Comedy for Animators

Chapter 8Structure, Style, and Theme

This chapter is about creating stories for funny cartoons. One of my big reasons for wanting to write this book is to present a counterpoint to conventional film storytelling. In animation, there is an emphasis on “story” that has led to adopting standard narrative formulas that don’t take advantage of what animation can do.

Hollywood is filled with thousands of aspiring screenwriters. They spend money to buy books and take classes that will help them learn the craft of writing the salable feature film screenplay. Those are the sorts of books that feature film screenwriters should read. The small number of writers employed to work on feature animated films are well versed in mythic archetypes, three act structure, ...