there will be
additional sets. Make a note of any common locations, but also
generic sets such as woodland or city streets.
The production company is generally trying to make the world look
as rich and varied as they possibly can with the budget they have.
Your job here is to see through that. Notice, is it always the sa me
street (or park or forest) when the characters are outside? If there
are regular new locations, how many are allowed within the show?
Shows like Adventure Time tend to have lots of new locations (it also
has a simple style of animation), whereas Doc McStuffins has fewer.

Bonus Material
When you do this type of analysis, it’s important that you view the
most recent episodes available. This is especially true of a long-
running series, as the cast of characters and the locations available
will be different from the earlier series. The later episodes will also
give you an idea as to how the series has evolved. Often, the
themes and, more importantly, the relationships between the
characters will have changed since the first series. There is usually a
budget for a show to expand a little each season so the locations
and the characters increase as time goes on.

Set Pieces
A set piece refers to a section of the show that happens in every
episode and is part of the show’s format. While these occasionally
feature in live-action programs, they are much more common in
animation—and you see them most of all in children’s television.
 There are three main types of set piece:

1) Transformation Sequences. A moment when the characters

change in some way. Examples of these would include the pups
getting ready for the rescue in Paw Patrol or a superhero getting
ready for action—like Ben 10 transforming into an alien creature
(see Figure 27).
2) Song. A regular musical interlude within the show. A set piece
song does not include the theme song or a unique musical
episode, but is a regular part of the show’s format. This can be the
same song each time or a different song in each episode.
3) Montage. While many shows might use montages occasionally,
some shows feature a montage in every episode. A montage is
usually there to compress time, but can just be visually
entertaining or comedic.

Are there any set pieces in the show you are analyzing? If so, is it
the same in each episode or does it vary each time? Is it always in
the same place in the story or does that change? Become familiar
with the way the show you are working on uses set pieces; it will
stand out if you use one incorrectly.
Figure 27 Ben 10, “Escape from Aggregor”, December 27, 2005.

How Important Is This Information?

Essential. Going through the process of analyzing a show, using the
aforementioned tools, will give you all the information you need to
write an episode of any animated show.
This exercise also has another advantage. The more you do it, the
more you see how shows and stories work—as we said, writing on
an existing show is a good way to hone your craft. If you do this with
several episodes of the same show, you will see how the plots and
subplots interact with each other and you will develop a sense for
how goals work to create story. The more you understand how
successful shows work, the more likely it is that you will be able to
create your own.
We highly recommend that you try out this exercise on your favorite
show. We say choose your favorite show as you will need to watch
some episodes several times, and it’s more fun if you like the show.
You will also have a deeper understanding of how a show you love
works. But before you do, read through the case study in the next
chapter to see the process in action.
 Chapter 21
WRITING FOR AN EXISTING SHOW
CASE STUDY

Bob’s Burgers
The Premise of the Show
Bob’s Burgers is an animated sitcom that revolves around Bob, his
family, and his burger restaurant, which barely makes enough money
to stay in business. Although the food is good, the problem lies with
Bob’s lack of talent when it comes to promoting his business, plus
his family’s wacky activities that often cause his plans to fail.

Length
A typical Bob’s Burgers episode is around twenty to twenty-two
minutes long including opening and closing credits. The opening
credit sequence is fifteen seconds long and the remainder of the
credits appear over the beginning of the first scene. Most scenes are
short—around a minute long.

Animation Style
Bob’s Burgers is created in 2D. The characters are simply drawn and
rendered, but the faces are expressive. The team of talented voice
artists bring the characters to life. Tina and Linda are voiced by men,
which gives them an unusual delivery.

Why Is This Show Animated and Not Live Action?

In the case of Bob’s Burgers, the answer is not obvious. There are
no complicated fantasy sequences (like you get in Family Guy) or
epic and expensive crowd scenes. The look of the show, especially
the characters, is the main reason for Bob’s Burgers being an
animated show. They have a comic strip quality to them that would
be lost in a live-action format. There is also the comedy which
derives from the deadpan delivery of the three children who are
voiced by adults. If this was a live-action show, the parts would be
played by actual children, and the comic delivery and range of edgy
and inappropriate lines could prove difficult if using younger actors.

Plotlines
Bob’s Burgers usually has two plotlines (an A and a B plot), but
occasionally uses a small C plot. Anyone writing a first script for the
series should probably stick to the basic A and B plot structure.

Identifying the Main Protagonists of the Series

Bob and his family.

Bob Belcher (Male, 46) He is well-meaning, sensible with a sunny

perspective but is always struggling to make ends meet. He is
patient and kind but will lose his temper if anyone demeans or
harasses him, chiefly Jimmy Pesto, owner of the nearby Jimmy
Pesto’s Pizzas. Bob receives little respect from his children but
remains a hardworking family man who will do anything to make
them happy.

Linda Belcher (Female, 45) Linda is Bob’s wife. She is enthusiastic

and supports her husband ferociously in whatever he does. She is
flamboyant and extrovert, talkative, and loves theater. Bob and Linda
have a happy marriage. Although Linda does have a tough side, she
has been known to head butt turkeys and chase someone down if
they beat her daughter in laser tag.
Louise Belcher (Female, 9) Louise always wears bunny ears, which
could trick you into thinking she is sweet and innocent. In fact,
Louise is aloof, cunning, and a bit of a trickster. She has a dark
sense of humor and loves to create chaos. For example in the
episode Human Flesh she started the rumor that Bob’s Burgers
contained human flesh. But despite all this, she does have a heart of
gold. She is a fan of Japanese culture and loves her Kuchi Kopi night
light.

Gene Belcher (Male, 11) Gene is the middle child, and is Bob and
Linda’s only boy. He loves music, can play countless instruments,
and has written musicals. He is highly creative but has a short
attention span and a gross sense of humor (his jokes normally
revolving around bodily functions or his genitals). He can also be
brutally honest with his family and doesn’t feel bad when they get
hurt.

Tina Belcher (Female, 13) Tina is a hopeless romantic who is

obsessed with boys, which is unfortunate since she has terrible
social skills (a good comedic combination). Although she is
obsessed with sex, this is mostly age appropriate, and the show
does not rely on shock for its humor. Despite her intense interest in
sex, she still loves horses and rainbows, so while she is moving into
her teenage years, she hasn’t fully let go of her childhood. She also
has a strong conscience and is often driven by guilt if she feels that
she has done something wrong.

The Supporting Cast

The creative team have surrounded the Belchers with countless rich
and colorful characters. There’s regular customer Teddy, a bumbling
handyman, known for telling long-winded stories and invading Bob’s
personal space. Linda’s emotionally unstable sister Gayle. Health
Inspector Hugo, an ex-boyfriend of Linda’s who takes his job very
seriously and is always trying to get the restaurant shut down. Jimmy
Pesto, Bob’s archrival and owner of Jimmy Pesto’s Pizzeria and his
son Jimmy Jr., who just wants to dance.

The Locations and Sets

Because Bob’s Burgers is a 2D animation, the sets are quite simply
rendered. The actual Bob’s Burgers Restaurant is usually the central
location but there are lots of sets available. Also, because of the
nature of 2D animation and the animation style of the show, creating
new locations would not be that difficult and story choices shouldn’t
be limited because they need an unusual location.

Set Pieces
Bob’s Burgers uses five different set pieces.

1 Episode Titles Bob’s Burgers titles quite often pay homage to

movie titles, songs, or well-known phrases with a slight twist. The
episode we will be looking at shortly is called “The Ring (But Not
Scary)”; other examples include the following:

Legends of the Mall

Pig Trouble in Little Tina
Motor She Boat
Live and Let Fly
The Unbearable Likeness of Gene

2 The Opening Credits: The Store Next Door The opening credits
always depicts Bob’s Burgers and the stores that are either side of it.
We then see a FAST FORWARD MONTAGE that shows the history
of Bob’s Burgers’ various catastrophic reopenings, via fallen banners
and pest control vans.
As this montage plays, we see that on one side of Bob’s Burgers is
a Funeral Home called “It’s Your Funeral Home & Crematorium” that
stays the same in all episodes. On the other side, a different
business is shown to occupy that store front in every episode. Each
one has a funny name; examples include the following:

Uncle Marty’s Breast Pumps

Hannibal’s Dead Animal Taxidermy
A Fridge Too Far—used appliances
Yes, Wire Hangers
Fern, Baby, Fern—discount fern store

3 The Burger of the Day Another running gag in most Bob’s

Burgers episodes is the “Burger of the Day” written on the
chalkboard behind the counter. These use puns and wordplay and
sometimes relate to the plot. The burger is always $5.95. Some
examples are as follows:

The Child Molester—comes with Candy

Pepper Don’t Preach Burger
Rest in Peas Burger
Foot Feta-ish Burger
Olive and Let Die Burger
She’s a Super Leek Burger (comes with braised leeks)

There are, however, a few episodes with no Burger of the Day,

mainly when the Belchers don’t appear in the restaurant.
One episode directly addresses the phenomena. In Sexy Dance
Healing, Bob can’t come up with any burger puns for his Burger of
the Day board. The lack of the Burger of the Day causes a
traumatized Teddy to storm out of the restaurant. Even the kids can’t
handle it. Eventually, while making a regular burger he comes up
with the “Running Out Of Thyme Burger” and normal service is
resumed.

4 Montages Bob’s Burgers uses montages quite a lot to summarize

the action and compress time in the episode.
5 End Credits As the end credits play, the show usually finishes
with a song that is unique to that episode.
So now we know how Bob’s Burgers works. Let’s look at a specific
episode.

The Ring (But Not Scary)

Plotlines
In the episode “The Ring (But Not Scary),” there are two plots:

The A plot: The children have lost an engagement ring (that Bob was
going to give Linda for their anniversary) at a water park. Their goal
is to find the ring and save their mom and dad’s marriage.

The B plot: Linda is trying to apply eye drops to her psychotic sister,
who has pink eye from letting her cat sleep on her face.

Act Structure
Bob’s Burgers uses the three-act structure but not in the most
traditional way. The show tends to have a very long act one. In a
twenty-minute show, we would normally expect the end of act one to
come in at around five minutes. In this episode, the end of act one is
around ten minutes in—nearly half the show length. This is usual for
Bob’s Burgers as they spend time setting up the situation and are
not afraid to do quite long verbal jokes in the scenes building up to
the act change.
If we follow act one for a moment, in this episode the kids find an
expensive engagement ring that Bob plans to give to Linda for their
anniversary. It turns out that Bob couldn’t afford an engagement ring
when they first got engaged and wants to make up for it now—he’s
even taken out a loan to pay for it. This sets up the value of the ring,
both in money terms and in emotional investment. So, when the kids
lose the ring at the water park, we know why they are so desperate
to find it.
 While all this is going on, we also have a physical goal for act one.
The ring is stuck on Gene’s finger and the kids are trying to get it off.
Unfortunately, it falls off when Gene’s finger shrivels up in the water
and it gets lost at the water park. When we get to the end of act one,
the kids state their goal for act two. They vow to find the ring and
save mom and dad’s marriage “so dad won’t end up as a single
skank!”
During act two, Bob joins the kids as they search the water park for
the ring. This is a fairly simple, physical tickable goal and easy for an
audience to foll ow. Act two finishes when Bob gives up looking for
the ring and the direction of the story changes again. Here Bob sets
a new goal—to “underwhelm” Linda on their anniversary like he
usually does.
This might not seem like the most dynamic goal for the final act, but
it does lead us into the touching finale of the show. Linda finds out
about the missing ring and tells Bob that they don’t need a ring to
prove their love.
The B plot is short and simple and follows the three-act structure
too. In act one, we learn that Linda’s sister has pink eye and needs
help putting her eye drops in.
Act two is a great physical comedy routine as Linda does her best
to put the drops in her sister’s eye, although her crazy sister keeps
fighting her off. This act finishes when she gives up trying to put the
eye drops in on her own and goes to Bob for help. When she gets
home, she discovers Bob and the kids are missing. The new goal for
act three, to find Bob and the kids—which she does at the water
park.

Set Pieces
There are two montages in this episode. There is a montage
condensing the time when the kids visit the water park. In the
duration of one song, we feel that we have seen them spend the
whole day there. Then, there is a second montage in act two that is
used to summarize the search for the ring.
Lastly, as the end credits play and the cast float around in their
inner tubes at the water park, the guest character Nat Kinkle (in a
tribute to the fact that her name sounds like Nat King Cole) sings a
song to the tune of her namesake’s hit Mona Lisa.1 The song is
dedicated to Linda and called “Mona Linda.”

Bob’s Burgers: A Summary

We can see that anyone hoping to write an episode of Bob’s Burgers
should stick to the three-act structure (although act one would be
longer than in other shows), they should use an A and a B plot and
use various members of the Belcher family as the leads in both
plotlines. They would also need to absorb the off-the-wall style of
humor in the show, as well as incorporate the Burger of the Day,
montages if necessary, come up with a funny “store next store” for
the credits, and find an appropriate title.
All of this might seem like a lot to take in, but the more you
immerse yourself into a show, the more it becomes part of the way
you think. This is easier in a well-established show like Bob’s
Burgers where there is a huge back catalogue of episodes, but a
newer show may take a more detailed analysis when you only have
a few episodes to view.

Notes
1 Nat King Cole, “Mona Lisa,” March 11, 1950, Capitol, 1950, vinyl single.
 Chapter 22
COLLABORATION

Writing for animation is perhaps the most collaborative form of

writing. When you write a novel, you are the writer and the director,
while the reader functions as the performer delivering the lines in
their head as they read. When you write for the stage or the screen,
you will probably be working with a director and a producer and
actors will be interpreting your lines. There will also be set designers,
prop makers, and storyboard artists. All of these exist in animation,
but it goes one step further. In a live-action show, a character is
going to pretty much look like the actor who is cast in the part,
whereas in animation the description in your script will give artists
the starting point for designing your characters. These are all people
who will be reading your script, but who also may be attending
meetings and providing feedback (usually called “notes”) on your
script.
The collaborative process may even go further than that. Several
years ago, we were asked to develop a new animation series. When
we say new, the concept wasn’t new; it had been a cherished and
successful series in the past but was going to need a reboot if it was
going to get the green light again. We were commissioned to
redevelop the idea and write a series proposal (similar to the type
seen in Appendix B). Before we started writing, we were asked to
come to a meeting to make sure we moved the show in the right
direction.
 We arrived at the meeting on a Friday afternoon to find ourselves
sitting around a huge desk with twelve other people. Two of the
twelve were the show’s producers, and the other ten consisted of
members of the marketing department, the company’s book
publishing team, the brand team, the DVD distributors (DVDs were
still big at this point), the toy team, and someone who deals with
apps and online content. Each of these departments was requesting
things that needed to be included in the show in order for the series
to go ahead. Once the show got the green light, we would be
collaborating with the director and the producer, but before we could
get that far we would have to satisfy all of these departments.
On other shows we have worked on, we have collaborated with
educational advisers, consultants, and broadcasters. As we said in
the first chapter, animation is big business and there are lots of
people who want to make sure that the show will make its money
back. Many writers are uncomfortable with this mingling of art and
business, but the more you make friends with the reality of the
situation, the easier your life as an animation writer will become.
If you are making a short for the internet and you are planning to
animate it yourself and do all the voices, then you won’t have to
collaborate that much. If you plan to evolve your career further, then
at some point you’re going to have to collaborate.

