By Meghan Proctor ’16

Former Pixar employee Emma Coats is well known for her work as a storyboard artist on animated films such as “Brave” and “Monsters University,” as well as directing some independent short films. However, some may also know her from another project: the creation of Pixar’s 22 Rules for Storytelling.

Back in 2012, a few months before the release of “Brave,” Coats released on Twitter a series of posts, sharing tips for telling stories. Some examples of her tips include “You admire a character for trying more than for their successes,” and “Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.”

Coats came up with the idea for these rules from her own experiences and what she has learned from working with the company. “I built my own curriculum for learning the skills relevant to storyboarding. The list is part of that as a continuing process,” said Coats. “I’m passionate about developing as a storyteller, so it’s all about discovering processes that work, challenging things and making more films.” Coats’s rules have since been compiled into a single list and shared across the Internet, known now as Pixar’s 22 Rules of Storytelling.

In an interview with the Washington Post, Coats explains some of her rules in further detail. Regarding the rule that the audience admires a character for trying rather than for succeeding, Coats states, “[Many famous] characters move forward when there’s no hope of success, miles after any one of us in the audience would have given up. Success without trials is meaningless, as you probably know if you’ve ever got something easy and then tried to share your triumph.” Coats then continues to explain how telling a story where someone had to work for their successes will more likely receive a more positive reaction from an audience as opposed to a story where someone finds an easy way to achieving his or her goal.

Coats did not post her rules with the intention of them becoming a definitive strategy for telling storytelling, or a set of concrete rules that must be followed in order to make a successful story. Rather, people should view these rules as a set of soft guidelines and advice to help them get on the right track. Writers and storytellers are not obliged to follow these rules, though they may find use in them as they write and improve their stories.

The same year she posted her rules for storytelling on Twitter, Coats left Pixar and is currently a freelance artist in New York City.