About Writing

Pixar Studios, maker of such classic films as Toy Story, Finding Nemo and Up, have had phenomenal success turning out one hit movie after another. In his book, Creativity Inc, Ed Catmull, one of the founders of Pixar, outlines many of the principles behind the studio’s success.

From the Writers’ Studio perspective, it is gratifying that just about every principle Catmull articulates matches the approach we passionately follow when conducting writing courses at the Writers’ Studio.Here are four of their guiding principles:

1. Story is King

In other words, they follow the principles of classic story structure where the action of the story, the character arc or journey and theme are inexorably linked.

At the end of last year, an award-winning Australian film director told me that people often asked him how to best learn to become a filmmaker. His response – study Breaking Bad created by Vince Gilligan.

Like many of the ground-breaking cable television series, Breaking Bad unfolds like a good novel. David Simon, who created The Wire, another great series, pitched the crime writer, George Pelecanos, to join the writing team with the concept that The Wire was like a novel for television.

One of the outcomes of our 4-Week Unlocking Creativity course is to help participants understand and recognise whether writing fiction is something they want to pursue and make part of their life.

Writing fiction is an art and a craft that takes time to master. If you do want to publish a novel or write a professional screenplay, you need to dedicate time to learning the craft. The same applies to any creative endeavour.

A burning question many aspiring writers often torture themselves with is  ‘Do I have the necessary talent required to be a writer?’

People often ask me how many talented writers come to our courses. I respond by saying I believe everyone who has a genuine desire to write has the raw ingredients to be a writer.