Collaboration Means Cooperation and Concessions

When we started writing animation, we had a vision that at some
point our genius would be recognized and everyone would just trust
our creative vision. That hasn’t happened. We are okay with that,
because we now realize that was an unrealistic expectation.
Whatever your project, there will always be someone who wants to
have some input and there is never just one person who is high
enough in the pecking order to call all the shots. It’s just not the
nature of the animation world today.
 To get by in animation, you are going to need to find a way to work
well with others, and understand where they’re coming from and
what they need for the project to work for them. It won’t always go
smoothly, but the better you become at collaborating, the more
successful you’ll be (and the happier you’ll be too).
The problem is, you’re going to have to deal with ideas. Did we just
say that ideas are a problem? Yes, we did. Let us explain.
Ideas are great. If you’re going to be a writer, you’re going to need
a lot of them. You should never worry about running out of ideas; if
you’re creative, they just keep coming. Having ideas is like a muscle;
the more you generate, the more you have and the easier they
come. The problem is, ideas come with a tricky side effect. When an
idea goes off in your head, it tends to make you think that it’s right.
The problem is that it might not be. We’ve seen writers (and
producers and directors) so convinced that their idea is the right
idea, even when there is so much evidence to the contrary, that they
pursue it and try to keep it in a script to the detriment of the whole
production.

Bonus Material: The One-Off Funny Idea

This is a type of idea that we want you to be particularly aware of,
and it should be treated with extreme caution. Have you ever been
watching a movie and you’ve thought “it would be hilarious if . . .
(insert ‘one-off funny idea’ here)?” It’s quite a fun thing to do. Being a
writer you will do this the whole time, hopefully not just with movies
but with your own scripts as well. That’s good! It might throw out a
funny idea that’s perfect for the scene you’ve been writing. The
problem can occur when that one idea affects the rest of your story.
Suddenly, you find yourself trying to reengineer your whole story to
accommodate that hilarious moment into your script. If that makes
the story stronger, that’s fine, but we’ve seen writers weaken their
stories trying to squeeze in their one brilliant idea because they are
convinced it is so funny or clever.
 The story should always come first. If the story is strong, the funny
moments that are organic to the story structure will always be better
than the one-off funny ideas. This is something that you need to be
aware of not only with your own ideas but also with ideas that come
from other people. There will always be people who have that “one-
off funny idea” that they think you should incorporate into your story.
If you like it and it makes your story stronger, then good. But beware
of restructuring for one funny moment.
The exception to this is in a short sketch, where the one-off funny
idea might be the basis of the entire sketch!
So, the idea that you’ve had that seemed so brilliant might not be
as good as you think it is and you may need another. Don’t worry,
you will have a ton of ideas so don’t get precious about that one. But
there is another aspect to ideas that you need to be aware of and it’s
one that can make life difficult. Before we get to that, we want to
remind you of two points from earlier in the chapter:

1. There are a lot of people who will have some input into your story.
2. When someone has an idea, they tend to think it’s right—even
when it might not be.

As a writer, you can be in the difficult situation of several people

having conflicting ideas for your script and they all think they’re right.
You might be working on a student project or maybe making your
own show and all your friends are helping you. You could be working
for a major production company and everyone thinks your episode
should go in a different direction. In all these cases, people are going
to be offended if you don’t listen to their ideas, and it will make your
job an uphill struggle. It doesn’t matter what level you are working at
—this is a real situation and you will have to deal with it.
There is no one way to deal with these scenarios. Every situation is
different, and there will always be a combination of personalities and
motivations behind the ideas that you’ve been presented with, but
we’ve found three principles that help negotiate this minefield.

Listening
When someone is giving you feedback that you know is going to
mess up your story, the natural reaction is to start arguing.
Sometimes this will be out loud and sometimes it will only be in your
head; either way, while that’s happening, you’re not taking everything
they are saying on-board. The person giving you the notes might be
right or wrong; the important thing to remember is that they are
saying it for a reason. Whatever your views on their feedback, you
will do a lot better if you understand their reason for saying what
they’re saying. This requires listening, asking questions, and
engaging in conversation.
Let us give you an example. Some time ago, we were proposing an
episode that involved a soap box cart race. There was a major
objection from the producer; they didn’t want any soap box racing in
the series. It seemed like this idea was dead in the water. After some
conversation, it turned out that the real objection was to seeing the
soap box carts being constructed during the episode—and our idea
included a cart building montage. This show was being made in
computer-generated imagery, where the cost of constructing
complex props was expensive. The budget allowed them to render a
couple of completed soap box carts for the race, but the cost of
animating the soap boxes at various stages of being built was going
to cost too much. The montage was replaced by a scene showing
the outside of the workshop, along with some comedic sound effects
as the cart was constructed; this was followed by the completed cart
being wheeled out and revealed as finished. By engaging in
conversation and addressing the real concern, animating the
construction process, this episode was green lit.

Diplomacy
When you started reading a book on writing for animation, you
probably didn’t think you would have to learn about diplomacy. When
you are working in TV and Film, a little diplomacy goes a long way. If
you want to have any career longevity, you had better be incredibly
talented or really nice to work with—or better still both. You could be
the most talented writer in Hollywood; if you’re not nice to work with,
others will be plotting your downfall and will rejoice when it happens.
Without sounding too much like Dale Carnegie, the more friends
you have in the business, the better your career will be. Having said
that, this is a creative environment and sometimes passions run
high; there will be explosions and clashes. When you do finally
detonate, do your best to make amends afterward. People rarely
hold grudges against people who apologize. Just be nice to work
with.

Concessions
Everyone working on a project will have a view on how you should
be telling your story; some will be helpful and some won’t.
Remember though, as the writer you are the person with the
overview of how each idea will affect the whole story and the story is
your responsibility. When notes come back that you don’t agree with,
it is important that you pick your battles. Decide which are the story
points that are worth fighting for and which points you should
concede. If you fight every battle, you will fall under the category of
difficult-to-work-with. If you concede every point, the story you end
up with will be watered down and lack direction. In the end, if the
script isn’t good, no one will acknowledge that it was their notes that
caused the problem—they’re going to blame the writer. You need to
protect the story, it is your responsibility and what they hired you for.
Remember, when picking your battles, some departments know
more about what will work best in a given situation than the writer
does. While you need to be able to think visually to write animation,
chances are the director will have a better grasp of the visual
aspects of the show than you do. It doesn’t mean that they are
always right, but it is worth listening to, so you know where they’re
coming from. Then use diplomacy when you fight your battle to keep
them on your side for the rest of your time on the project.

Bonus Material: It’s Not Your Fault.

There will be times when you get feedback that decimates your idea.
You need to remember, this isn’t personal (unless of course you’ve
been seriously undiplomatic in the past, in which case it might be).
The other thing you need to remember is that it wasn’t your fault
(unless of course you did a slack job, in which case it might be).
Notes that send your story back to square one happen all the time
in this business. Changes in direction for the show, indecisiveness
within the production, and people wanting to change your idea are
part of daily life for an animation writer. When you get notes like this,
there is no point in beating yourself up about it. There is nothing you
could have done. Just be glad that this doesn’t happen too often. If it
does happen a lot, it is worth considering whether you should look
for a new project to work on. It could be that either you are just not
getting that particular show, or the production team are a bunch of
crazy makers. Both of these things happen, and, again, neither of
them are your fault.
 Chapter 23
CREATING THE SHORT

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines the

duration of a short animation as a film with a running time of forty
minutes or less. This gives quite a scope for short film writing. We
have written short films for the internet that are less than a minute
long but have also written standalone TV specials that run closer to
thirty. While each was quite different, there are processes that can
be used to help in writing shorts, whatever length you are working to.

Why Make a Short?

When Paul started out, he wanted to write novels. The books on
novel writing at the time all said that you should master the art of
short story writing first. In doing so, you learn about the
fundamentals of storytelling, character, action, dialogue, and plot
without investing the huge amount of time it takes to write a full
novel. Short story writing is a quick process compared to a novel that
can take years, and, if you’re new, chances are that novel won’t be
good enough to publish. That’s because you haven’t honed your
skills crafting short stories. Well, Paul didn’t like short stories so he
tried to write novels and, in the end, he wrote two half-finished bad
ones. He should have listened to the advice.
Writing short films is like writing short stories. You get to work on
your craft without the time investment of writing a full feature film.
Telling a good story in ten minutes, five minutes, or even two minutes
takes ability and that’s an ability that develops with practice.
 Initially, you might want to write a short by taking all the principles
in this book and applying them to your short film idea. This might
work if you were planning to work in the longer end of the short film
spectrum, it’s even possible to do that in as little as ten minutes, if
you’re concise and have become adept at conveying information
quickly and visually. But you may not want to tell anything as
complex as that.
Many short films are the same length as episodic TV shows. We
have worked on episodes that fit a five-minute TV time slot, which
meant that the body of the episode was only around four minutes
long—shorter than a lot of shorts. But you could compare episodic
TV writing and short film making in the same way you might compare
designing a washing machine with constructing a sculpture out of the
parts that make up a washing machine. When you make a washing
machine, it normally fits within a set of parameters of size and
technical functions. It must work electronically and mechanically and
be plumbed in correctly. A sculpture made from the parts can look
like an explosion in a workshop or like something that Heath
Robinson drew. With the short film, especially an independent one,
you are freed from the requirements of broadcast time slot, regular
cast, and animation style. You can let your imagination run wild.
How then, do you use what you have learnt in this book to create
your short film? Well there is no one set way. To go back to the
washing machine analogy again, when you make a sculpture, you
have a lot more choice. As such, you need to start with what kind of
short animation you are going to make. You may have a duration that
you need to adhere to for a particular project, festival, or competition.
You may have already decided on the technology that you are going
to use. How much of a narrative form is your film going to take, or is
it going to be more abstract? Do you already have an idea or are you
starting with a blank slate?

Bonus Material: Making an Independent Short

It’s now possible to make animations on your smart phone and post
them straight to the internet. There are plenty of forums and
websites available to showcase your work and even win awards.
If you’re reading this because you want to be a director or producer
and you want to understand more about story, this is a great chance
to make something exactly as you imagine it. If writing is your
priority, you may want to team up with others to help you make it.
Either way, this is a great way to network, practice your craft, build
up your resume, and submit your work to festivals. The likes of
George Lucas, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, and, of course, Walt
Disney started off making short animated films.
When you make an independent short, it is an opportunity to push
boundaries. Use this time to express yourself. Be as subversive or
mainstream, funny or dramatic, surreal or conventional as you like—
whatever suits your creative leanings.

Finding the Right Tool

While many independent animated short films use edgy artistic
visuals, you will find that the ones that employ basic storytelling
techniques are often the ones that engage the viewing panels. There
are cases of visually stunning animations with very little narrative—
see George Lucas’s Look at Life—but most use some form of story.
If you have an idea for your abstract animation that doesn’t employ
any narrative, then go ahead and make it. Tools and techniques
should never outweigh raw talent or the power of an idea. However,
if you are going in that direction, we hope the case study at the end
of this chapter encourages you to at least entertain the idea of
adding some narrative elements to your film. If, however, you are
starting with only the beginnings of an idea (or even no idea at all) or
you have something that you’ve fleshed out and you just want to
make it a bit better, then we suggest applying some of the principles
you have read to expand and/or refine your idea.
 We suggest if you are making a showcase film, you start at less
than five minutes. Films of this length are quicker to make, so you
get feedback on how successful your storytelling has been quite
quickly. It is also easier to get people to watch something that is
short. As your skills develop, then extend the length of your projects
—you will be a better animator and a better storyteller by then.
Which tools you use in the writing process will be dependent on your
initial idea and the length of the project you are engaging in.
Assuming the idea that you have is going to be narrative rather
than abstract—that is after all the scope of this book, to create
narrative—we would suggest the use of two particular tools when
making a short:

1. Create an emotional connection with the character.

2. Give your character a goal.

Let’s look at those two points in the context of short film making.

Create an Emotional Connection with the Character

When you only have a few minutes to tell a story, you don’t have
long to “grab” the audience. Chapter 10 on Emotional Connection
gives you several tools to increase emotional connection with your
character; the more efficient you are at getting your viewer to engage
with your main character, the more compelling your stories will
become.
In Pixar’s Partly Cloudy, we see clouds making babies for the
storks to deliver. It is hard to say whether Peck the stork or Gus the
cloud is the lead character, but we have an emotional connection
with them both. All the other storks get nice babies to deliver, but
Peck gets hazardous ones. As such, he suffers both jeopardy and
adversity. Gus on the other hand has little ability when it comes to
“making babies.” Instead of the cute bundles of joy the other clouds
create, he makes a crocodile, a porcupine, and a shark. Here we
have a character who is funny because of his ineptitudes, but this
also makes Gus sad and we sympathize with him. There is also a
caring bond between both characters so we feel that they are both
nice and we love them for it.
In the brilliant Hair Love, we see something as simple as a young
girl who doesn’t like her hair. Later we will discover that her mother
has cancer, and has lost her hair—which is definitely undeserved
misfortune—but the filmmakers have already created a strong
emotional connection long before the audience get that information.
This is a young girl with crazy hair and she wants it to be pretty. As
she tries to tackle the issue of her hair, we see that she has
unwavering resolve, she’s not going to give up on the hairstyle she
loves. She is funny, cute, and on the screen straight away.
In Bear Story by Gabriel Osorio Vargas, again we see misfortune
as we follow a bear who was taken away from his family to perform
in a circus. But even before we learn of that undeserved misfortune,
we see that the bear has amazing skills and abilities as he
constructs incredible clockwork displays. In Father and Daughter, we
see a young girl whose father never returns after going out in a
rowing boat one day. The whole short film follows her unwavering
resolve as she keeps returning to where she last saw her father.
Which, in her case, is a lifetime.

