Pixar offers free online lessons in storytelling via Khan Academy

Another way to put it, and I think it was a quote by Stephen King but I cannot find it back at the moment, is that if you want to convey something don't spell it out, make the person listening/reading your story see/feel it for themselves by the way you describe it.

Nobody wants to watch The Village of the Happy People.

The mundane becomes exciting with conflict.. either physical, emotional or both.

Lame: I was going to school as usual. After I had arrived the bell rang and our biology teacher entered the classroom. He showed us a movie about wolfs.

Better: I was going to school when all of a sudden a wolf started hunting me. It almost got me the second I entered school but fortunately I managed to close the door behind me just in time. When the bell rang our biology teacher entered the classroom and showed us a movie about wolfs! Can you believe it? I grew incredibly nervous when the narrator began talking about wolfs attacking humans. While the movie was still running I turned my head away from the screen for a second and glanced through the door's window. At first I wasn't sure what I was looking at. I only sensed movement. But then it became clear that the wolf which had followed me earlier this morning was strolling down the hall. Somehow he must have managed to sneak in....

Of course, you don't need a wolf chasing you to have material for an exciting story but the general principles still apply I think.

What made today different from another day? What, as someone asking, would I not know? I know you probably went and typed on a keyboard and ate lunch, but I don't know that you finally solved that bug in production and feel awesome or that Steve from accounting turned up late, giggling, with Dave and they've been making excuses to see each other at work for the last few weeks.

What's different? What's changed? Over time these things fit into a larger story, the buildup of Steve and Dave's romance has been happening for weeks.

What's relatable for the person asking? If I'm another dev then telling me about that new library you got to use that's fun might be interesting, for others maybe not. Although you can often find interesting ways of talking about it to someone who is inquisitive, I talk a lot about bits of tech to my wife and explain how things work and why things are as they are, sometimes it's relevant to what she's doing. In return she's explained a lot about NMR machines and biology to me.

For practice, perhaps, I'm a developer but probably not using the same tech stack. How was your week? Since I don't know anything about your office or things, imagine you'd already told me what had happened the week before. What's changed, what's new?

Finally, it's also OK if not much really happened. But if nothing really happened, was that good or bad for you? Why? Was it a quiet week and that's different, or are the quiet weeks becoming less interesting? Is it quiet but there's a buildup of expected work coming in a few weeks?

In my very limited experience, I think this skill is made up of two components: finer details [1] and emotional expression. [2]

I find drawing to a be a great way to learn the art of going into finer details. For emotional expression in animation, you will need to study the classic principles of animation. [3]

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Drawing-Right-Side-Brain-Definitive/d...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_expression

[3] https://www.amazon.com/Tradigital-Blender-Animators-Principl...

A truly boring day can't be exciting. Honestly, I think the only answer to this is the most obvious. Stop having boring days.

Do things you enjoy and you'll gather talking points for people who also enjoy those things. Explore and enjoy more types of things, and you'll be able to interact with more people.

Maybe read an article/book or watch a video at work about something new that you'd enjoy sharing. Personally, I'll sometimes watch PBS Space Time on Youtube and share what I learned with people who also have their mind blown easily. It's a ton of fun.

This is standard fare in Nova documentaries where the topic can often be fairly dull. eg: documentary is about dinosaurs, they find a dinosaur fossil, extract it from the surrounding rock and take it back for cleaning and research. Pretty dull stuff.

But if you blow up some minor crisis: Scientists are extracting the large fossil but oh my, the plaster-cast looks like it may break (crisis). What can they do ? They gather in a room to decide, there are conflicting opinions (conflict). Finally one person makes a decision - they will wrap the plaster-cast in a wooden cage and use a fork lift. But will it work !? (drama). Tension builds as the forklift truck raises the plaster-cast - and, sigh of relief, it works. The fossil is safe (resolution).

The above scene is completely unnecessary for the documentary but inserting it grabs the viewers attention.

