Screenwriter Michael Arndt knows that all good stories have powerful beginnings that set up the story. In Beginnings: Setting A Story in Motion, he reveals what he’s learned working for Pixar and demonstrates how to write a good beginning for Act 1 using Toy Story, Nemo and The Incredibles as examples.
While some writers may stay away from storytelling formulas and prescriptive advice, I am always looking for ideas to strengthen my storytelling and aim to do like Picasso, “Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”
I have outlined Michael Arndt’s ideas below:
- Establish the world your character lives in
- Introduce your main character doing the thing they love most (their grand passion)
- Establish your character’s hidden flaw that comes out of their grand passion
- Establish storm clouds on the horizon
- BABOOM–someone takes away their grand passion and changes their view of their future
- Add insult to injury and make the world unfair.
- Character comes to a fork in the road and must make a decision on how to deal with their new reality.
- Character makes the unhealthy choice (rather than the right choice–which is boring and leads to no story)
- Character’s wrong choice leads to a crisis.
- We transition into the 2nd act (the journey) and 3rd act (to fix their flaw and to hopefully get back what they lost).
I have been working on my script for my winter project, and while I know the story I want to tell, I was not sure how to structure it as a 3-Act structure. So I decided to experiment and write out my story using Arndt’s ideas for Act 1.
I am happy to say that following this exercise made me focus my ideas, define my character and set up my story in a powerful way, so that Act 1 easily flowed into Acts 2 and 3. At first, it felt awkward to write out Act 1 in an outline form, and the whole outline seems long enough to cover Acts 1 through 3. I did two iterations but without realizing it each time, my character’s passion and flaw were too vague and general. And what was my character’s BABOOM moment–was this part even necessary? But when I finally found the BABOOM moment on the 3rd try, I knew it was worth it.
So if you are having difficulty writing a powerful story, I recommend trying Arndt’s ideas on beginning a story and see how much more powerful your Act 1–and the rest of your story–can be.
Thanks for sharing this video! I saw a lot of films from Pixar, but I never notice how they build their character. Animation is not like other movies, because it’s easy to understand but it’s hard to build a vivid character.
Nemo is a good example to learn. Author use a simple word “family” to build everything together. That’s super cool! As an audience, I can also be connected by the word “family.” I feel I can use the same skill when I write a story to connect with more readers.
Wow. This is incredibly simple and, in being so, astonishingly helpful. Thank you for sharing. I have a bunch of interview footage for my winter project that covers a wide variety of topics. While I may not follow this exact formula when editing it together, that video and your subsequent post did give me some ideas about how I want to structure the way my piece flows. When I previewed my sample scene for you all, the biggest suggestion I received was to establish my character. I think I will use my subject’s passions to do that.