Give Your Character a Goal

In a short it is possible to tell a story without a goal being central to
the plot, you can watch things “just happening” to a character. Peck
in Partly Cloudy is one such character, although in the end we see
that Peck has the goal of staying with Gus and works toward that by
getting some protective clothing so that he can deliver the dangerous
“babies” that Gus has created. The aim though is to engage an
audience, and a character with a goal is usually more engaging than
one without. The shorter your story, the more simplistic and quickly
understood by your audience your goal will need to be.
 It is easy to forget now, but many of the early Looney Tunes and
Walt Disney Productions were made for theatrical release. These
were short films—not part of episodic television—and they focused
on simple, physical goals. Whether it was watching Bugs trying to
evade the hunter, Sylvester trying to catch the bird, or Goofy trying to
surf when the very ocean is against him. The entertainment value of
these short films is obvious; many of them still stand up today, and
the principle of having a clear and simple goal in animated shorts is
still important.
In Hair Love, the little girl wants a very specific hairstyle. In Father
and Daughter, the young girl wants to see her father again. Both are
physical, tickable goals. In Jacob Frey’s short film, The Present, we
see a three-legged dog trying to get a child to play with him. This is a
very simple setup and goal, but is made original—not to mention
very touching—by the reveal at the end, which is that the child has
also lost a leg. In Bear Story, although the story is told as an
embedded narrative, the bear is desperate to get back to his family.
While we would put emotional connection and goals at the forefront
when developing your short film, what if you don’t have your initial
idea yet?

Thinky Time #14

Now we’re going to put a few things together. We want you to go
back to the character you created in Thinky Time #11. (If you skipped
that stage, go back to it now. If you want to create a new character,
then just do it again.) Once you have a character ready, focus on two
things.

1. The archetype that the character falls under.

2. The ineptitudes that the character has.

Next, remember when you put the character in five interesting

situations at the end of that Thinky Time? We want you to do the
same thing again, but now make those interesting situations ones
that the character wouldn’t want to be in, based entirely on their
ineptitudes. If your character is a bovine-centric, one step behind bull
who is particularly clumsy, they could have a job in a china shop. Our
bull is strong and gruff and lacks the elegance he needs to deal with
his customers or the delicate products on display. What if they’re a
pompous droid with high intelligence but has weak, spindly limbs and
is sent to load trucks in an anvil factory alongside some powerful
loading robots?
You might now find that you haven’t given your character enough
ineptitudes. If so, just add some more. This is your character to
change and adapt as much as you want. Once you have your five
situations, choose the one that you connect with the most. Think of
one thing that could go wrong in that scenario and work out how your
character overcomes it in the end.
Next, look at the tools for creating an emotional connection
(chapter 10). Can you apply just one of those to your character when
they first appear on the screen? You might find it is there already;
often archetype and ineptitude will often bring out those elements
naturally.
Turn this into a two- or three-page script using the script guidelines
in Chapter 18.
If, when you’ve finished, you don’t think it’s funny enough, make
“the drop” a bit bigger using the techniques in Chapter 16.

Bonus Material
While this is primarily a comedic device, it is possible to use the
same technique to create drama. The more inept a character is, the
more they produce comedy. Therefore, it stands that the less inept a
character is, the less they produce comedy—and they produce
drama instead. Sitcoms are (hop efully) funny, but many of the best
ones have touching, heartfelt moments that give us a lump in the
throat. Next time you watch a sitcom and it moves you emotionally,
notice that the characters in that moment are not being inept.
If you want to use the exercise above to create a dramatic piece,
you can simply give your characters abilities in the area in which
they are working, not too many; you still want their goals to be a
struggle, but by avoiding the “fish out of water” scenario, you create
drama instead of comedy.

This exercise might seem simplistic, and in its most basic form it is,
but this is an exercise for approaching the blank page, when you just
don’t know how to proceed. As such, it can give you a good starting
point and move you from just being stuck, to having a solid idea in
front of you that you can then craft into something great.

Short Film Case Study: “The Meaning of Life” by Don

Hertzfeldt
This is a film whose production values are within reach of the
independent filmmaker; it also shows what can be achieved when
narrative principles are added to an abstract form. There is no
obvious central character, very little dialogue—at least not in
understandable conversation—and it takes us in unexpected
directions. Yet, even a cursory viewing of the film gives us a feeling
that we are watching a story of some sort. The stunning art and the
rhythm of the film makes this compelling viewing, but let’s look at the
narrative elements and why they are successful.
Throughout the opening credits, we watch as a person seems to
both plummet and fall slowly through the air. We see them as they
grow old, die, and decay. Next, as we come out of the opening
credits, we see the beginning of life, not a character’s life but what
would seem to be Earth’s earliest life as it crawled out of the ocean
in primordial chaos. We see life struggle to evolve, only to then
engage in trivial day-to-day life; we see angry exchanges, busy lives
spent pointlessly, and then finally death. We have a strong emotional
connection to the characters on screen, but why?
This short film uses three of the tools that help create emotional
connection to engage the audience in the first couple of minutes of
screen time. First, these creatures are funny. This comes from the
brilliant artwork, perhaps more than the writing, but we are instantly
entertained by the darkly comic anguish of the characters (see
Figure 28) as we see both desperation and anger played out. These
characters are on the screen right from the beginning, the first one is
alone as we watch it mature into a human being. As the creature
fights to evolve we see its determination—the alternative,
presumably is extinction. So, we see them in adversity too. Once we
have this audience empathy, we want to know what happens next.

Figure 28 The Meaning of Life, January 2005.

As multiple characters appear, we might start to question which

character we are following. Chances are, this question will only be at
the subconscious level, but it is still usually there. But in this case,
any individual character is lost in the crowd. This incredible opening
sequence makes the audience ask a bigger question, and one that
we are set up to ask just by knowing the title of the film, “What is the
meaning of life?”
We suggested in the earlier parts of this chapter that the short film
is where you can be subversive; you can take things in a creative
direction that might be prohibited in an entirely commercial venture.
The Meaning of Life takes us in such a direction. Instead of the
central character appearing on the screen, it is the audience who
has the goal for this film—to answer that very question and discover
the meaning of life. This question may not be physical, but because
we ourselves are the central character, it is most definitely “tickable.”
If by watching this short film we discover the meaning of life, we will
know that we can tick that box. The filmmaker in this case makes
you feel that he knows the answer, and if you continue to watch, you
might just find out the answer for yourself. From that point on, we are
taken on a journey as we pursue that goal. Ultimately we fail. Not all
stories have a happy ending.
While The Meaning of Life uses many of the principles we have
outlined, it has subverted most of them and not least its act structure.
If we were to follow the three-act structure in its strictest form, we
would follow the same character as they pursued their goals, along
with the necessary changes in story direction. The Meaning of Life
gives us three acts but in a slightly different guise. First, we follow
life, we watch a species evolve giving us a simple first-act goal—to
survive the evolution process. But then the narrative changes
direction, as we lose sight of that single character, we ourselves
become the central character as we try to discover the meaning of
life. We follow these characters through their life of preoccupation
and then to their death. As we spin off the planet and shoot through
the galaxy, we are led to believe that maybe we are going to find the
meaning of life in the stars. As we travel to distant planets, we
discover a myriad of life forms each behaving in the same trivial way
as the humans back on Earth, leading us to realize that we are not
going to discover the answer to our question. The story now takes us
into the third and final act. We watch as a young alien, perhaps with
its father, is pondering the same question as we are. As that young
creature stares up at the stars, we understand that we are not alone
in trying to answer this question. Two changes in direction, or act
breaks, three acts.
The Meaning of Life is also a comedy and uses (again
subversively) solid comedy structure. We are literally watching the
“fish out of water” comedic situation as we follow something evolving
from sea life to trying to understand the biggest question of them all.
We can also see “the drop” being executed perfectly as the drama
takes us through the battle of the evolutionary process, only to hear
the first words that we speak “give me your money.” Then when we
fly through the universe, expecting revelation to occur, we discover
aliens behaving the same way that we do. Both of these moments
give us a drop in expectation and a drop in status, while the second
example also demonstrates a drop in normality.
The Meaning of Life is a stunning film on many levels, and while it
is somewhat abstract and definitely subverts the storytelling form, it
is worth noting how much more successful the film is precisely
because it does use narrative storytelling techniques. We have
emotional connection, goals, three acts, and some very solid
comedy techniques.
It is hard to know how much of this idea came to Don Hertzfeldt
fully formed and which bits he had to craft and rework to get right. If
you plan to make mains tream comedy or drama shorts, the
necessity of following storytelling fundamentals is obvious, and we
strongly suggest mastering these skills to the best of your ability. We
hope, though, that this analysis encourages you to look for
opportunities to elevate your ideas and to use narrative principles,
even in your most subversive and abstract films, to make your
stories stronger.
 Chapter 24
BREAKING THE FORMAT

So far we have given you a lot of tools that you can use to write an
independent short, an episode for an animated show, or even a
movie. With the information you have, it would now be possible to
take a central character, give them a physical goal for act two, an
emotional need and tell a story across three acts and produce
something great. But as we have said, this is about tools not rules
and it is important to remember that great things can happen when
you break the “rules” a little.
To demonstrate, we thought it was worth looking at two very
successful animated movies that have unconventional structures, to
see how they “broke the rules.”

Case Study: Frozen (Central Character

Inconsistency)
When we went through Zootopia, the case study showed a brilliant
example of how goals can drive the three-act structure. We saw how
in act one Judy Hopps set out to become a cop. She goes through
the police academy but only ends up being a meter maid. The
physical tickable goal for act two is that she must find Emmitt
Otterton in forty-eight hours. She succeeds at this, but it’s not a
happy ending yet. In act three she must save Zootopia by finding out
why the predators have gone savage. In Zootopia, we have one
central character whose physical goals drive the plot from act to act.
Frozen is different.
Central Character
Due to the success of all the Elsa merchandise, you would be
forgiven for thinking that she must be the central character in Frozen.
You might also think that when you watch the movie. Elsa has the
big song in the middle of the film (the one everyone knows!) and has
the superpower—she can wield ice and snow. But she is not the
central character, Anna is. Like the relationships in this movie, it’s
complicated.
Let’s have a look at the four-point central character checklist.

Who has the main goal that we follow through the story? The
answer is Anna, but it’s not entirely straightforward. Anna has the
tickable, physical goal for act two, but (as we will see in the section
on the act structure) her goals in the other two acts are somewhat
lacking.

Who is the most proactive character in the story? Again, this is

Anna. Her act two goal is to find her sister. What is unusual about
Frozen is that, as the central character, Anna is not proactive for
most of the final act. Standard story structure would dictate that the
central character solves their own problem, and while she might in
the end, for most of act three Anna is passive and reactive.

Which character spends the most time on screen? Definitely

Anna.

Who changes or learns the most by the end of the story? This is
shared between Elsa and Anna. They both learn that love will melt a
frozen heart. Everyone was expecting it to be a kiss from one of the
male characters that did this, but it turned out to be a selfless act of
unconditional love by a sister. Here though, Elsa is the one that
really undergoes a change as the action of her sister teaches her
how to wield her power as a force for good.
So, we have Anna as a central character but with a few irregularities.
Those irregularities continue as we look at the act structure.

Act One
When we look at the functions of act one, we can see how this movie
is already breaking away from traditional story structure. The scenes
set up our world perfectly; we can see straight away that we’re in a
fairy tale Scandinavian kingdom and that we will be following the
princesses in the castle. It also introduces Anna as the central
character, but she is not the one with the biggest problem in the first
act. Her parents are dealing with the information that their daughter,
Elsa, has dangerous powers. For this reason, Elsa is isolated from
her sister. This makes Anna lonely, but her problem isn’t as big as
her sister’s or her parents’ problem.
The act one goals are also unusual. While we would normally
expect the central character to have a goal that takes us to the start
of act two, Anna has no specific goal. She wants to play with her
sister and she wants to build a snowman, but these are both less
active than Elsa, who is trying to protect people from her powers.
Even Anna’s parents have a bigger goal than Anna as they try to
protect Anna from Elsa’s powers.
When we get to the end of act one, a goal is more firmly
established. Elsa flees the castle and Anna sets off to find her sister
and bring her back—a specific, tickable, and physical goal for act
two.

Act Two
Anna is on a quest to find Elsa and bring her back. As she actively
pursues her goal—meeting allies and overcoming obstacles along
the way—Frozen is back using a more traditional story structure. But
then, Anna fails in her goal. This can, and does, happen in many
standard three-act stories with a single central character, but as we
go into act three, Frozen yet again breaks with convention.
Act Three
Anna has been hit in the heart by one of Elsa’s ice bolts, and we
know from act one that this is very serious. In nearly every
successful story, the central character is proactive during the third
act, solving his or her own problem. In Frozen, the central character
is dying and is pretty much a passenger in this part of the story. For
most of the third act, Kristoff is trying to save Anna, making him the
most proactive character in the third act. But we also see Olaf doing
his best to keep her warm and Elsa being held prisoner and trying to
escape.
Ultimately, Anna does save the day (with what seems like her dying
breath), but in the end both Anna and Elsa learn lessons and evolve
as characters.
Frozen is a brilliant story—one of the most successful animations
of all time—but despite its mainstream success, Frozen uses a
subversive structure that plays against the traditional use of central
character and goals in the three-act structure.
But does a successful movie need to have a three-act structure?

Case Study: Toy Story 3 (a Four-Act Structure)

Another successful movie that breaks form is Toy Story 3—not
exactly an underground, cult animation. Earlier, we highlighted the
importance and domination of the three-act structure in animated
movies (and TV series). We encouraged you to master its form and
understand it at a deep level. We still think this is very good advice,
but to prove that not everything fits neatly into three acts, Toy Story 3
shows us that a four-act story can be just as successful. Just in case
you might be doubting its credentials, it became the highest-grossing
animated film of its time and won an Academy Award for best
animated feature.

