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RULE 4. REMEMBER WHY IT’S ANIMATED

The current state of special effects is so advanced that it’s become increasingly difficult to impress even the least theatrically experienced 8-year-old. But take heart, there are still things animation can do that can’t be matched by the even the most skilled effects wizards. The key is to know what those things are and use them as tools to make your story as fun as possible.

Good animation looks for an “animation hook” – essentially a reason why the movie is being animated in the first place: Toys coming to life after you leave the room is a hook that bursts with possibilities. The ascension of a rat to the pinnacle of Parisian gastronomy would probably lose a bit of its charm in live action, but Ratatouille stands out as one of my favorite animated films of all time. The key is to squeeze as much mileage out of that hook as is humanly possible.

Which leads me to…

RULE 5. SINK YOUR TEETH INTO THE WORLD

Animators will regularly spend months researching the world of the film. They’ll practically live at the zoo watching exotic animals prance around looking for the idiosyncrasies and personalities of various animals… it wouldn’t kill you to do the same.

On The Princess and the Frog, I was looking for a series of unique ways to show conflict and contrast between the fun-loving Prince Naveen and the hard-working Tiana. I ended up spending a lot of time – don’t laugh – pretending to be a frog. I finally came to the conclusion that Naveen, a world traveler and a man open to new experiences, would immediately enjoy his new frog body. He’d have no problem at all eating flies and hopping around in the swamp. Tiana, who wanted no part of this would try to walk upright (which would lend itself to physical comedy given the fact that it’s virtually impossible for a frog to stand on two feet), she’d resist eating flies and try to retain her dignity through the experience. But, in the end, her inherent resourcefulness would bail them out of a jam or two. Even when the two waltz in the middle of the film it’s filled with acrobatic jumps and underwater moves that only two frogs could do and it adds to the uniqueness and magic of the movie.

RULE 6. THINK VISUALLY

When I worked on situation comedies like “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air” and “Roc”, we would write stuff like “He enters and sits on couch” followed by five pages of witty dialogue. Conversely, there’s nothing more boring in animation than two characters sitting around and talking. Keep your characters moving. Don’t let them talk about what they’re going to do, put them in action. And, when they speak, keep in mind that some poor animator is going to have to sit over a light table or a computer screen for two weeks bringing the sentence you’ve just written to live. Keep it short and make what’s there fun to play with.

RULE 7. REMEMBER TO BRING YOURSELF TO THE TABLE

Animation is a collaborative medium. An actor, (sometimes a singer) and a team of animators create a character. A team of background artists give the characters places to go. Dozens of sound engineers and composers work around the clock to create an auditory reality out of thin air. The process is as different from live action as the laws of nature allow. But, at its heart, good story telling is good story telling. The more outrageous and remarkable the world of your film is, the more it needs to be anchored with an emotional reality. Find the truth in the incredible, give your characters a beating heart, tell your stories as entertainingly as possible and have a ball doing it.

I can’t wait to see the films you make and I hope you’ll all enjoy mine this weekend!

Language is the primary conductor between your brain and the minds of your audience. Ineffective language weakens and distorts ideas.

If you want to be understood, if you want your ideas to spread, using effective language must be your top priority.In the modern world of business and politics this is hardly ever the case. In many instances, imprecise language is used intentionally to avoid taking a position and offending various demographics. No wonder it’s hard to make sense of anything!

Web-based forums like www.crimespace.ning.com and the Crime
Writers Association www.thecwa.co.uk have flourished, bringing
together writers and fans around the world.

Authors I spoke with for this column rated among their
favorites the crime fiction sites "Confessions of an
Idiosyncratic Mind" at www.sarahweinman.com,
www.thrillerwriters.org and www.crimespot.net.

Seasoned or aspiring writers also track blogs run by police
officers where they can read tales and learn jargon --
something that was not possible a few years back.

Child said one of the great benefits of tapping into the
right police blog site is that writers can learn about tension
between departments, staff and bosses, personal concerns and
how they balance the "banal with the extraordinary."

1. Use short sentences.

Hemingway was famous for a terse minimalist style of writing that dispensed with flowery adjectives and got straight to the point. In short, Hemingway wrote with simple genius.

Perhaps his finest demonstration of short sentence prowess was when he was challenged to tell an entire story in only 6 words:

For sale: baby shoes, never used.

A ficlet is a short story that enables you to collaborate with the world.

Once you’ve written and shared your ficlet, any other user can pick up the narrative thread by adding a prequel or sequel. In this manner, you may know where the story begins, but you’ll never guess where (or even if!) it ends.

“We steal the headline and not the body copy,” Mr. Wolf explained. While the story’s jumping-off point would not change, he said, “the internal construction gets us into a vastly different area because the front half is a murder mystery, but in the best episodes the second half-hour is a moral mystery.”

Mr. Wolf’s early conception of the episode involved not one but three suspects linked to the footprint at the crime scene. In this retelling, three people in the victim’s building had identical footprints because several pairs of size-10 sneakers had fallen off a truck nearby. Two of the suspects were, like the real-life suspect Mr. Pillco, illegal aliens doing construction work. A third was the 22-year-old ne’er-do-well American-born son of their employer.

Over the course of the episode, the main suspect would change three or four times, so that in the final 15 minutes neither the characters nor the television audience would be certain whether the defendant on trial was the guilty party. The surprising plot twists were also intended to make viewers question their preconceptions about different kinds of suspects. “What is our knee-jerk reaction when we hear that an illegal alien is involved?” Mr. Wolf asked. “What is our knee-jerk reaction when we hear that a rich white kid was involved?”