In this week’s episode, JP and Crys go into detail about what Pixar Pitches are, how they use them, and why they are helpful in their writing.
Question of the week: If you have a story that you’re working on, what is your Pixar Pitch? What was weird about it, what was hard, what was helpful? Share your answer here!
Don’t miss our weekly check in on Patreon (it’s public!) where we talk about what we’re currently learning, any thoughts we missed in last week’s episode, and our plans for this week!
Show Notes
The Emotional Craft of Fiction by Donald Maass
Transcript
Crys: Hello, friends. And welcome to the Write Away Podcast. It is Thursday, November 18th as we’re recording this. It’s a little early with American holidays coming up soon. This is episode 71. I’m your host, Crys Cain, with my cohost…
JP: JP Rindfleisch.
Crys: Hi, it’s been a whole two weeks since we have sat alone in a zoom room without other people and caught up.
JP: That is entirely true and it’s entirely too long.
Crys: Indeed. And my weeks have been weird. And we’ve both been in different kinds of insanity.
And so thankfully it’s been equal for being like, hi, I’m not ignoring you.
JP: Yes. And I think, whatever, that happens, it’s adulting.
Crys: Gross, adulting. So what’s been up for two weeks?
JP: I came back from insanity and ended up with a pseudo insanity with the day job. But also, I’ve been working on a presentation that I gave to the TASM groups Essential Gathering, on my thoughts on theme. And that took a lot more brain space than I thought it was going to. Just collecting my own thoughts into something that I can cohesively present to others, but also the mental preparation of that kind of preparation and presentation. So afterwards I just like collapsed. I was just like, what’s wrong with me? Why am I so tired? And Crys is like, I don’t know, maybe because you’ve been preparing for this. And I was like, oh, you’re right.
Crys: I was extremely snarky.
JP: As you should be.
Crys: I just wanted to let people know who are like, what the hell is TASM, that is The Author Success Mastermind, the author community group that JP and I are part of.
JP: Yes. And yeah, so that’s been the big thing I’ve been working on, and then I’ve been getting back into some edits and all that fun stuff that I’m just trying to do all at once.
Crys: Yeah, I find the best way to figure out if you actually know something slash form your thoughts about it, is try to explain it to someone else or teach it to them. Because in saying it out loud, you’re going to be like, ooh, actually, no, I don’t think that’s right at all.
JP: Yeah, there was a really nice refining process in having to make the presentation and then talk through it. Yeah, so I enjoyed the process and I think that it’s something that people responded positively to. So it’s something that I hopefully will have something to share with the broader community.
Crys: Excellent. Yeah. Story hypothesis is about finding your theme and using that to supercharge your stories. I feel like that’s the dullest language possible to describe it. Particularly if you’re of a science-y mind, the way he approaches it is really going to work for you.
JP: Yes, I hope so. So thank you. How about you, though? Tell me your life. Tell me your things.
Crys: I’m finally back in Costa Rica. Yeah, we flew in two weeks ago tomorrow. We were supposed to fly in two weeks ago today. Our flight got canceled an hour before we were going to leave the house and we did end up leaving that evening, but we had this layover in New Jersey, ew. Not anything against New Jersey, just Newark people. But thankfully the airport or the airline covered all that, which is the first time I’ve done that. So new adventure. And then we got in, we visited a house that very first night. We flew in Friday, we visited a house Friday, and that is the house I now live in. We did look at one other one, we didn’t go inside it, we just looked at the neighborhood and we were like, nope, first one. It was bomb.
It’s huge for us. Three bedrooms, giant downstairs, right smack dab in the middle of a small town that’s between two larger cities, small cities, and then 20, 30 minutes away from the capitol, 20 minutes away from the airport. Found a school for the kid, bought furniture, not everything. I still don’t have a bed frame, couch, or table, or oven.
We’re just, we’re winging it. It’s not camping anymore. That’s exciting. I need a desk. I’m sitting in a camp chair with a lap desk on top of a fold-up ottoman. But we’re getting there, we’re getting there. So I haven’t really worked again, like we got into a phase again where I just did not have time to work again.