Act One
At the opening of Toy Story 3, we see how much Andy loved playing
with his toys—especially Woody. We also see a montage of him
growing up and now, as the story starts in earnest, Andy is off to
college and doesn’t want to play with his toys anymore. As his
mother pesters Andy to clear up his room, the toys realize that
they’re never going to be played with again. Andy is going to take
Woody to college with him, but the other toys are going to be put in
the attic. Unfortunately, there is a mix-up and all the toys (except
Woody) nearly end up in the trash. The toys are angry that Andy
would throw them away and decide that they want to go to
Sunnyside Daycare. They don’t believe Woody when he tells them
that it was a mistake, Andy wanted them to be stored in the attic and
not thrown in the trash. Throughout this act, we see that Woody’s
emotional goal is to keep everyone together; he doesn’t want them
to go to Sunnyside, because then Andy will never see them again.
So, Woody’s physical goal is to get them to stay in the attic, together,
so they can be there for Andy.
Woody fails at this goal when they all get locked in the trunk of the
car and Andy’s mom takes them to Sunnyside. When they get there,
Woody is still insisting that they all go back to Andy’s house with him,
but the others refuse. Sunnyside seems like a nice place and Lotso,
the head of the Sunnyside toys, is very welcoming. So, Woody sets
off on his own, with the physical goal for act two being established.
Woody wants to get back to Andy.

Act Two
Woody tries to escape Sunnyside (hanging on to a kite), but only
gets as far as the perimeter. This is where Bonnie, the daughter of
Sunnyside’s receptionist, finds him and takes him home. Meanwhile,
back at Sunnyside, it turns out that things aren’t as ideal as they
seemed. The toys are horrifically abused by the kids at Daycare, and
we discover that Lotso is the villain of the piece.
 Back at Bonnie’s house, Woody makes friends with her toys. He
tells them of his plans to get back to Andy’s and they resolve to help
him. But before Woody leaves, a chance remark leads Bonnie’s toys
to tell him all about Sunnyside. Woody hears that it’s a place of “ruin
and despair” and decides to go back and rescue his friends. This
sets up his physical goal for the third (but in this case, not final) act—
to rescue his friends from Sunnyside.

Act Three
Woody arrives at Sunnyside and tells the others of his plans to break
them out. Act three follows a prison escape/heist format, as the old
team get back together again.
Andy’s toys are successful in their escape. They have left the
confines of Sunnyside, but it hasn’t gone as well as they planned.
Lotso and his henchmen (or hench-toys) attempt to block their
escape. Andy’s toys and Lotso all end up in the dumpster, which is
then picked up by the garbage truck. This changes the story
direction once again, giving us a fourth physical goal and a fourth
act. The physical goal for act four is to escape from the trash.

Act Four
The fourth act in Toy Story 3 gives us the same level of action that
we would normally see in the third act of a three-act story. The toys
try to avoid being crushed as new trash is tipped into the back of the
garbage truck. They end up on a conveyor belt, dodge the shredder,
and eventually escape the furnace. They have survived, safe and
sound. They just have to get back to Andy. Fortunately, the garbage
truck that collects the trash from Andy’s street is just leaving.

Coda
Woody’s emotional goal from the very beginning has been to keep
everyone together. In the end, he abandons his goal of them all
staying with Andy and writes him a note, so they all end up at
Bonnie’s. They have a new kid to play with them and the final shot is
of all of Andy’s toys together on the porch at Bonnie’s house.

Don’t Try This at Home

You know those shows that tell you that what you are about to see is
performed by trained stuntmen and that it shouldn’t be tried at home
under any circumstances? Well, we’re giving you the same
recommendation.

Master the Fundamentals

To be successful in this field, you need to master the craft of writing
for animation. The level of mastery that we are talking about is built
on getting the basics right. This might not sound as fun as doing the
wacky stuff and writing the funny gags that you’ve thought of, but the
better you are at the tools in this book, the more competent your
scripts will be.
Let us give you an example. When Paul was younger, he decided
to take up tennis. He watched Wimbledon and was captivated when
the players played a tricky but spectacular shot. When he started
playing, he discovered that he was really good at a backhand drop
shot. He loved it when he got the opportunity to play it, and the other
player would run toward the net without a chance of getting to the
ball in time. What he couldn’t understand is why the tennis coach
was so set on making sure that everyone could do a competent
forehand drive. To Paul, this was the most boring, run-of-the-mill shot
in the arsenal of tennis shots. But when it came to playing actual
matches, it turns out that the forehand drive is an important
fundamental. Paul would watch forehand drives sail past him time
and time again, desperately hoping for a chance to play the
backhand drop shot—the opportunity for which might come up twice
a set.
 Think of the tools in this book as a selection of important basics
that you can use all the time. It will be no good coming up with a
great scene that’s really funny but it doesn’t fit within a total story
structure (unless you’re writing a sketch). Master the tools of the
trade. Your ability to craft a great physical gag or c reate fascinating
characters will still be there and will shine even brighter when you
place them into your solid script.

Big Movies, Big Teams

Movies like Frozen and Toy Story 3 do break away from a lot of the
real basics in storytelling, and a lot of writers will tell you why they
think Frozen doesn’t work. Try telling that to the zillions of kids who
think it’s the greatest movie ever. Now, take some time and watch
the credits at the end of any major animation movie. What we want
you to do is look at the writing staff involved. In most cases, there will
be several people credited with the script, but there is often also a
Head of Story or a Script Editor. Look for anything that implies writing
or stories and you will see that a whole host of people have been
involved in getting the script from concept to screen. In most cases,
these will be people with a strong background in storytelling who
have mastered the basics. Between them, they will have told enough
stories to have a deep story instinct and know when you can bend
the rules and when you need to rely on the fundamentals.
 Chapter 25
HOW TO LAUNCH YOUR CAREER

If you talk to writers of animation, you will find that each of them has
a different story about how they cracked their way into the industry.
For some, it would have come through social networking and others
an accidental meeting; some might have been working in another
area of animation (a good friend of ours was a production manager
first), and others might have been pitching new show ideas at a
conference. There is no one way to get your big break. If you’re
trying to launch your career, we recommend that you try all of the
above and anything else you can think of. So, what’s our top tip?
Write the best sample script you can. Preferably more than one.
We are asked time and time again how you land your first writing job,
as if there is a magic formula. The magic formula is having good
sample scripts that you can send out. In that respect, the previous
parts of this book are much more important than this chapter. They
can guide you toward writing the knockout script you need. For a
producer to take a risk on you, you have to be able to prove you can
write and your sample script is how you do that.
It’s important to clarify here what “risk” the producer is taking when
he commissions a new writer. Understanding how the industry works
will give you a much clearer idea of why it is so hard to land that first
job. The path you take if you want to write a movie is a little different
to the one you take if you want to write episodic television, but if
you’re going to make a living as a writer of animation, chances are
you are going to work in both. You might need to write several
episodes of a TV show before anyone will read your movie scripts.
Also, the development stage of a movie can be long and slow, and
writing episodes for a TV show is a good way to keep writing,
learning, and supplementing your income during that process.

Bonus Material
While you are working in episodic television, you will also be
networking and meeting people in the industry. Everyone you meet
will talk to others who work in animation; and the more people who
like you, the more work you will get. Remember, this includes those
who are only just starting their career, the interns and office juniors of
today will be the producers and directors of tomorrow.

Writing Episodic Television

When a show goes into production, there is an incredibly tight
schedule that the show runs to. As a writer, your first job is normally
to pitch ideas for an episode that you would like to write. If they like
one of your ideas, you’ll be asked to expand this to a one-page
premise, where you summarize how the plot will develop in your
proposed episode. Once the “powers that be” (usually the producers
and the head writers) are happy with that premise and want to see it
as an episode, you get commissioned. Congratulations, you have a
job and a contract is issued.
The next stage is usually to write an outline for your episode. This
is longer than the premise and will include the individual scene
headings. The outline is usually around four to six pages for a ten-
minute show. You will then keep revising the outline until everyone is
happy that the story is working. Once everyone is happy with the
story, you then move on to first draft script. Once you are at script
stage, there is a second-draft script that deals with any structural
problems that have arisen and a script polish that normally involves
making final adjustments to dialogue. At each stage of scripting, you
will receive feedback and notes from the various “powers that be.”
Each show is different, but these “powers” can include head writers,
producers, the director, broadcasters, and educational advisors.
At last, the final draft of the script is delivered. This process will
normally take around five or six weeks.
Six weeks might sound like a long time to write a ten-minute
episode of a cartoon, but it can be a frantic time. You won’t be writing
for that full six weeks as you will often be waiting for feedback and
sometimes the feedback is delayed. Often, the feedback will seem
inconvenient as your episode will need a restructure. This may take
longer than you expected and sometimes will appear late in the
process.
While unexpected changes can be annoying, remember the head
writers, and the producers will be juggling up to eight scripts at the
same time from the whole team of writers. They will be trying to
make all of the stories work together, they will want a good variety of
themes, locations, and characters across the series. They might also
be dealing with budgetary issues and marketing requirements
(remember all those departments we told you about?). There is also
a delivery schedule, where the team need to complete scripts on
time. This schedule will vary from show to show, but in recent series
the normal delivery rate has been one completed script a week.
Once your episode has been delivered, it will go out to the
storyboard artists who will start the visual process, and it will also be
recorded by the voice artists. The voice artists are booked when an
episode is commissioned, so any delay with your script can cost the
production company cancellation fees for both actors and the
recording studio.
While the process on each show will vary slightly, you can now see
difficulties in the process and the importance of delivering a script on
schedule. This is why producers are often reluctant to give new
writers a try. You are untested and they have no idea how you will
cope with last-minute restructures or how fast you can deliver a
script if the notes are delayed. Head writers will be the ones who
have to spend the weekend rewriting a script that didn’t work in the
end, so they tend to only work with writers they trust.
All of this means that the way you land your first job is to go from
being an untested writer to a writer who is considered to be a safe
pair of hands. And for that, once again, you need good sample
scripts. The more outstanding your scripts are, the better it is. Some
shows will ask you to write an “audition” script as well, to see if you
“get” that particular show. Don’t be offended if you’re asked to do
this. The fact that a production company has taken the time to offer
you a chance and is going to read your script is a massive
opportunity.

Writing a Movie
First a reality check. To date, we have never heard of a writer
bringing an unsolicited script for an animated movie to a production
company, and the movie has made it to the screen in the way that
writer imagined at the beginning. This might have happened
somewhere, but we’ve never heard of it.
An animated movie might start off in any number of ways. It could
be a visual concept, a character des ign, a book, an existing TV
show, a game, or just someone’s vague idea. The way you normally
end up writing a movie is that someone comes to you with their idea
and they commission you to write it. More often than not, this wasn’t
your idea in the first place. As we’ve said before, animation is a
collaborative medium.
If you want to be commissioned to write a movie script, you need to
prove that you can do it. If you can prove that you can structure a
good story, make people laugh, and make people feel for your
characters across a script that is 80–100 pages long, you have a
better chance of landing the job. Like working in television, you’re
going to need a sample script.
 The writing process is pretty much the same as an episode from a
TV show. You will most likely write a premise, several drafts of an
outline, and probably several drafts of the script. One of the key
differences is that you may not have a deadline. Quite often the rest
of the production process will not be booked until everyone has
signed off on the script. This means that it can be a lengthy process
and patience is essential—the reason why a lot of movie writers also
write episodic television.

Writers’ Groups
A writers’ group is a group of like-minded people who all want to be
better writers and joining such a group is a great way to make sure
your sample scripts are up to scratch. As part of the group, you write
scripts (or outlines for scripts), send them to each other, read the
scripts, and give each other feedback. These can be people that you
meet up with on a personal level, but they can also be an online
group that uses a forum or even video conferencing.
The one thing you need when you are starting out is honest
feedback. It’s great getting your family and friends to read your work,
but there are three reasons why you should not go to them for
feedback:

1. Family and friends rarely give you the brutally honest feedback
that you need. But, you will find that members of a writers’ group
want to prove they understand story principles, so will only be too
happy to point out where they think you’ve gone wrong.
2. If your family or friends give you brutal feedback, there is a high
chance you will take it personally. You might end up having some
heated exchanges in your writers’ group, but it doesn’t really
matter.
3. Unless your family members are aspiring writers, or work in the
TV and film industry, they probably don’t know which bits of
feedback are most useful.
This might make a writers’ group sound like a hostile environment,
and in one respect it is. They will tell you what they don’t like about
your script. But that is exactly what you need. When you’re writing
for a living, directors, producers, and other writers will be highlighting
these problem areas for you. Until you get there, you need someone
else to give you that feedback. It also toughens you up for the
feedback you’ll get when you’re working!
Once you are in a writers’ group, there a few things you can do to
make your time as effective as possible.

1. When you give feedback, be prepared for the fact that the other
person might disagree with your notes. This can be frustrating if
you can see where someone is going wrong, but the best you can
do is try to help them and then let it go. Some people just don’t
want to make the changes; they just want to hear how good their
script is (don’t be that person).
2. When you get feedback, make a note of all of it but don’t assume
that all of it is right. Everyone will have a vision of what they think
you should do with your script, but it’s you that has to decide on
what story you want to tell.
3. The group is there to help you discern if your story is working or
not. If your story isn’t working, it should help you find the
weaknesses but it’s up to you to fix it yourself. You might use
some of the suggestions that you hear, but don’t feel like you have
to use it all. As the writer, you need to bring the whole story
together and make it work.

Networking
Once you’re in a writers’ group and you’ve got some great sample
scripts, the next thing you need to do is get people to read your
scripts. This requires networking. Talk to as many people as possible
and use social media as much as you can. Make friends in the
industry. Even when you have a friend that is keen to read your
script, it might take longer than you expect for them to get around to
it. Sometimes months. Now, you should see the importance of
having a really great script. It’s going to take a lot of effort to get
someone to read your work; the last reaction you want your script to
illicit is, “This is terrible! I never want to read this person’s stuff
again!” If this happens, you need to start both the writing and the
networking all over again.
When someone in the industry reads your work and likes it, the
most likely response is, “Have you got anything else I can read?”
They want to make sure that your script isn’t just a one-off. This is
why you need to keep writing and have as many great scripts in your
drawer (or on your hard drive) as you can.

