Building Better Content - Ideas for the Animated Short - page 29

Rule #6: Emotion Drives Action
A story is defi ned by the character. More specifi cally, it is defi ned by how the character
reacts to the situation he is in.
In fi lm, unlike literature, the story is told through the actions of the characters. We are seldom
privy to the character's thoughts. As Ed Hooks reminds us, a character will play an action
until something happens to make him or her play another action. [2]
For example: I will sit and type at my computer until the phone rings and I go to answer it,
or the phone might ring and I ignore it and keep typing. What I do will depend on what I
am writing and how I feel about it, or who is calling and how I feel about talking to that
person. I might even really like what I'm writing and ignore the phone until the fourth ring
before the answering machine picks up. At this point, I make a mad dash for the phone
because, emotionally , I can't stand not to answer it.
Too often, beginning storytellers will create the events of their story by what the character
does and the action he takes instead of looking at the emotional changes in the character
as he meets the rising confl icts in the story. This leads to the perception that the story is
shorter in running time than it actually is. The time it takes to convey emotion and to react
to a situation will grow the length your piece.
Action never just happens. Action is the result of thought and emotion.
What a character thinks and feels at any moment in the story is called internal dialogue .
“My Tomato!,” Gopher Broke crow, Illustration by
Sean McNally, Blur Studios