This week I’m preparing for just attending The Author Success Mastermind Essential Gathering. It’s really useful for me to use time with other writers as refocusing time. I really felt that after The Career Author Summit and had a couple of good weeks of getting some more work done and then back into a chaos where I’m not getting work done.
And I sat down the morning before the gathering and I did, I don’t know if I’ve talked about it here before, but I did, what is it called? The passion roadmap from the passion planner. You can find this for free on their website. I’ll try and put a link in the notes. But it’s a four-quadrant kind of goals planner. But what you’re supposed to do is you have these four quadrants, one is what you need to get done in three months, one year, three years and then lifetime. And you set a timer, I never set a timer, and you just write down all the things that you would love to accomplish or would love to happen. If you just wave a magic wand and it happened in these timeframes, what would they be?
And they’re like, don’t worry about being realistic. Yada, yada, yada. And then you go through and you evaluate which of those would bring the most change to your life. I haven’t done that step, but I did like the figuring things out. And it’s interesting, because every time I do it, it’s completely different. And that actually makes a lot of sense to me because like COVID, post COVID times, like how far I’ve been able to see in the future and what I’ve been able to imagine like I want or is possible has been very dark and not clear.
So it’s changed a lot. It’s a lot simpler at the moment. Probably because I’m still in a bit of chaos mode, but I also was not able to fill in like the lifetime box. I was like, oh, we’re going to skip that one and we’re going to focus on the next three. And then today I’ll probably go through and evaluate that.
Right now, I’m I am just trying to regather everything, trying to start up on projects, had some really great insights to my fantasy serial that I started at the beginning of the year, and then I haven’t worked on anything. This summer, I had some really great insights on some mental story elements that were slowing me down.
And we’ll probably talk about those today as we get into our topic, which is: what is the Pixar Pitch and how is it useful? And I threw this at JP because it had been so useful to me when we met on Tuesday for Essential Gathering. And I think this is the first time where Pixar Pitch was really super helpful for me.
I find them generally helpful to know that I have a grasp on the story most of the time, but this is the first time it helped me work out some stuff. So for our listeners who aren’t familiar with Pixar Pitch, JP, would you describe what it is and why it’s useful.
JP: Yeah. So it’s basically a template that you can use to put together your plot for your story in a means of simplicity so that you have an equal footing for all of your ideas across the board. So for example, like I’ve used this before when I have five or six ideas and I want to put them all into a Pixar Pitch so that they all have the same template, so that I’m not judging them based off of like how many more ideas one may have over the other. But based off of the same template, I can see which ones fit more with what the story is that I want to tell.
Those are really good with having that shared communication and being able to share a Pixar Pitch with someone else and not having to give like an hour-long quote unquote elevator pitch, but to really put something in a tight, templated format so that you’re able to tell or convey your plot to someone else.
Crys: And for you story nerds who are wondering where this Pixar Pitch came from, it didn’t actually originate with Pixar. Pixar is famous for using it. They were taught it by Brian McDonald. And when he was asked where it came from, and he uses a version called the Story Spine, that’s the version I use, it has a couple extra steps that are really useful for me. And we’ll talk about those as we get into things. And he’s like, ah, he’s like, I don’t know where I got it. It’s been around in improv for forever. So there’s the folklore of how the Pixar Pitch came to be.
So I am going to go over the Story Spine. We’ll probably be using those words a little bit interchangeably. I like the Story Spine because it has two extra steps than what the commonly related Pixar Pitch has. And I’ll explain why they’re useful. So the Story Spine is this: Once upon a time. And then you fill in what the once upon a time is. This is where you put your character, basically in the situation they’re in every day, this is more of the full situation they’re in. Like this is what kind of norm you’re going to break with your inciting incident. Until one day, this is your inciting incident, what happens to change the status quo? Because of that, what is the consequences? Because of that, what’s the consequences of that because of that, because of that? This is one of the extra things the Story Spine has that Pixar Pitch doesn’t generally talk about, in that you can put as many ‘because of thats’ in as you need.