What to do While You’re Trying to Get Your Big

Break
As you can see, getting your break might take a while. Fortunately,
there are more opportunities than ever before to work in animation.
There are children’s channels, TV movies, streaming services,
theatrical releases, and now online content. This means there are
lots of script opportunities as well as other jobs inside the industry. It
might take a while to get people to read your stories, but if they know
you as someone they’ve already worked with, they’re more likely to
listen to you. If you can’t get a job straight away, become an intern or
a runner. One writer we know started off as a runner and then landed
a job in the script department. Initially, he was just photocopying and
compiling scripts, but then moved into script editing and soon landed
his first job as a writer.
Lastly, you may be wondering about getting an agent. You should
pursue this as well as the other areas that we have suggested, as an
agent can accelerate your career. But don’t get disheartened if you
can’t get one to start with. Agents make their money from writers and
directors (or performers) who are working. They know how hard it is
for a writer to get that first job. The cold hard fact is, they don’t want
to do that work unless they’re certain you’re going to earn a lot of
money. Ideally, they want to sign you just after you become
successful so they don’t have to lay all the ground work. This might
seem unfair, but look at it from their point of view. Would you want to
do all that work of landing someone their first job only to find out that
they’re not going to stick with it? Cultivate relationships with agents
alongside all your other networking. It is time well spent, and the
good ones will give you advice along the way, even if they’re not
ready to sign you yet.
 Chapter 26
FINAL WORD

After more than twenty years of writing professionally, we still get

excited about creating something new. The moment, at the end of
the day, when we realize that something exists that didn’t when we
started that morning is simply magical.
It would be easy to forget that twenty years ago, that blank page
was something we considered to be intimidating. The pressure to not
only fill it with something but something that would be considered
good enough to put on a screen could be overwhelming. There are
times when ideas just write themselves, words just spill out of the
characters’ mouths, and every scene dissolves seamlessly into the
next. Then there are other times when coming up with the simplest
idea can feel like you are pulling teeth. That’s when the principles
and tools that we have outlined in this book really come into their
own, because now, when you’re stuck, all you need to do is work out
which is the right tool to use.
This comes with a word of warning though, that is, finding the right
tool isn’t always easy. We have often spent long hours using the
wrong tool for the job. We recently spent most of a day trying to
apply act two principles to a story that wasn’t working only to
discover that the problem was that we didn’t have a central
character. The tools in this book can help you a lot, but unfortunately
there isn’t a shortcut. If it was easy, many of the blockbuster
animations that we see at the movie theaters wouldn’t take five years
to make. The good news is that the more you do this, the easier it
gets.
The world of animation is an exciting place to be, with advances in
technology constantly pushing the boundaries of what is possible. It
is also a medium where storytelling techniques continue to evolve
and both comedy and drama explore new frontiers. Animation caters
for a wide audience, from the simplest preschool concepts, to high-
budget animations and subversive artistic productions. In such a big
world, it is important to remember that no one writer is the complete
package. As your career progresses, you will find that your writing
voice starts to emerge and you will discover your strengths. We
encourage you to develop those strengths and abilities and work out
how to best use them, so that you can find your place in—and
contribute to—this exciting world. The only way to do that is to write.
So, start writing and keep writing and then write some more. The
world of animation needs you.
 Appendix A
SCRIPT FORMAT

When you start writing scripts, you’ll need to familiarize yourself with
the script format and terminology that is used in scriptwriting.
Scriptwriting software will move you effortlessly through the format
as you write, but it’s always a good idea to know what it is you want
your audience to see. The more familiar you are with the
terminology, the more dynamic and professional your script will look.
You can see examples of script format in Figures 19 and 23, and we
have covered the basics in Chapter 18, but this appendix gives you a
comprehensive guide to all of the script elements that are available
to you.

Scene Headings
You will always begin each scene with a scene heading. Scene
headings are in capital letters and perform the following functions:

a) Tells the reader whether the scene is inside or outside

b) Tells the reader where the scene is taking place
c) Tells the reader what time of day it is

Let’s start with inside or outside:

EXT. represents a scene that is taking place outside.
INT. represents a scene that is taking place inside.
You then follow that with the location of the scene, so the scene
heading could expand to:
 INT. JIMMY’S HOUSE
You would then follow that with the time of day your scene takes
place:
INT. JIMMY’S HOUSE – DAY
The reader would know that this scene is going to take place inside
Jimmy’s house during the day. Or, if you wanted to be more
specific, you can include an area within the location by adding a
slash:
INT. JIMMY’S HOUSE/BATHROOM – DAY

Action
You would then follow your scene heading with what is called the
action or stage direction. The action tells the reader what they are
seeing within the scene. The action is always aligned to the left
margin and uses standard upper- and lowercase letters. A scene
heading followed by some action might look like this (note the line
space between the heading and the action):
INT. JIMMY’S HOUSE/BATHROOM – DAY
Jimmy looks in the mirror as he brushes his teeth, Jenny
appears behind him.

Character
The next thing we need is dialogue. But before we get to the
character’s words, we need to know who is doing the talking. At first
glance, the character names might look like they are centered but
they are indented and left aligned. There is no need to know the
exact position as your script writing application will do this for you
automatically.
We know the location, the time, and what we can see in the scene.
If we want to continue from the previous example, the script now
looks like this:
 INT. JIMMY’S HOUSE/BATHROOM – DAY
Jimmy looks in the mirror as he brushes his teeth, Jenny appears
behind him.
JENNY
We now know that it’s Jenny who is about to speak.

Dialogue
The dialogue has its own set of margins, indented from the action,
and is in upper- and lowercase. It looks like this:
JENNY
Any chance I could use the sink?
Usually this is enough, a name followed by a line or a few lines of
dialogue, but sometimes, before the actual dialogue, you may want
to use some of these abbreviations:
(V.O.)
The abbreviation for Voice-Over (V.O.) is used when the person
speaking the dialogue can be heard by the audience, but not by
anyone in the scene. For example:
JENNY (V.O.)
I never understood why Jimmy would
always take so long brushing his teeth.

O.S. (O.O.S. or O.C.)

This is the abbreviation for Off Screen (or sometimes Out Of Shot or
Off Camera). O.S. is used when the character is speaking off screen
but the other characters within the scene can hear them. For
example: if they are outside a door:
JENNY (O.S.)
Okay Jimmy, I’ll wait outside till you’ve finished brushing your
teeth.
 Parenthetical
Parenthetical refers to a word, or words, in brackets that are inserted
between the character name and the line of dialogue (or sometimes
between two lines of dialogue). These indicate how a character
should deliver their lines. For example:
JIMMY
(angry)
Why did you eat my cookies!?
(sad)
I loved those cookies . . .
You can use emotions such as (happy) (excited) or (exasperated),
although we recommend that you only use these if absolutely
necessary. Voice actors are pretty good at getting the emotions right
and something as simple as (sadly) won’t really sum up the subtlety
that they will be aiming for.
You can also use things that might be going on physically, like (out
of breath), (chewing/talking with mouthful), or (through loud hailer).
The key point is to make sure that the words in parentheses only
relate to how the line is delivered—this is not the place to sneak in a
stage direction.
Now for a couple of dialogue devices that may come in handy.

The Beat
Usually written as (BEAT). Use this if you want a pause or an
interruption in the dialogue. Often used for comic effect when it takes
a moment for a character to realize what another character is saying
or what is actually going on:
JENNY
Kate has the most stupid ugly nose
I have ever seen. . .
 (BEAT)
She’s standing behind me isn’t she?

The Incomplete Sentence

There are two types of incomplete sentence and each one is
indicated in a different way.
Sometimes a character just trails off in the middle of a sentence.
This can be because they have seen something that shocks or
distracts them, or possibly they are just the sort of people who lose
focus. This type of incomplete sentence is finished with an ellipsis
(three dots . . .).
JENNY
I was just thinking, about the
Ummm . . . you know, the errrr. . .
The other type of incomplete sentence comes when someone gets
interrupted as they are speaking. This could be because of another
character speaking, a loud sound or an action that’s taking place
within the scene. In this case, we put the unsaid words in brackets.
This way the performer knows what the full sentence would have
been, had they been able to finish speaking:
JENNY
Oh I do love a brisk walk
especially when it’s a [lovely
day]

Jenny falls down an open manhole.

Directing on the Page

That is the basics and, most of the time, that will be all that you
need. The scene heading, the action, and the dialogue cover the
essentials required to write your script. There will be times however,
that you feel like you need to “direct on the page.” This should only
be done if you need to clarify how a scene could be played out and
only if it is relevant to the story. It is not our place as writers to direct,
although sometimes it might be necessary to include a close-up to
give emphasis to a piece of information, or a point-of-view shot so
we know what a character is seeing. The following devices are all
available to you, but should be used sparingly (unless you are the
director). A script that lists every shot (or one that directs every line
of dialogue) will mark you out as an amateur.

Shots
A shot is a single continuous angle, or view, that only shows a
specific part of what is happening in a scene. There are a wide
variety of shots available to a director, but as a writer there are a few
basic shots that can be used to inform the reader what it is you want
them to see in the frame.

CLOSE-UP:
This is usually abbreviated to CU. This is a shot where an object or,
more usually, a person’s face fills the screen. The script might read
as the following:
CU: Jenny looks shocked.
Figure 29 shows a close-up of The Judge in ParaNorman, but you
can go closer with an Extreme Close-Up (ECU). Figure 30 shows an
Extreme Close-Up of Norman from the same film.
Figure 29 ParaNorman, August 5, 2012.

Figure 30 ParaNorman, August 5, 2012.

ANGLE or ON:

This directs the camera to be pointed (or angled toward) a particular

character or object. It can be used to give emphasis without going for
the full close-up. An example would be:
ON Jimmy as he turns around to face Jenny.
Figure 31 shows an example of how the “Angle” or “On” would
work in a scene. This shows a scene from Despicable Me. Here, the
camera is focused on the cookie bowl while a conversation
continues in the background. This action could be missed if the
camera wasn’t pointed directly at it, especially as the characters in
the scene are looking in the other direction.

Figure 31 Despicable Me, June 27, 2010.

POV:
We see what the character sees from their point of view, for
example:
JENNY’S POV: Jimmy staring back at her as he cleans his teeth.
ESTABLISHING SHOT:
A shot that tells us where the following scene is going to take place.
An establishing shot of the New York skyline, for example, would
indicate that the next scene or sequence will take place in New
York. It can be more specific than that, an establishing shot of a
large building with a sign overhead that says, “Bank,” would
indicate that we are about to go into a scene set in a bank. An
example would be:
EXT. THE WHITE HOUSE – DAY
ESTABLISHING SHOT of the White House.
INT. THE WHITE HOUSE/OVAL OFFICE – DAY
 The President sits at the desk.
Figure 32 shows an example of an establishing shot from Cars. We
see this shot outside of the courthouse, which establishes where
the following action will be taking place.

Figure 32 Cars, May 26, 2006.

Transitions
After you have finished your scene, you will then need to transition
to another scene. And, of course, there are several ways of doing
that. These are in capital letters and are aligned to the right margin.

CUT TO:

This is the most commonly used transition and is a change of scene

over one frame. You can usually omit the CUT TO (although some
productions include them for timing purposes). If there isn’t any other
kind of transition at the end of the scene, CUT TO is always implied.

SMASH CUT TO:

Like the CUT TO but faster, quite often used for comedic effect.

DISSOLVE TO:
As one scene fades out, the next scene fades in. This is most
commonly used if there is a passage of time between scenes.

MATCH CUT TO:

When the following shot is almost the same as the shot before. For
example: Your first shot is a painting of a seaside scene on a poster.
Then you MATCH CUT to the next shot, and it’s the ACTUAL
seaside that the painting represents. Add a couple of <SEAGULL
CALLS> and you have a perfect MATCH CUT.

Effects
To denote a sound or visual effect, use pointy brackets on either side
of the suggested sound or visual effect, usually inserted within the
action. For example:

Jimmy lights the fuse, it <FIZZLES> for a few seconds. Then

<KABOOM!> the firework <EXPLODES> in front of him.

The Montage
This is a useful device to denote progress or time passing. If you
have an eleven-minute script and someone needs to learn to play
the ukulele or become a master at Kung Fu, you cannot show this in
real time. So, you would use a MONTAGE. A series of short fast-cut
scenes with appropriate music. A great example is the Montage
Song in South Park1 (see Season 6 Episode 2: Asspen).
A MONTAGE can also be used as a FLASHBACK. The opening
sequence in the film Up has been referred to as a cultural
milestone. It shows Ellie and Carl’s relationship till her sad demise
and it’s a masterclass in the power of judicious editing alongside
beautifully written music.

Notes
1 DVDA, “Montage,” South Park, Season 6 Episode 2: Asspen, Comedy Central, First
Broadcast March 13, 2002, TV Program.
 Appendix B
SAMPLE SCRIPT BIBLE

Understanding a script bible is a fundamental part of writing for

animated TV shows. If you are working on a show, these will be
provided to you by the production company. If you are creating your
own show, you will need to write one of your own so that everyone
understands your show and can visualize how it will play out. There
is no set format for a script bible, but they usually include the
following:

1. An introduction to the show concept. This will tell people

everything they need to know about the basic concept and flavor
of the show.
2. Descriptions of the main characters.
3. Descriptions of the main locations within the show.
4. Sample storylines.

Script bibles normally evolve as the show progresses, so if you are

starting work on a brand-new series, chances are it will be pretty
short. If there are already 100 episodes out there, it might be quite
extensive as new characters, locations, and story summaries are
added.
This appendix shows a sample script bible for your reference. It is
for a show that we pitched several years ago that never came to
fruition. It is however, a good example of the kind of script bible you
can expect to work from—or the type you need to produce if you’re
creating your own show.

“THE EARTHLINGS HAVE LANDED

!”
An Intergalactic Animated Comedy for Six- to Eight-Year-Olds

by Laura Beaumont Paul Larson

Moving to a new home is never easy . . . making new friends is
always hard . . . but coming to terms with a completely alien
culture, can be a total nightmare. . .
“THE EARTHLINGS HAVE LANDED!”
follows the fortunes of a modern Earth family as they discover a
whole new life . . . on a whole new world.

10 . . . so who is this family?

They’re the Twiggs from Illinois. There’s Molly (14), Matt (12), Gem
(mom) (best not mention her age), and Axl (dad) (as old as he feels).

9 . . . and where is it they’ve landed?

The town of Neptune on the planet Poseidia (head toward the edge
of the known universe and turn left at Pluto). Poseidia is a peace-
loving society, where all creatures are equal, everyone lives in
harmony, and everything is shared. There is no TV, no movies, no
smartphones, and the fastest food you’ll find is a hastily passed plate
of kelp cookies. Poseidia is untainted by consumerism, media hype,
video games, or fashion. Similarity is celebrated and competition is
nonexistent.
How dull is that for a pair of Earth kids? The Poseidians live by a
simple three-part code (again with the dull!):

1. Shoal first, self last.

2. When the tide rises let it come. When it goes out, . . . let it go.
3. Kelp all year, keeps your blowhole clear.
8 . . . did you say blowhole?
Yes, you see the Poseidians are not THAT different to humans. They
walk on two legs and live on the land. But they just happen to be
blue, have domed foreheads, and the previously mentioned
blowhole. Well, that’s how you tend to look when you evolve from
dolphins instead of apes. The Poseidians are enthusiastic, uncynical,
and accepting of everything—everything that is, except change. And
a whole shoal of change has just arrived in the shape of a family
called Twigg.

