Walt Disney’s words of advice on story lines

Walt Disney said that there are only two things that belong in a story: building character and telling

the story. In his mind everything outside of those two aspects is superfluous and distracts from the

story. This sounds simple, right? But as writers it is easy to go “off into the weeds” and write things

that don’t honor this rule. While we may not notice we have done that, our readers will. This applies

mostly to creative writing.

So how do we abide by this? Keeping in mind that every story is nothing more than a collection of

scenes, right? So as we write each scene we need to stand back and say, “Is that scene necessary?

Does it comply to Disney’s simple rule?” If a scene stands up to that test, then we need to look

inside that scene to make sure that these rules apply. Is that dialog necessary? Does what the

character say or do make sense in the context of the story line? Is that dialog or action consistent

with the character? If portion of a scene doesn’t, the answer is simple edit or DELETE.

As writers we need to be introspective to make sure the words we put down will make sense to the

reader and help with the flow of the story line. After all, our only job is to communicate with our

readers.

So with these words of advice, let me say...happy writing!