I generally stick to three because if I let myself go hog wild, I will just go hog wild and it will get not as simple as we’re looking for. Until finally, this is generally your climax. Not always, but until finally, and ever since then your denouement. And ever since then is something the Story Spine has that the Pixar Pitch does not. And I find that I need it. And I think because, this came out of our conversation on Tuesday or Wednesday when we were reviewing, I think the reason that I need that step is because I am so focused on the emotional summation of the journey and that ever since then fills in that answer, what is the emotional summation of the journey? Without that, I often feel as if the pitch is just very incomplete. How about you, JP?
JP: Yeah, I’ve used the ever since then sometimes. And then other times I don’t. And I think that it comes down to, one, where I am in mentality with the Pixar Pitch and like where I am with thinking of the story. And then also how I want the story to end because if like the one that I was working on, I didn’t want to put an ever since that day. And I wanted to leave it at an until finally, because it was a cliffhanger for me to explore more. And for the thing that I was working on, this is something that will continue on, there wasn’t really a moment.
And that’s when I really liked to use it, because sometimes for me, I like not knowing what’s going to happen at the end. I like exploring and figuring that out a little bit later. But then other times I love to know the ever since that day and figure out like what that means and how that can be as either a stepping stone or a finishing point.
Crys: Yeah. I would say that an ever since then doesn’t fit with a book in the middle of the series. So if you’re doing this for an individual book and I have examples for both a series as a whole and then this is extra for a serial, so for the first season. And on my season, I felt that same. I was like, that ever since then, not helpful. Because we’re going to move right into more story in season two. And so I crossed that out on my little sheet and wrote cliffhanger. Was the cliffhanger I’m going to leave people with. Then that’s, you know, why we’re saying that this is flexible and the core is really solid.
This is a really good way to see if your story has legs. And especially if you’re trying to decide which story you’re trying to write and you come up with 5, 10, 20 ideas, you can see which ones immediately draw someone else’s attention versus other ones.
JP: Definitely. And I’ve done that before, too. Especially with writing with a co-writer, being like, okay what are we going to write next? All right, let’s make some Pixar Pitches. You make two, I make two, we read through them, and we pick and choose which ones work and keeping, mash them up because they’re all on the same template. So why can’t you mash them up? It makes it way easier to have same core elements to mash up which is super helpful.
Crys: All right. Should we go into our examples?
JP: Sure. Let’s do the thing.
Crys: You or me, Sir?
JP: I’ll go first. I have it pulled up. So this idea is something that I’ve been stewing on, but it is something that came out of the Essential Gathering, and it would be a co-written project. So once upon a time, there was an ex-communicated witch. Every day they lived in the middle of reaches of the coven’s galactic rule, where they plan to spend the rest of their days. One day they discover a young witch with immense power who has been involuntarily captured to be shipped off world to join the witch coven. Because of that, they save the young witch and team up with a smuggling crew to flee the system to the outer reaches of the galaxy. Because of that, they searched the outer reaches through missions in search of the prophecies of the great witch who will rise to defeat the coven. Until finally, the ex-communicated witch helps the young witch control their powers and discover how to bring an end to the coven’s grasp on the galactic colonies.
Crys: Excellent. That’s solid. Now, when we do this in kind of critique groups or brainstorming groups, this is the point where we ask any points of confusion. If there are points where the writer was like, I don’t know what happens, I don’t know what to fill in for this, we’d ask questions to help them get there.
And for me, when I do Pixar Pitches or when I hear Pixar Pitches, because I am so emotion focused, I start asking questions. What is the emotional beginning and end, which is one thing that yours doesn’t have it. Now, it doesn’t have to have that. J Thorn, we’ve talked about this, he doesn’t necessarily need that. It’s something that I need to comprehend my story though. And so I’m curious for you and yours, what is her beginning emotion and what is her end emotion?
JP: Yeah. So that’s part of the ex-communicated part, feeling shut off from this greater community and then having to rise up and actually fight against it.
So it goes from this state of shielding oneself, looking out for one’s soul self, and then discovering this family. I think I may have said she, I’ve been leaving it genderless with the potential to actually be he, but just throwing that out there. Anyways, but it’s that shielding of oneself and then having to realize that there is something greater than me and I need to actually take action here and do something about it instead of just looking out for myself.
Crys: So internally protective versus externally protective as well?