7 . . . so how did the Twiggs get there?

Good question. Basically . . . they won the latest all new/cutting
edge/reality/fly on the wall/interactive/gameshow: “Blastaway!”
Where viewers vote for the family they’d most like to see surviving
(or not) in outer space (sponsored by the World Space Program and
Snikky-Snax). The idea was that they would be orbiting the Earth in
the Blastmaster 1, a space shuttle with hidden cameras on board
filming them trying to live their normal, day-to-day lives, in space.
Unfortunately, a freak accident sent the shuttle veering off course
and through a wormhole where it crash-landed on the planet
Poseidia.

6 . . . so what is Poseidia like?

Fortunately, the inhabitants of Poseidia breathe oxygen, but other
than that it’s a different world out there.

5 . . . but surely “Blastaway” put an expert on board?

You’d think. Actually . . . the Twiggs did have the opportunity to win
their own robot—courtesy of “Blastaway’s” Build-a-Bot round. But,
due to their lame score, they ended up with a puke-colored swing-bin
on wheels called Cosgrove Glitch the Third.

4 . . . so will the kids make new intergalactic friends?

Of course! There’s Dorsal (female)—(908 podyears), Crustacia
(female)—(899 podyears), and Welk (male)—(700 podyears).

3 . . . and what about the adults?

There are Welk’s parents Mr. Mussel (4,450 podyears) and Mrs.
Mussel (4,200 podyears), and Ms. Gourami (3,000 podyears), the
Shoal School’s only teacher. There’s also Miss Finn (2,602
podyears), who runs the General Store, and the Octopus Counselor
Guy (OCG)—(12,000 podyears), who we only ever see in tentacle-
filled glimpses.

2 . . . so how will the Twiggs fare?

Well . . . they will learn a lot about themselves, their values, and how
to adapt to a different culture. Molly will throw herself into Poseidian
society with gusto. Matt will embark on the mothership of scam-fests.
Gem will try and find an alternative career to designing Apps.
Cosgrove will learn to stop saying, “I didn’t ask to be created!” And
Axl will find that one planet’s incompetent handyman is another
planet’s mysterious and interesting visitor.

1 . . . and what about the Poseidians?

They’ll learn craterloads! Like how to have fun, that competition can
be inspiring, and that someone without a bluey tinge can be
attractive. They’ll also learn that swimming with humans isn’t all it’s
cracked up to be; they’ll learn how to “flip the fin” and tell teachers to
“stick it down their blowhole.” They’ll also learn that looking different
isn’t that scary, that rock’n’roll is good for the sole and, most
importantly, . . .that change isn’t so bad after all.

Lift off!!!
So it’s Twiggs in space—as Britain’s first intergalactic family
embark on their own personal Poseidian Adventure
“THE EARTHLINGS HAVE LANDED!”
The Twiggs are an unremarkable family from an unremarkable town
on an unremarkable planet, which is exactly why they got chosen to
be contestants on everyone’s favorite new/cutting edge/reality/fly on
the wall/interactive/gameshow: “ Blastaway! ”

Characters
Earthlings
Molly (14) Molly is an optimistic fourteen-year-old whose main aim
in life is to keep her crazy family from getting even more crazy. Molly
is good-hearted and supportive and always tries to see the best in
everyone. She’s bright and clever and a hard worker, ever hopeful
that one day her dad will fix the Blastmaster 1 so the Twiggs can
return to Earth. Having said that, Molly is the one person that truly
tries to embrace the Poseidian lifestyle, but it’s an uphill struggle
getting anyone else in her family to join in. Molly is very fond of her
newfound Poseidian buddies but she still misses all her friends back
home. So, until she finds herself back there once again, she will
continue writing her log and doing everything in her power to
embrace her new life.

Matt (12) Matt is a twelve-year-old serial prankster and the bane of

Molly’s life. A chaotic cocktail: two parts Bart Simpson, one part Tom
Sawyer with a twist of Cartman thrown in. Matt is impulsive and
determined. If he has a new idea or a plan or a scheme, there is
nothing anyone can do to stand in his way. And he’s not always
alone. Matt’s persuasive energy draws people to him like moths to a
flame, so there are always people willing to go along for the ride . . .
until they realize they are heading down the side of a black-run
crater or they’ve just handed him their allowance! If Matt could use
his power for good instead of chaos, he could be the president of the
United States, but unfortunately Matt will always be drawn toward
the dark side . . . as it’s always going to be way more fun!
Gem (Mom) (Best not mention the age) Back on Earth, Gem was
an App designer. Her most famous App was Strawberry Squash,
which, due to the phenomenal success of Candy Crush, ended up in
the App equivalent of the bargain pail, something she has never
quite got over. On Earth, Gem would always pride herself in her
ability to juggle home life and work but there is no call for Apps in
Poseidia, so she is constantly trying to channel her creativity into
designing new things that she hopes the people of Poseidia will like.
Gem is a perfectionist and can get very anxious if things are out of
place, so her chaotic family will always be her ultimate challenge.

Axl (As old as he feels) Axl is the least handy handyman that
anyone could ever imagine, but he has big dreams. He believes that
one day he will fix the Blastmaster 1. Even though most of his efforts
so far have resulted in either an explosion or something falling off the
ship’s exterior. His methods might be a bit off the wall (like most of
the pictures he’s tried to hang up), but Axl is ever optimistic and
always happy to lend people a hand. He is charming and childlike
and loves his family. Just don’t ask him to put up any shelves.

Cosgrove Glitch the Third: A Robot Cosgrove is the family’s robot.

He was designed in the Build-a-Bot round on Blastaway. He speaks
like a character from Downton Abbey, is pretentious and arrogant,
and clearly feels superior to everyone and everything. He has only
been programmed with the contents of “Mrs Battenberg’s Book of
Home Baking and Household Management” so is incredibly good at
cooking and a great help with the household chores—although, it
goes without saying, an engineering droid would have been much
more useful. He can’t repair the space shuttle but he can get a mean
shine on the particle accelerator.

Poseidians Poseidians basically look like humans with a dolphin-

centric twist. Domed foreheads, small blowholes, and a bluey tinge is
pretty much all that separates young Poseidians from Humans. As
they get older, their features become more extreme as can be seen
by the large moving tentacle that grows out of Miss Finn’s head. The
language is different but courtesy of Esperanto Ear Drops,
(administered to the humans when they arrived) the Twiggs can now
understand every word that’s said . . . and so can we!

Dorsal (Female)—(908 Podyears) Dorsal is a young Poseidian UFO

spotter. She’s been prophesying the Earthlings will land for a very
long time, she’s written essays on the subject, done speculative
drawings, walked around with a placard and now she’s hit pay-dirt!
She is so happy to not only finally meet Earthlings but also be their
friend. Her fellow Pod mates have been putting up with her UFO
mania for so long; they were pretty much convinced that she was as
mad as a bag of Squiddles (small hyperactive Poseidia creatures
that don’t like being in bags). But with the arrival of the Earthlings,
things are beginning to change.

Crustacia (Female)—(899 Podyears) Crustacia is very direct, blunt,

and outspoken. Unusual character traits considering she’s both
Poseidian and the healer in the shoal. Crustacia is constantly
exploring alternative healing methods from coral back rubs to kelp
flotation tanks and is always on the lookout for folk to help her test
them, which can be quite a traumatic experience. Crustacia has no
time for malingerers and believes in tough love. She is quick-witted,
condescending, and sarcastic.

Welk (Male)—(700 Podyears) Welk is always desperate to impress.

Despite his young age, his role in the shoal is “ambassador” to the
grown-ups. In oth er words, he has to keep the communications
open between parent and child, a very important role in Poseidian
society. Welk is proud of his role and takes it very seriously indeed.
Unfortunately, most of his peers aren’t very happy about their antics
being reported to their mums and dads, and it’s not long before Matt
is pointing out that on Earth an “ambassador” to the grown-ups
would be called something like a “tattle tale.” Welk has a sneaky
admiration for the Earth children and always tries to be part of the
gang . . .

Mr. Mussel (Male): Mayor of Poseidia Mr. Mussel is Welk’s father

and a walking talking textbook of all things Poseidian. His job is to
look after the Twigg family, help them fit into their new shoal as
painlessly as possible, and acclimatize them with the locals down at
the Kelp-U-Like. Unfortunately, his ambitions outweigh his natural
ability, and although he tries to protect the culture of his planet
vehemently, his attempts to try and do everything by the book can
sometimes lead to total confusion.

Mrs. Gourami (Female): The Shoal School Teacher Mrs. Gourami is

Matt’s nemesis and the only person on Poseidia that he’s scared of.
She is stern and strict and seems to be able to read his mind. But
she does have a dry sense of humor and can sometimes surprise
her pupils with energetic displays of extreme Poseidian sports.

Miss Finn: Owner of “Kelp! Kelp! Kelp!” Miss Finn runs the Neptune
General Store (aka “Kelp! Kelp! Kelp!”). Although at first glance she
appears to be one of the more extreme characters in Poseidia
(mainly due to the moving tentacle on the top of her head), once you
get to know her, you realize that she is one of the most practical,
smart, and knowledgeable characters there. She is very proud of her
store and loves nothing more than trying to get hold of the “un-
sourceable.” When not there, she’ll be out on the surface of Poseidia
looking for new things to sell or use as ingredients. At night, she will
sit on her roof, Kelpfizz in hand, looking up at the stars through a
telescope.
Octopus Counselor Guy (OCG)—(2,000 Podyears) We never see
him properly, but can perceive roughly what he looks like through
glimpses of writhing tentacles. But, by means of a video-com, he will
help the Twiggs work through any traumas they may have, record
their activities, and register their complaints (these usually revolve
around Poseidia’s main source of nutrition—the ubiquitous kelp).

The Firds The Firds are a flock/shoal of crazy creatures. They are
like a cross between a bird and a fish, and they fly around creating
general havoc. Occasionally, they will murmurate into extraordinary
shapes in the sky, . . . but most of the time they just create havoc.
Having fun is their one aim, and, in the world of Poseidia, they have
achieved almost sacred status. Which means they can do whatever
they want and no one is allowed to stop them. The Poseidians just
try to keep a cheery exterior, no matter how irritating the Firds
become.

The Locations and Sets

Despite the huge theme of “outer space,” the show would be
contained to only a few locations. Ones that are relatable to our
audience. There is a very ocean-centric look to Poseidia but without
actually being underwater. The dwellings are reminiscent of 1950s
homes but with a sea-life twist.

The Blastmaster 1
The Blastmaster 1 is the space shuttle that the Twiggs headed off
into outer space in. It was sponsored by Snikky-Snax so there is a
massive Snikky-Snax logo on the side. The engine was seriously
damaged in the crash-landing, but most of the body work and
internal workings are still in place and it functions as the Twigg’s
home. Even though the Twiggs were offered a Poseidian dwelling,
they prefer to live in the Blastmaster, as it reminds them of Earth. Axl
is constantly trying to repair it (“only 876 more things to fix and we’ll
be off!”), so he is usually in the engine room. Its interior could be
described as “distressed space age”—a bit like a Vintage Airstream
Trailer. All the kids have their own bedrooms, plus there is a
communal kitchen/dining area as well as a pole for people to slide
down to get from one level to the next.

The Kelp-U-Like
The Kelp-U-Like is the nearest thing Poseidians have to a Diner. It’s
where everyone gathers for fun and entertainment and any strange
Poseidian traditions that need a bit of leg room. It’s the home of the
“Bell That Is Never Rung” and any number of ancient Poseidian
artifacts. Mr. Mussel is usually there to make sure everything runs
smoothly and there’s no trouble. There is a small stage and the
menu is mainly kelp related. Kelp Burger, Kelp in a Basket, Kelp
Splits, and, if you’re lucky, a Kelpabocker Glory: . . . SO get on down!

The Shoal School

The Shoal School is the school for Poseidian children. The age
range is from 200 to 2,000 podyears. Mrs. Gourami is the teacher.
Poseidian children of all ages go to the Shoal School to learn how to
be good Poseidian citizens. There is a Poseidian equivalent to most
Earth subjects; History, Geography, and Math, and so on. Plus, there
is a large playing field outside where the pupils can engage in sports.
The pupils of the Shoal School can even learn Poseidian, a peculiar
guttural language that is rarely spoken any more, mainly because it
makes people throw up while they are speaking it.

Kelp! Kelp! Kelp!

There is a local general store where anything you need can be either
bought or ordered. It sells food, clothes, and household items and
the “appliance creatures” everyone uses to run their homes (which
are all displayed in a back room). It’s run by Miss Finn, who
manages to get most things people need even though it’s a mystery
how she does it. [Note: there have been sightings of shady
characters handing things to her in the dead of night and small
parachutes coming down from the sky near her backyard.]

Poseidian Dwellings
In a typical Poseidian dwelling, the building materials are reminiscent
of anything you might find under the sea. Rock, coral, and driftwood
being the main components, combined with a smattering of space
debris. It’s open plan with dangly seaweed curtains and sea sponge
pillows. Furnishings are usually seashell related.
Recycling is big news on Poseidia so nothing is wasted, and there
would also be a “Flintstonian” usage of smaller sealike creatures as
household appliances and pets. This will give scope for visual jokes
and fill in the gaps where there would usually be the need for
something powered by electricity. Examples might include creatures
that eat rubbish, one that emits music, one that emits light, and one
that has a mouth like a washing machine (some of the more wealthy
residents have one of those).

Beyond the Dwellings

As soon as you leave the town of Neptune, you are pretty much in
something that looks like a desert, but an alien planet desert. There
are mounds and craters, kelp forests, kelp farms, coral swamps, salt
streams, and various places that are ripe for exploration and play.

Episodes
The episodes would be character driven and focus on Matt, Molly,
and their Poseidian friends, but the grown-ups will always be a big
part of the action. Poseidia’s tranquil culture is both figuratively and
literally alien to the Earthly, streetwise, tech-reliant, dysfunctional
Twiggs.
The plots will often involve the Twiggs acclimatizing themselves to
their new life on an alien fish planet OR their hapless attempts to
“Earth-up” Poseidia whether Poseidia is ready for it or not. There will
be new sports to compete in, new music to come to terms with and
strange fashion, traditions, and habits to embrace.

When Worlds Collide, . . . Compromise!

