Where Do Ideas Come From

Andrew starts with the two things a story needs: wants and conflict. He then explores where ideas come from. Inspiration can hit anywhere: a picture of a caterpillar, a caption contest (a Pixar icebreaker using New Yorker-style cartoons), or daily life. The class does a live caption exercise, generating ideas from simple images.

He explains that stories start with a premise, a "what if?" question. He shows Pixar's premise slide: "What if toys had feelings? What if monsters had feelings? What if feelings had feelings?" He reveals that when he pitched stories at Pixar, they noticed his stories were always about hitting a glass ceiling, reflecting his own life. The lesson: your stories often bubble up from personal experience. He also covers hooks (the cheap kind versus the meaningful kind) and introduces the structure of setup, unexpected twist, and payoff.