This formula works when giving fairly dull presentations - find something that blocked you in your research, explain the options you had and the choices you had to make and how you finally overcame that minor crisis.

Knowing this formula will, unfortunately, ruin your Nova viewing experience since they use this technique every time.

My nature is to not think anyone is interested in my day cause it is boring as hell to me.

I also found my listening ability greatly improved by simply jotting stuff down..

This thread is awsome by the way.

Is there a special reason as to why you're putting these out there? Trying to attract talent, or making the world a better place?

http://channel101.wikia.com/wiki/Story_Structure_101:_Super_...

Disney/Pixar probably are just emulating European classical storytelling that we find in fairy stories?

There are some mildly scary or tense scenes in many Pixar movies but I think children are more receptive to that kind of experience than you think they are. There is definitely a question of age appropriateness / maturity that you would want to think about before showing one to a very young child, but that's the responsibility of you as the adult, not Pixar. Kids movies aren't one size fits all. And it certainly doesn't feel like a valid criticism of the quality of the storytelling to say that some children are scared by them; tension and investment in the outcome by the viewer are hallmarks of good storytelling, not bad.

To prepare them for life in the magical unicorn fairy-land?

Besides, have you read the original Brothers Grimm stories and such?

But in one of the video, one story artist is talking about her first experience with the lion king and how traumatized she was by simba trying to talk to his dead father. And then I understood one thing:

I always thought that for you to make a long lasting mark into the world, you had to build a castle. But there are other ways: make cute animations targeting kids, but sneakily insert traumatizing sequences.

Three little pigs: violence Little Red Riding Hood: violence with a hint of sex Sound of Music: sex with the fear of violence from the Nazis.

ALL good stories must have conflict. All conflict originates from sex or violence.

Here's the most basic story in the Aristotlian tradition:

Get a man in a tree Throw rocks at him Get him down again

One could argue about what level of explicitness is appropriate for kids -- but there's no such thing as a story without fear, violence or sex.

Look at Fox and the Hound or Bambi, Peter Pan, Cinderella, Snow White -- all varying degrees of sex and violence and the fear and anticipation of each.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032910/synopsis?ref_=tt_stry_pl

Pixar is following a tradition that goes back to the origins of story telling. Ever read Grimm's fairytales? They're even worse. Scare the kids! Teach them to overcome their fears in a safe environment so they don't grow up to be irrational and superstitious. They need to be innoculated against these things so they don't grow up with allergies that stunt them later in life.

Instead of an abstract complaint, it would be more instructive if you could provide concrete examples of children's films that are: not contrived, not cliched, not sappy with no lame humor.

Think of it like any other art. Not everyone is equally good at it, but with practice, everyone gets better.

The first is a good imagination. Most people are born with a good one. Imagination tends to be more born with and can be harder to improve.

The second is understanding how to take what you see in your head and tell it to others. This is the part that needs help. Speech class for oratory story telling, art class for telling stories with images, English class for telling stories with the written word and many others. (These also can overlap.)

The basis behind story telling may be innate but the ability to share with the world is something that needs a lot of practice and training to be smooth.

Maybe this early exposure to fiction influences a developing mind in a way that's much more difficult to achieve once you have grown up. Learning to jump seamlessly between Narnia, Hogwarts, the Hundred Acre Woods, Victorian England, Medieval Europe, the Arabian Nights, and back to the real world is a bit like learning a new language, a new culture. Children learn new languages much more easily than adults do, and the languages you learn in your childhood stick with your accents for the rest of your life.

Anecdotally, I never thought I'd be able to draw, I used to think drawing (and art in painting, etc) was just something I wouldn't be able to do, though it's surprising and encouraging what you can do after dedicating some consistent time to practicing.

Also something I've started learning about recently is the art that goes into public speaking (from the Washington Uni Coursera course).

With knowledge broken down and explained by professionals, the mysterious becomes reachable through reasonable amounts of practice.