The greatest story commandment is: Make me care.
Interpretation
Engaging storytelling elicits emotions and connections from the audience.
This quote emphasizes the importance of emotional engagement in storytelling. Andrew Stanton suggests that a compelling narrative must resonate with the audience, making them feel invested in the characters and the plot, thereby creating a memorable experience that captures their attention and empathy.
In practice
During a writing workshop, when discussing the fundamentals of captivating narratives.
We all fall into our habits, our routines, our ruts. They're used quite often, consciously or unconsciously, to avoid living, to avoid doing the messy part of having relationships with other people, of dealing with a person next to us. That's why we can all be in a room on our cell phones and not have to deal with one another.
Change is fundamental in story. If things go static, stories die.
It was a pleasant cafe, warm and clean and friendly, and I hung up my old water-proof on the coat rack to dry and put my worn and weathered felt hat on the rack above the bench and ordered a cafe au lait. The waiter brought it and I took out a notebook from the pocket of the coat and a pencil and started to write.
Poetry is like making a joke. If you get one word wrong at the end of a joke, you've lost the whole thing.
Curves are the essence of my work because they are the essence of Brazil, pure and simple.
I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me - shapes and ideas so near to me - so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down.
I search for surprise in my architecture. A work of art should cause the emotion of newness.
Meet some people who care about poetry the way you do. You'll have that readership. Keep going until you know you're doing work that's worthy. And then see what happens. That's my advice.
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