The show would have an energetic “kitsch-ness” with license to
enjoy and celebrate the “outer space” genre, rather like Futurama.
The world of Poseidia will have its own look, creatures, rules, and
rituals giving us the opportunity to explore diversity, embracing
change, making new friends, compromise, and creativity.

Stories
The Firds
Gem is fed up with the Firds. They fly in crazy shoals over her
garden and knock down her carefully laid-out garden ornaments.
Gem asks Cosgrove to SHOO them away, which he does.
Unfortunately, Welk is watching and reports Cosgrove to the
authorities. It seems he has committed a serious Poseidian crime.
“Firds are allowed to go wheresoever they please” quotes Welk.
So, what will happen to Cosgrove? He’ll be taken to court and tried
under Poseidian law. Fortunately, Matt decides he’ll make an
excellent defense lawyer but Mr. Mussel is determined to get his first
ever successful prosecution.

Puffball
Matt is really excited that there is going to be a Puffball tournament.
But then, he finds out that a Puffball is a cheerful little creature that
looks like a pufferfish and the game is noncompetitive. “What is the
point of playing??!!” He complains. “You can’t kick the ball and you
can’t win the game!”
Unfortunately, his attempts to liven up the game result in a very
angry Puffball. No one has ever made a Puffball angry before (and
people don’t like them when they’re angry). Watch out, furious
Puffball on the rampage!

Father of Invention
Axl has entered the Poseidian Robot Inventing Contest at the Kelp-
U-Like and is very confident that he will win. Matt and Molly worry
that their dad will fail miserably so they decide to help him. The
family build a life-sized Robot with a remote control—which puts
Cosgrove’s small metal nose out of joint. But all their new Robot
seems to do is fall over, but then Matt has an idea. When they get to
the contest, he will get inside, . . . which is fine until Dorsal’s Robot
challenges him to a duel. Only Cosgrove can save the day!

Shell Club
When Molly decides to start Shell Club—a club where everyone
collects seashells—everyone is excited. There are badges, a
password, and a checklist to tick off all the shells you collect. But
there is one type of shell none of them can find—the beautiful
Poseidian Conch! Even Miss Finn doesn’t know where that can be
found! Poseidia is soon a chaotic hive of collecting activity as the
search for the Conch takes hold. But when Matt eventually finds one
of the rare Conches, he thinks he’s going to be famous. Little does
he know that Miss Finn will go to extraordinary lengths to get the
Conch for her store, . . . and she’s got some friends in very low
places.

The Bell That Is Never Rung

Molly is excited. She’s going to be interviewing Mr. Mussel about the
Un-ringing of the “The Bell That Is Never Rung” for the school
newspaper. Matt offers to be her photographer, although she
suspects that he just wants to try and ring the bell—a grave
Poseidian offence—but he manages to land the job anyway.
Molly sits opposite Mr. Mussel at the Kelp-U-Like as he eats a kelp
burger and drones on about the history of the bell and how sacred it
is to the Poseidians. Matt wants to take a photo of the bell but it is
hidden under a sheet until the ceremony. Matt and Molly are getting
bored when Mr. Mussel spills Kelpchup on his tie and rushes off to
clean it. Matt takes this opportunity to take off the sheet and ring the
bell. Molly goes to stop him, there is a struggle, the bell falls on the
floor, and cracks. They do their best to make it look like the bell is
still under the sheet then they rush out, taking it with them. But will
they manage to repair it before the great Un-ringing Ceremony
begins?

Space Beans
Axl has bought the shopping back from Kelp! Kelp! Kelp! and in it
Matt is fascinated to find a tin of fluorescent beans. There is a knock
at the door. Miss Finn bursts in and tells them that they shouldn’t eat
the beans—they are highly unsuitable for anyone not descended
from sea mammals! Too late. They hear a loud burp, and all turn to
see Matt, sitting at the table with fluorescent bean stains around his
mouth and an empty can in front of him!
Crustacia is really excited! Matt will be ill and she hasn’t had a
patient for ages! Everyone is very relieved that they have a healer on
hand . . . Unfortunately, that healer is Crustacia and Matt is the worst
patient on the planet.
 FILM AND TV PROGRAM
REFERENCES

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Cue Ball Cat—Tom and Jerry (1950), [Short Film] Dir. William Hanna and Joseph
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Aardman Animations, DreamWorks Animation.
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Bradley Raymond, Toby Shelton, Bill Speers, USA: Disney Television Animation.
Walt Disney Feature Animation.
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Annapurna Pictures, Digital One.
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Walt Disney Animation Studios, Walt Disney Pictures.
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2.4.7. Films.
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USA: Walt Disney Productions.
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Württemberg.
The Princess and the Frog (2009), [Film] Dir. Ron Clements, John Musker, USA:
Walt Disney Pictures.
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Productions.
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Annapurna Pictures, Columbia Pictures, Point Grey Pictures, Nitrogen Studios
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Animation, Pacific Data Images (PDI).
Shrek the Third (2007), [Film] Dir. Chris Miller, USA: DreamWorks Animation,
Pacific Data Images (PDI).
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Animations, BBC Bristol.
Zootopia (2016), Dir. Byron Howard, Rich Moore, USA: Walt Disney Pictures.

TV Shows
8 Simple Rules… for Dating My Teenage Daughter (2002), [TV
program] ABC, September 17.
The Adventures of Paddington (2020), [TV program] Nickelodeon, Nick Jnr,
January 20.
Adventure Time (2010), [TV program] Cartoon Network, April 5.
Batman: The Animated Series (1992), [TV program] Fox Kids, September 5.
The Big Bang Theory (2006), [TV program] CBS, May 1.
Black-ish (2014), [TV program] ABC, September 24.
Bob’s Burgers (2011), [TV program] Fox, January 9.
Bob’s Burgers, Sexy Dance Healing (2016), [TV program] Fox, February 21.
Breaking Bad (2008), [TV program] AMC, January 20.
The Bugs Bunny Show (1960), [TV program] ABC, October 11.
The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show (1983), [TV program] CBS, September 17.
Curious George (2006), [TV program] PBS Kids, September 4.
The Deep (2015), [TV program] Family Chrgd, December 1.
Desperate Housewives (2004), [TV program] ABC, October 3.
Dinotrux (2015), [TV program] Netflix, August 14.
Doc McStuffins (2012), [TV program] Disney Junior, March 23.
Dora the Explorer (2000), [TV program] Nickelode on, August 14.
Downton Abbey (2010), [TV program] ITV, September 26.
Everybody Loves Raymond (1996), [TV program] CBS, September 13.
Family Guy (1999), [TV program] Fox, January 31.
Family Guy, Absolutely Babulous (2019), [TV program] Fox, October 13.
Family Guy, Blue Harvest (2007), [TV program] Fox, September 23.
Family Guy, Love, Blactually (2008), [TV program] Fox, September 28.
Fawlty Towers (1975), [TV program] BBC Two, September 19.
The Flintstones (1960), [TV program] ABC, May 1.
Friends (1994), [TV program] NBC, September 22 .
Frasier (1993), [TV program] NBC, September 16.
Fresh Off the Boat (2015), [TV program] ABC, February 4.
Futurama (1999), [TV program] Fox, March 28.
Hong Kong Phooey (1974), [TV program] ABC, September 7.
Jake and the Never Land Pirates (2011), [TV program] Disney Junior, February 14.
King of the Hill (1997), [TV program] Fox, January 12.
Leave it to Beaver (1957), [TV Program] CBS, April 23.
Lego Marvel Superheroes: Maximum Overload (2013), [TV program] Netflix,
November 5.
The Mandalorian (2019), [TV Program] Disney+, November 12.
The Middle (2009), [TV program] ABC, September 30.
Modern Family (2009), [TV program] ABC, September 23.
Paw Patrol (2013), [TV program] TVOKids, August 27.
Paw Patrol, Pups Go for the Gold, (2018) [TV program] Nickelodeon, March 8.
Peppa Pig (2004), [TV program] Channel 5, May 31.
The Phil Silvers Show (1955), [TV program] CBS, September 20.
Rick and Morty (2013), [TV program] Adult Swim, December 2.
The Road Runner Show (1966), [TV program] CBS, September 10.
Salem’s Lot (1979), [TV program] CBS, November 17.
Scooby Doo, Where Are You! (1969), [TV program] CBS, September 13.
Schitt’s Creek (2015), [TV Program] CBC, January 13.
Scrubs (2001), [TV program] NBC, October 2.
Seinfeld (1989), [TV program] NBC, July 5.
Sense8 (2015), [TV program] Netflix, June 5.
Shameless (2004), [TV program] Channel 4, January 13.
Shark Tank (2009), [TV program] ABC, August 9.
The Simpsons (1989), [TV program] Fox, December 17.
The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror (1990), [TV program] Fox, October 25.
South Park (1997), [TV program] Comedy Central, August 13.
Timmy Time (2009), [TV program] BBC, April 6.
Tom and Jerry (1940), [TV program] MGM, February 10.
Top Cat (1961), [TV program] ABC, September 27.
Two and a Half Men (2003), [TV program] CBS, September 22.
Wacky Races (1968), [TV program] CBS, September 14.
Watership Down (2018), [TV program] BBC, December 22.
We Bare Bears (2015), [TV program] Cartoon Network, July 27.
The X Factor (2004), [TV program] ITV, September 4.
 THINKY TIME GUIDE

1. Creating a fantasy show idea.

2. Looking at hyper-reality.
3. Why animation?
4. Why is the goal important to the character?
5. Identifying obstacles.
6. Plotlines: A plots and B plots.
7. How to plot the second act.
8. Three-act structure.
9. Plotting the emotional goal.
10. Character archetypes.
11. Creating a character.
12. Adjusting the drop.
13. Metaphorical family relationships.
14. Creating short film concepts.

Dialogue Workshops Are in Chapter 19

1. Getting down the basics.
2. Character motivation.
3. Voice and attitude.
4. Keeping it visual, increasing the action.
5. Making it brief.
 Case Study Guide
Central Character: Family Guy “Absolutely Babulous”
Three-Act Structure: Zootopia
Three-Act Structure: Paw Patrol “Pups Go for The Gold”
Emotional Goal: Shrek
Writing for an Existing Show: Bob’s Burgers
Short Film: The Meaning of Life
Breaking the Format: Frozen
Breaking the Format: Toy Story 3
 INDEX

2D animation here, here

4/4 Time Signature here
8 Simple Rules here
101 Dalmatians here

Absolutely Babulous here–here

act four
physical goal for here
Toy Story here here
action
with dialogue here–here
scene headings with here
act one here–here, here, here, here
case study
Paw Patrol “Pups Go for The Gold” here–here
Zootopia (Zootropolis) here–here
central and main characters here–here
challenges here, here
community here
environment here
Frozen here–here
functions here–here, here
genre here
goal here–here, here, here–here, here
sympathy for character here–here
Toy Story here here
act structure here
Bob’s Burgers here
The Ring (But Not Scary) here–here
act three here, here–here, here, here
case study
Paw Patrol “Pups Go for The Gold” here
Zootopia (Zootropolis) here–here
challenges of here–here
exciting or dramatic part of story here–here
Frozen here
functions of here–here, here
goal here, here, here, here, here
providing satisfying ending here–here
Toy Story here here
act two here–here, here. See also act four; act one; act three
case study
Paw Patrol “Pups Go for The Gold” here
Zootopia (Zootropolis) here–here
challenges here
end of here–here
Frozen here
functions of here–here, here
goal here, here–here, here–here, here–here, here, here, here
main function of here
mini-goals here
Toy Story here here–here
The Adventures of Paddington here
Adventure Time here, here, here, here
adversity here
Aesop’s Fables here
Aladdin here
An American Tail here
Andy here, here, here, here, here, here, here
animation
business of here–here
cost here
fantasy here–here
hyper-reality here–here
master the craft of writing here
 money here, here, here
purpose here–here
three-act structure in here
type of here
writing here–here
rules here
Anna here, here, here
anthropomorphism here–here. See also character archetypes
creative variations here
making the relevant here–here
rules here
Anton Ego here
A plots here, here, here, here, here, here. See also B plots
archetypes here, here, here
character (see character archetypes)
personalities of here
Arendelle here
arrogant characters here–here
attitude of characters here–here
audience here–here, here

Babs here
banana skin, slipping on here–here
Bart Simpson here
basic dialogue here–here
Batman here, here
Batman here
Batman: Hush here, here
Batman: The Animated Series here
Beans here
Bear Story here, here
Beast here, here, here, here, here
beat here
Beaumont, Laura, “The Earthlings Have Landed!” here–here
Beauty and the Beast here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here,
here
beaver here, here
Bee Movie here
Belle here, here, here, here, here
“The Bell That Is Never Rung” here
Bellwether here
Ben 10/Escape from Aggregor here, here
The Big Bang Theory here
Black-ish here
Blue Bloods here
Bob Belcher here, here, here–here
Bob’s Burgers here, here, here, here, here
animation style here
existing show case study here–here
length here
locations and sets here
main protagonists of here–here
plotlines here
premise here
reason for animation here–here
set pieces here–here
supporting cast here
BoJack Horseman here, here, here
Bonnie here, here
Bo Peep here
The Boss Baby here
B plots here–here, here, here, here, here, here
Brave here
Brian Griffin here, here, here
brief dialogue here, here–here
Bugs Bunny here
Bugs Bunny here, here, here, here, here, here, here
Bunker Hill Bunny here
The Burger of the Day here–here
Buster Moon here
Busy Bodies here
Butters here
Buzz here, here

callback device here–here, here

Captain Hook here
Cars here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
establishing shot here
Cartman here
catchphrases, of character here
central character here, here, here–here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here,
here
case study: Family Guy “Absolutely Babulous” here–here
goal here, here, here, here
identifying here–here
importance of here–here
inconsistency in Frozen here–here
life change here–here
obstacle here
obstacles here–here
stake for here–here
centric
defined here
on a sliding scale here–here
CGI (3D) animation here, here, here
Chaplin, Charlie here
character archetypes here–here
dreamer here
long-suffering here, here
one-track mind here, here
physicality here
pompous or arrogant here–here
servants of darkness here–here
“a step behind” here, here
trickster here
uptight here
villain here, here, here, here, here–here
Zanni here
characters
attitude here–here
central (see central character)
challenges here
cost of creating here
costume changes here
emotion (see emotional connection)
emotional goals (see emotional goals)
emotional need here, here
 funny here–here
goals of (see goals)
history here–here
identifying here
ineptitudes here, here, here–here
jeopardy, hardship, or adversity here
kindness here–here
life and personality here–here
likes and dislikes here
little niceness here–here
main goals of here, here, here, here–here
motivation here, here, here
objectives here–here
obstacles here, here–here
on the screen here
script format for here
skills here
speech patterns here
stakes for here, here
status here
sympathy for here
uptight here
villain here, here, here, here
voices here–here
Charlie Brown here, here
Chewington here–here
Chicken Run here
Chief Bogo here, here, here
Chip here
Clawhauser here
A Close Shave here
close-up (CU) shot here–here
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs here
Coco here, here
Cogsworth here
collaboration here
comedic characters here
comedic situation, situation comedy as here–here
comedic suffering here
comedy here–here
drop
in expectation here–here, here–here, here, here
in normality here–here, here, here
in status here–here, here–here, here, here
use of here–here
The Meaning of Life here
Commedia dell’Arte here–here, here
Common Time. See here/4 Time Signature
community here
concessions here
costume changes here
Country Mouse here
craft of writing here–here
created obstacles here
creative variations here
The Croods here–here
Cruella De Vil here, here, here
Cue Ball Cat here
Curious George here
The Curse of the Were-Rabbit here, here