JP: Mhm.
Crys: Okay. So I have two, and the reason we’re going to discuss two is because I did two the other day, but also because this is an example of how you can do one for an entire story, and then how that will look different for one for the first book. All right. And I have those extra steps that we talked about.
So this is the Story Spine for the whole story. Once upon a time, there was a girl who spoke to rocks. Every day, she felt out of place in her small mining town, hiding her gift to avoid further ostracization. And I don’t know if I’m saying that word correctly. It’s one of those words where I’m like, yes, I know that word. And then I try to say it and I’m just like, my mouth does not know how to do this. Until one day, she warns her father about an imminent danger of the mine. He ignores her and he dies. Because of that, she escapes to learn how to deal with her unique magic. Because of that, over the years– and that’s my hint to that this is a long running story– she befriends a group of people and falls in love with the princess and saves a country but destroys their main city. Because of that, she’s rejected from her new home, her found family, her new love, and returns to her original home. Until finally, she reconciles with her family and her friends and her lover who choose her over their own places in their family and society. And ever since then, she teaches her community and others like her about magic that so that no child feels wrong and alone.
And what I do that I think is a little different, and this is for those of you who are very character arc driven or emotion driven, is the because of thats that I put in there are very much tied to what that emotional journey is for her.
So the emotion is, generally for me, stated in the everyday. Like what’s her status quo, what’s her status. Sometimes it’s in the once upon a time where I’m describing who is there, who she is. So she’s ostracized, out of place, lonely. And then at the end, she’s reunited, connected, and supported. So each element I have in there is about her being rejected, alone, finding community. Those are my important elements.
Now for season one, I didn’t do this as strongly because I don’t have as clear an idea of what the big events are in season one. And that became clear as I did the Pixar Pitch. So this was super useful for that. And this will start off very similar because it is the first season in this series.
Once upon a time, there was a girl who spoke to rocks. Every day, she felt out a place in her small mining town, hiding her gift to avoid further ostracization. Until one day, she warns her father about an imminent danger of the mine, and he ignores her and dies. Because of that, the town blames her and she escapes the wrath with her brother via ship, which makes her violently ill. The ship, not the escape. Because of that, they find they’re not alone in their gifts, but she cannot travel oversea with him so that they can have the same teacher because of how ill it makes her. Because of that, they split up to pursue different teachers in schools, leaving her feeling more alone than ever. Until finally, she arrives in her destination city having built a group of friends who she trusts to support her as she tries to figure out her magic. And then instead of an ever since then, I have a cliffhanger. She discovers that her new friends had a secret, that the girl she has a crush on is actually a princess, leaving her feeling a bit more betrayed and alone.
So now I know looking at this, I see the weaknesses are that I, one, don’t have any freaking clue what my climax is. And that’s not necessarily something wrong with a Pixar Pitch, that is something that I know looking at this. I’m thinking of the Pixar Pitch with Finding Nemo, that’s one of the standards that are used in explaining the Pixar Pitch, and they don’t actually have the final climax in there. But you know that it has enough legs for me. I’m like, okay, the until finally should be the climax, and it’s not. It’s what happens after the climax. It would be the and ever since then, in some sense.
And so much of the story, this is another thing that we talked about, a lot of times your Pixar Pitch will be what happens in the very beginning of the story a lot of times. I like them because of that to cover more than the beginning. And mine is all the beginning. It’s all about her escaping, but it’s not about the big things that happen after. So I know right now that this story is weak because I don’t actually know what’s going to lead me up to my big bad, by my until finally. I don’t know who these friends are that are mentioned in the until finally. And putting the Pixar Pitch together for this shows me the weaknesses and my potholes in my brain.
Is the Pixar Pitch fine? Yeah. If I read this to somebody, would they respond to it? Absolutely. I had some people respond really strongly to it. But I know looking at it also that I’m missing some stuff.
JP: Yeah. I think though that you use that because of that, to really call out like a pivotal moment with her having to leave her brother. And that just depends on where that’s going to be in your story, but I doubt that’s going to be your climax. It definitely shows like this turning point for this character, this emotional turning point, which I think is where you come you use your most focus on. So that makes sense to me that you would put that in there.
