“Pixar’s 22 Rules of Story,” Analyzed

Back in 2011, a Emma Coats tweeted a series of “story basics” she absorbed and distilled during her tenure as a story artist at Pixar. These tweets were aggregated by many bloggers, who tended to refer to them as “pixar story rules,” even though they were never represented by Coats as “rules,” or “Pixar’s.”

I found Emma’s tweets insightful and useful (especially when rendered in Lego). As with any pithy, tweet-sized aphorisms, they were more interesting for the thoughts they spurred in the reader than as hard and fast “rules” on their own (as Emma was always quick to point out herself). To me, what was most valuable about these observations was what happened inside my head when I read them.

Another Pixar employee, Stephan Bugaj (a good friend who consulted on the design of Slugline), would seem to agree, as he blogged his analyses of each of the rules-that-aren’t-rules. He recently completed the series of 22 posts, and has compiled them all into a PDF e-book, which you can download free from his site.

Pixar’s cultural commitment to storytelling is something special, and any window into it is gold. But in the same way that Emma’s tweets were her own, Stephan’s analysis is all him—and it’s definitely worth a read.

Slugline at BACPUG

Pronounced “PUG with a BACKPACK.”

On June 5, Clinton Torres and I will be guests at the first ever Bay Area Creative Pro User Group meeting, discussing Fountain and Slugline.

Wes Plate of Adobe will also be there, showing off Prelude. There are no plans for a Prelude-vs.-BulletProof showdown of Anchorman proportions, but be safe—bring your trident.

If you’re in the Bay Area, come and check it out!

Slugline

You probably saw this coming.

Slugline is an app for writing screenplays. It uses Fountain as its native file format. It brings the power and simplicity of plain text to screenwriting, without sacrificing features that screenwriters need. In fact, Slugline is focused entirely on the writing part of screenwriting. It has annotation, integrated outlining, and Fountain’s ability to omit text without deleting it, all driven by the text you type.

Your files are plain text, editable with any writing software, on any device. But when you print them from Slugline, they appear as a perfect, industry-standard screenplay. Better, in fact, because Slugline optionally lets you use Courier Prime.

Read more at the new Slugline blog, follow SluglineApp on Twitter, or just head on over to the Mac app store, where Slugline is exclusively available for $39.99.

Take Highland

Convert, Preview

Highland, the screenplay conversion app from John August and company, is out of beta and available on the Mac App Store for $9.99 until the end of the month, $19.99 after that.

Highland convertes screenplays back and forth among Final Draft’s FDX format, Fountain, and PDF. Not just to PDF, but also from—if you have a PDF screenplay, Highland can “melt” it into an editable file.

That, lemme tell ya, is super handy.

Highland also allows you to edit the raw text of Fountain files, and preview the results in industry-standard screenplay formatting.

Highland joins an ever growing list of Fountain apps that now includes Scrivener too. It’s a party!

And it’s just getting started…

Edit