Summary of Andrew Stanton: The clues to a great story

00:00:00 - 00:15:00

In the video, "Andrew Stanton: The clues to a great story," the speaker discusses how to create a story that will engage and inspire the audience. He talks about how all well-drawn characters have a dominant goal that they strive for, and how to evoke wonder in the audience by making them curious about what will happen next.

• 00:00:00 The video discusses how storytelling is the art of joke telling, and how it is important to give the audience a promise that the story will lead to something worthwhile. The narrator of the video, Andrew Stanton, discusses his experience completing the film John Carter, based on the book The Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Stanton says that the book's promise is that the story will lead to something interesting and worthwhile.
• 00:05:00 Andrew Stanton explains how storytelling is a pure form of cinematic storytelling that engages the audience by hiding the fact that the story is making them work for their meal. He credits this theory to screenwriting teacher Judith Weston, and explains that all well-drawn characters have a dominant, unconscious goal that they strive for. He also shares a quote from 1998 which inspired him to become a better writer.
• 00:10:00 In his talk "The clues to a great story," Andrew Stanton discusses how to make a likable selfish character and how to identify a theme in a story. He also talks about how he recognized the theme in "Lawrence of Arabia" after seeing it multiple times.
• 00:15:00 Andrew Stanton explains the "secret sauce" for a well-told story, which is the ability to evoke wonder. He recalls a vivid memory from when he was four of finding two matching scars on his ankle and asking his dad what they were. His dad explained that when he was born, he was born premature, and he wasn't fully baked. This made him very, very sick and he spent months in the hospital. Despite this, Stanton strived to be good at anything he pursued.