Daffy Duck here

Despicable Me here, here, here, here, here
destination here
defining here–here
dialogue here
action with here–here
basics here–here
brief here–here
character here–here
motivation here, here, here
character motivation here, here, here
exercises here–here
functional here, here
objectives and obstacles for characters here–here
script format for here–here
Dick Dastardly here
Dino here
Dinotrux here–here
diplomacy here–here
directing on the page here–here, here
dislikes of character here
Disney, Walt here
Doc McStuffins here, here
Donald Duck here
Donkey here–here
Downton Abbey here
Dracula here, here–here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
Dragon Scroll here
Dragon Warrior here, here, here, here
Dr. Cox here
dreamer here
drop
adjusting here–here
in expectation here–here, here–here, here, here
in normality here–here, here, here
in status here–here, here–here, here, here
types of here
use of here–here
dropped character here–here
Dug here

“The Earthlings Have Landed!” here–here

characters here–here
episodes here
locations and sets here–here
stories here–here
ECU. See Extreme Close-Up (ECU)
Elmer Fudd here, here
Elsa here–here
Emmett Otterton here–here, here
emotional connection here, here–here, here
of character
funny here–here
jeopardy, hardship, or adversity of here
little niceness of here–here
on the screen here
 skills and abilities here–here
unwavering resolve here–here
emotional goals here–here. See also physical goals
analysis of movie here–here
at beginning of story here
case study, Shrek here–here
act one here–here
act three here–here
act two here–here
creating the stepping-stones here–here
defining the destination here–here
new behavior and old, negative behavior here–here
emotional healing here
emotional need here, here
emotional see-saw effect here
emotional stake here
environment here
episodic television, writing of here–here
Ernesto here
Escape from Aggregor here
Ethel & Ernest here
Everest here–here
Everybody Loves Raymond here
existing show, writing for here, here
case study
Bob’s Burgers here–here
The Ring (But Not Scary) here–here
length here–here
set pieces here–here
sets here–here
target audience here
external obstacles here–here
Extreme Close-Up (ECU) here

Family Guy here, here–here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
“Absolutely Babulous”, case study here–here
family sitcom here–here
Fantastic Mr Fox here
fantasy here–here. See also hyper-reality
Fast and Furry-ous here
Father and Daughter here, here
Fear here
fears here
feedback here, here–here
Fievel here
Fiona here, here, here–here, here
The Firds here–here, here
first character here
flashback here
Fleischer, Dave here
The Flintstones here, here, here–here, here, here
Flushed Away here, here, here, here, here
Foghorn Leghorn here
four-act story here, here
four-act structure, case study in Toy Story here here–here
Frankenstein here
Fresh off the Boat here
Frey, Jacob here
Friends, sitcom in here–here
Frozen here, here, here, here–here, here, here, here–here
act one here–here
act three here
act two here
case study, central character inconsistency here–here
functional dialogue here, here
Futurama here

Gabby Gabby here

Gad, Josh here
Gene Belcher here–here, here
genre here, here
Gideon Grey here
Gnomeo here
Gnomeo and Juliet here
goals here, here, here, here
act one here, here–here
act two here–here
central character here, here, here, here
 characters here–here
desire and action here
emotional (see emotional goals)
main here–here
physical here, here, here
specific here–here
time frame here
Goofy here, here
Gotham here
Gotham here
Graves, Chris here
Griffins here
Gromit here, here, here, here
Gromit here, here
Gru here, here, here–here

Hair Love here, here

Hanna Barbera here–here
hardship here
head writers here
Héctor here
Hermes here
Hertzfeldt, Don, The Meaning of Life here–here
Hiccup here, here–here, here
high-status character here
history of character here–here
Home Alone here
Hong Kong Phooey here, here
Hotel Transylvania here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
Hotel Transylvania 2 here, here, here–here, here
How to Train Your Dragon here, here, here
Huckleberry Hound here
Human Flesh here
hyper-reality here–here
and fantasy here–here

incomplete sentence here–here

The Incredibles here, here
independent short making here
ineptitudes here, here, here–here
Inside Out here
internal conflicts here
internal obstacles here–here
“It’s Your Funeral Home & Crematorium” here

Jack Skellington here

Jake here
Jake and the Never Land Pirates here
Jasper here
jeopardy here
Jerry here
Jimmy Pesto here
Johnson, Dwayne here
Joker here, here
Joker here
Judy Hopps (rabbit) here, here, here–here, here, here
The Jungle Book here

Kaa here
Kakamora here
Ken here
Kenny here–here
kindness of character here–here
King John here
King of the Hill here
Kramer here
Kristoff here
Kubo and the Two Strings here
Kung Fu Panda here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
Kurt Barlow here

Lady and the Tramp here, here

Larson, Paul here, here, here, here, here
“The Earthlings Have Landed!” here–here
Laurel and Hardy here, here
Leave it to Beaver here, here
Lego Batman movie here
LEGO Marvel Super Heroes: Maximum Overload here
length of show here–here
Lennon, John here
Lightning McQueen here, here, here, here, here, here
likes of character here
Linda Belcher here, here–here
Lionel Frost here–here
The Lion King here
listening here
locations, Bob’s Burgers here
Lock, Shock & Barrel here
Lois Griffin here–here, here
Loki here, here
long-suffering characters here, here
Look at Life here
Looney Tunes here, here, here
Lord Farquaad here, here–here, here, here, here
Lotso here, here, here
Louise Belcher here
Love Actually here
low-status character here
Lucas, George here, here

McCartney, Paul here

Madagascar here
Madame Souza here, here
Magnolia here
main characters here, here, here, here–here, here
main protagonists, Bob’s Burgers here–here
mannerisms, of character here
Marge Simpson here
Marlin here, here
Marvel Avengers here
Mater here
A Matter of Loaf and Death here
Maui here, here, here
The Meaning of Life
case study here–here
comedy structure here
emotional connection here
goal here
as stunning film here
 three-act structure here–here
Merida here
metaphorical family here
Mickey Mouse here
The Middle here, here
Miguel here
Minions here, here
Minions here
Missing Link here, here–here
Moana here, here, here, here, here
Moana here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
Modern Family here
“Mona Linda” here
Mona Lisa here
Monica Geller here–here
montages here, here–here, here
Morty here, here, here, here, here, here
motivation, of characters here, here, here
movie script writing here–here
Mr. Big here
Mr. Burns here
Mr. Incredible here, here
Mr. Krabs here
Mr. Lint here
Mr Magoo here
Mr. Pricklepants here
Murray here
Mutley here

Nana here
Nat Kinkle here
natural obstacle here
nearly funny here
negative behavior here, here–here
Nemo here, here
networking here–here
new and old behavior here–here
examples of here
Newman Theater’s Laugh-O-gram’s here
Nick Wilde here, here, here–here, here
Night Fury here
The Nightmare Before Christmas here, here
nonfamily sitcoms here
nonhuman characters here–here
Norse myths here

obstacles here–here, here, here

central character here, here–here
character here
exercise here
external here–here
internal here–here
Officer Dibble here
Off Screen here
Olaf here, here, here
Oliver and Company here
One Hundred and One Dalmatians here, here
one-off funny idea here–here
one-track mind characters here, here
Oogway here, here–here
opponent obstacles here

ParaNorman here, here

close-up shot here
parenthetical here–here
Parker, Trey here, here
Partly Cloudy here–here
Paw Patrol here, here, here
“Pups Go for The Gold”, three-act structure case study here–here
Paw Patrol puppies here–here
payoff device here–here, here
Penny here
Peppa Pig here, here, here
Perdita here, here
Persepolis here
Peter Griffin here–here, here
Peter Pan here, here
Pewterschmidt here
Phil Silvers Show here
physical goals here, here, here
for act four here
for act one here, here
for act three here, here
for act two here–here, here, here, here
physicality of character here
Pinocchio here
plotlines here, here, here, here
Bob’s Burgers here
The Ring (But Not Scary) here
Pluto here
Po here, here, here, here, here, here–here
pompous characters here–here
Pongo here, here
Poseidia here
Poseidians here–here, here
dwellings here
positive behavior here
The Present here
Prince Hans here
The Princess and the Frog here
promises here
Pulp Fiction here
Puss in Boots here

Quagmire here

Rango here, here, here, here, here

Rapunzel here
Ratatouille here
Ratatouille here, here
recurring characters here
Red Death here
Rex here
Rick and Morty here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here–here
Rick Sanchez here, here
Riddler here
The Ring (But Not Scary) here
act structure here–here
existing show case study here–here
 plotlines here
set pieces here–here
Road Runner here, here
The Road Runner Show here, here
Robin Hood here
Robinson, Heath here
Rodney here, here, here
Ross Geller here–here
Rubble here
Rugrats here
“Running Out Of Thyme Burger” here
Ryder here–here

Salem’s Lot here

sample script bible here
Sausage Party here
scene headings here
with action here
Scooby Doo here, here, here, here, here, here, here
Scooby Doo, Where Are You! here, here, here
script here, here–here
character and the dialogue in here
directing on the page here–here
formatting here–here, here
length here
stage directions here
writing here–here
delivery schedule here
movie here–here
television episodes here–here
script format here
action here
beat here
character here
dialogue here–here
directing on the page here
incomplete sentence here–here
montage here
parenthetical here–here
 scene headings here
shots here–here
sound or visual effect here
transition of scene here–here
scriptwriting software here, here
Scrubs here
Seinfeld here
servants of darkness here–here
set pieces here–here
Bob’s Burgers here–here
The Ring (But Not Scary) here–here
sets here–here
Bob’s Burgers here
sexual character here
Sexy Dance Healing here
Shaggy here
Shark Tank (Dragon’s Den) here–here
Sheldon here
Shifu here, here–here
short films
case study: The Meaning of Life here–here
character in
emotional connection of here–here
goal of here–here
independent here
reason to make here–here
tools for making here–here
short story writing here
shots here–here
Angle or On here–here
close-up here–here
establishing here–here
showcase film here
Shrek here, here, here, here–here, here, here
Shrek here, here, here, here, here
case study, emotional goals here–here
act one here–here
act three here–here
act two here–here
Shrek the Third here
Siamese Cats here
Sideshow Bob here
Silverman, Sarah here
Simba here, here
The Simpsons here, here, here, here, here
Sing here, here, here
sitcom. See situation comedy
situation comedy here, here, here–here, here, here
as comedic situation here–here
family in here, here, here–here
Friends here–here
skills of character
and abilities here–here
and ineptitudes here, here
Sleeping Beauty here
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs here, here, here
songs here, here, here, here
sound/visual effect here
South Park here, here, here–here, here, here
montage song in here
specific goals here–here
of act two here–here
speech patterns, of character here, here
Speedy Gonzales here
Spiderman here–here
SpongeBob here
SpongeBob SquarePants here, here, here
Spot here
Squidward here
stage directions here
status of characters here
“a step behind” characters here, here
stepping-stones here–here, here, here
Stewie Griffin here–here, here
Stone, Matt here
stop-motion here
Superman here
Sven here, here
Sylvester here
sympathy here

Tai Lung here, here, here, here

Tamatoa here, here
Tangled here
target audience here
Te Fiti here, here, here
three-act structure here, here, here
in animation here
break the rule here–here
case study
Paw Patrol “Pups Go for The Gold” here–here
Zootopia here–here
importance of here–here
The Meaning of Life here–here
Tiana here
time frame here
Timmy Time here
Tina Belcher here–here, here, here, here
Tom and Jerry here–here, here
Toothless here, here
Top Cat here, here
Town Mouse here
Toy Story here, here, here, here, here, here
Toy Story here here, here, here, here, here, here
act four here
act one here
act three here
act two here–here
case study, four-act structure here–here
Toy Story here here, here
Tramp here, here
transformation sequences here
transition of scene here–here
Treehouse of Horror here
trickster here
Triplets of Belleville (Belleville Rendez-vous) here, here, here, here–here
Tweak here
Two and a Half Men here

Ugly Naked Guy here

Uncle Otis here–here
unwavering resolve here–here, here
Up here
uptight characters here

Vargas, Gabriel Osorio here

Velma here
Victor Quartermaine here, here
Viking here, here
villain characters here, here, here, here, here–here, here
visual style here–here
Vlad here–here
V.O. See Voice-Over (V.O.)
voice of characters here–here
Voice-Over (V.O.) here

Wacky Races here

Wallace here, here, here
Wallace and Gromit here, here, here
Walt Disney Productions here
Watership Down here, here
Welk here–here, here
Werewolf Kids here
Wicked Queen here
Wile E. Coyote here, here, here, here
Wilson, Rebel here
Woody here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
writers’ groups here–here
writing
animation here–here
episodic television here–here
movie here–here
short films here

The X Factor here

Yogi Bear here

Yosemite Sam here, here, here
Zanni characters here, here
Zootopia (Zootropolis) here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
three-act structure case study here–here
 BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Beaumont, Laura, 1956- author. | Larson, Paul, (Screenwriter), author.
Title: Writing for animation / by Laura Beaumont & Paul Larson.
Description: New York: Bloosmbury Academic, 2021. | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021006785 (print) | LCCN 2021006786 (ebook) | ISBN
9781501358678 (hardback) | ISBN 9781501358661 (paperback) | ISBN
9781501358654 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501358647 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Animated films–Authorship. | Animated television programs–
Authorship.
Classification: LCC PN1996 .B386 (print) | LCC PN1996 (ebook) | DDC 808.2/3–
dc23
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