Learning Story Structure from Movies
Animated Movies are Perfect Examples of Tight Story Structure
Back around 2005, I created a character who was an animator for my novel, Becoming Latina in 10 Easy Steps. She’s still one of my favorite characters because she was quirky, and she had a great job. She worked for a fictional animation studio, and I bought books on animation and read everything I could about movie studios, and I watched a lot of animated movies.
Two that I watched many times was Monsters Inc and Mulan. The Monsters Inc DVD had extra bonus videos that showed how the animators created movement in the fur, and it was fascinating. I learned a lot about how animators work. I chose Mulan simply because I loved the story of a strong female character going after an impossible goal. I also got the opportunity to do a behind the scenes tour while visiting one of the Disney parks.
While watching these movies many times, I paid close attention to story structure even though that wasn’t my original intent in watching the movies. And I learned that if writers want to understand plot structure, studying Hollywood movies, especially animated movies is a great way to see exactly how it’s done. And it’s interesting to see how close they stay to the same structure.