Crys: Yeah, absolutely. And I think what I will do with this, is that I will extend my because of thats as I figure things out. One thing I know that I need to do before I’m ready to do that, for me and how I work, is I need to do some more character work.
I know the character she’s going to meet really strongly, but my original intention was for her to not meet them until after she got to the city, which left me a whole season without getting to the characters that I was really fucking excited about. And without her getting to the characters that she’s going to be with most of her journey.
And that’s one thing that putting this together did make me realize, I’m like, I want to bring those characters in earlier. How can I do that? I can have them also going on a journey. And until I know what that journey is, for me, the character work, because I had them starting in a different place in time with different goals and ideas, I now don’t know what their interactions are because they’re meeting in a different context. And this is outside the actual Pixar Pitch, but the Pixar Pitches illuminated this for me. And so now what I’ll be doing, is I’ll be going and looking at my ideas, my stories, the lies these characters believe.
The characters aren’t going to change, but why are they on this trip? Why are they not in a giant cavalcade of guards if they have the princess with them? Like what is going on here that puts them in this circumstance that might lead me to a climax that will also support my emotional journey for my character.
JP: Yeah. I really like that you think through the word choice when it comes to the emotional journey and you’re using those words to convey that message in the Pixar Pitch. I think that’s something I definitely would like to use in here and I can already start to see different ways. And I think the difference between you and I is I focus on conveying either genre or like world setting. So when I first gave this, I didn’t use words that conveyed sci-fi. But half of it is, it’s like basically witches in space, so I have to figure out those words. So I used words like galactic right off of the bat, like that was the second line, so that I could convey that to someone. And I think that that’s the thing that I like about Pixar Pitches is that based off of your word choices, you can convey genre. And for you, you can convey this emotional journey through just saying simple words about what kind of person they were to start and what kind of person they were to end. And that’s just super resonating to anyone that hears it.
Crys: Yeah, I think that each of us are able to use this to figure out the things that we need to figure out as individuals about our story. I do have this question though, because and I go through the internet and I look for people’s examples of Pixar Pitches all the time, or Story Spines, however they want to do it, to see how other people are doing it. It really frustrates me that there’s no particular one right way, which is fine because there is no one right way to writing, period.
But I also like really detailed instructions of how I’m supposed to do this. And there’s not. And so one of the things that I wonder as Pixar is using this for their story pitches. As everyone is pitching different stories is if everyone’s coming at it with these a bit different focuses with emotions or whatever, like how they can actually be equally compared when coming from different writers. I can easily see how you can compare one writer having five to 10 pitches and being like, okay, like from this writer, with their style, these are the ones that jump out at me more, that seem more fully fleshed out.
When you’re comparing a bunch of different writers, with a bunch of different Pixar Pitches who are coming at it with a bunch of different focuses like we are, I wonder just how, I mean it’s better than not having the same presentation, a hundred percent. Yeah. And for me, like without having the at least hints of the emotional journey, I’m like, how can I judge whether that story is actually going to capture me or not? But I know that at that’s also a me thing, not necessarily an everybody thing.
JP: I don’t think so. I think the emotional part is really pivotal. I think it’s a really big point to make and I would imagine that if I were like crazy high up exec and people were giving me these Pixar Pitches, I probably would pick the ones that carried me on some emotional journey from start to end, that showed me growth of the character and not just the set dressing, because you can have witches in space, but if I’m not sad about it, then whatever. Especially when we come to terms with Pixar, Pixar is all about this emotional feel good or feel devastated and then feel better at the end after they fix Woody and don’t throw them in the incinerator.
But regardless, that’s pretty much their MO is this emotional tone. So I feel like, yeah, maybe people come at it at first when they join this group or collective with this idea that they can do this whole set thing without emotion, but they’re going to learn very quickly that their stuff’s not going to get picked up. Maybe it’s the same concept of if you’re pitching with multiple people, there should be some type of a format formality. I think emotion is really key to it, to be honest.
Crys: Yeah. Out of curiosity, I pulled up the plot of Finding Nemo, the Pixar Pitch, which I’ve looked at a hundred million times, but still do not have memorized. I’m gonna read it real quick because I was like, does it actually convey all that much emotion? And when I look at it right now, it does.
