By Michael Ardnt Michael is the Screenwriter of Little Miss Sunshine, Toy Story 3, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens. I put this lecture together in 2006, when I started work at Pixar on Toy Story 3. It looks at how to write an “insanely great” ending, using Star Wars,…
In Chinese mythology, Hou Yi (后羿) is considered to be the greatest archer of all time. He is best known for marrying the moon goddess, Chang’e (嫦娥), and for shooting down nine of the ten suns. Once an immortal who lived in the Jade Emperor’s palace, Hou Yi decided to become human to…
By The narrative department Nothing captures our imagination quite like made-up worlds. Remember Richard Scarry’s Busy Town? Those books were our first hint to our 3-year-old brains that there was a WHOLE LOT going on outside our front door. Then, as we got older, we discovered Narnia…and Themyscira…and Hogwarts…and Middle…
By Pietro Schito@Writing for Animation
Mike Jones (born 1971) is an American screenwriter and journalist. He serves as the Senior Story and Creative Artist at Pixar Animation Studios and has co-written the studio’s animated feature films Soul and Luca. Soul is a 2020 American animated fantasy-comedy drama film produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures. The film was directed by Pete Docter and co-directed by Kemp Powers, both…
By Brooke Maggs Imagine writing a story where the first thing the “reader” asks when they begin is: what do I do? The answer might be one or all of these things: explore, survive, observe, solve, form a strategy, make decisions. Game writing is a type of storytelling where the…
By GameWriting Video games are a huge industry, worth billions of dollars every year. But the people who make them don’t work in a vacuum. They need to know how to write a video game script. Luckily for aspiring writers, there are some simple rules you can follow to create…
–By Narrative Thread Despite receiving praise for its story and lore, particularly in contrast to the previous entry in the series, Diablo 4’s narrative design — and, by extension, its campaign — is the blandest ingredient in this demon-slaying cocktail It starts with a cutscene — a wanderer, assaulted by…
When people talk about gaming, they usually talk about it as if it’s one monolithic thing. It’s not. It’s actually three monolithic things. There are three distinct pillars that makeup what we offhandedly call game writing: Plot, character, and lore Not all games need to focus on all of these…