Okay. So once upon a time there was a widowed fish named Marlin who was extremely protective of his only son Nemo. So we have widowed, extremely protective. All of those have emotion keys. Every day, Marlin warned Nemo of the ocean’s dangers and implored him not to swim far away. Warned, danger, implored.
One day in an act of defiance, Nemo ignores his father’s warning and swims into the open water. Defiance, ignores. Because of that, he’s captured by a diver and ends up in the fish tank of a dentist in Sydney. We just see a consequence. Because of that, Marlin sets off on a journey to recover Nemo, enlisting the help of other sea creatures along the way. Until finally, Marlin and Nemo find each other, reunite, and learn that love depends on trust. Reunite, love, trust.
Yeah, there’s a lot of emotion in there. Okay. So now I feel safe in saying that if your Pixar Pitch doesn’t have emotion, then it’s not accurately portraying something that the reader would want to read. Okay. I hesitated to say that because so many people don’t do that and I think if you’re doing it for yourself , you don’t necessarily need that, but if you’re pitching it to someone else you do. Maybe that’s the difference.
JP: Maybe yeah. I have, we talked about it already at the beginning of this episode, I have a strong opinion about theme. And I think theme can tie really strongly with your plot and you can have these thematic arcs that go along with your character arcs that go along with your plot arc.
And I think that it leads to a stronger story when you have that in mind, even if it changes as you write it. So right at the end of that Pixar Pitch, it literally says the theme, what he learns. That to me sounds like, oh, we should be doing that in our Pixar Pitches.
Crys: Yeah. I a hundred percent agree. I know that I have like individual character kind of themes that each character, and that’s basically the why they believe, and they all link together similarly in that they all have beliefs about worth of humans. But I don’t know that I’ve defined it as a global thing that everybody is working towards or working against. But that’s definitely something to consider for me.
JP: Yeah. I want to look at this through the lens of emotion slash theme.
Crys: For our listeners, I hope that this has been helpful. And if you have a story that you’re working on, I would love if you would share your Pixar Pitch with us and let us know what was weird about it, what was hard, what was helpful? This is a really powerful tool and I’m really interested to see if it helps anybody else out there.
JP: Agreed. 100%.
Crys: All right, friends. In a couple of weeks, we will be recording our book club for The Emotional Craft Of Fiction by Donald J Maass. If you would like to join us for that live recording, you can come on over to Patreon and sign up for that level. And we will be posting the link where you can join us live on Zoom. I am really looking forward to this one. I need to get started on it. Pronto. I need to get my butt on this now that we’re somewhat settled. I started this book on audio, but it’s one of those dense books where you can’t just plow through and gather information up like quickly. It’s one that I need a bit more time to process as I read it.
JP and I are notorious for like, well, he’s better than I am. I will often start the book like the day before or the morning of the recording. But there is a reason for this, it’s not simply procrastination. It’s literally that I will forget everything if I don’t do it very soon before, like three days before would be lovely. But often it’s the day of and I can’t do that with this book.
JP: No, luckily I’m not that, I would just fail if I did that. But yeah, I need to get on it.
Crys: He sometimes waits until the week before.
JP: That is correct.
Crys: That’s one of the joys of doing this is that it forces us to regularly read books that will help our craft and business.
JP: 100%. Also, I just want to know, because I don’t know how often we will note it on this, that we are both open for author services.
Crys: Check us out. We’ll put our websites down below. We both have some smaller options if you are, for JP, he’s a figureoutable guy. If you want to just have someone to bounce questions off of, he’s, if you’re familiar with Clifton Strengths, one of his top strengths is ideation.
Like this man is, it’s a high up there. It’s top three, if it’s not first. This man never runs out of ideas. He’s great at that. Also, if you’re like, I am struggling with figuring out theme, understanding theme, also great at that. We both are offering editing services. I am offering both an emotional focus, if you just have a scene and you want to talk about some tools that we can use to write emotion, I have a service for that. We’ll have our links down below. You can check it out and always feel free to shoot us a message just if you have a question of what it is.
Thanks so much for joining us this week.
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