Plot, Character, Setting, Point of View, and Theme

There’s something about 2D (two dimension) animation that attracts me like a magnet when I was a child. I loved Anastasia, Lady and the Tramp, and Tarzan. When Pixar came in with 3D (three dimension) animation Toy Story, I freaked out. Everything shaped weird, looked too real, and made me scared.

When I was old enough, I started to accept and consume 3D animations. One in particular is undoubtedly my favorite: WALL-E. In 2008, Pixar released a futuristic movie about WALL-E, a cleaning robot living on a deserted Earth. All humans evacuated to a spaceship, escaping the trash-filled planet. One day, a robot named EVE came to Earth in search for a plant life. Astounded, WALL-E made friends with her and the story started from there.

What makes WALL-E stands out to me, is the fact that Pixar delivered storytelling with minimum amount of dialogues. They succeeded in touching viewers’ hearts, making them care about WALL-E and EVE. They were the champions of storytelling.

There are five elements to a story that you need to know before you start writing. They are Plot, Character, Setting, Point of View, and Theme.

Plot

Plot is the structure of your story. In general, you can divide a story into 5 parts. [1]

• Exposition. This is where you introduce the story to others. Here, readers learn about the main characters, where the story takes place, and what a normal day looks like. In novels, you might want to give a ‘hook’ within 1% of your whole story. [2]
  
• Rising Action. Here is the biggest chunk of your story: it’s where story becomes complicated and the main characters experience conflicts. You need to consider both internal and external conflicts, where the character needs to re-evaluate what he values and what he’s fighting for. As readers understand what’s on stake, they become drawn into the story.
  
• Climax. Imagine your story as a line diagram and climax then, is at the peak of it. It’s when your main characters face a turning point and meet the antagonists. In novel, it’s around 88% of your story. [3]
  
• Falling Action. It is where things start to fall into place between climax and resolution. You might want to explain the after effects from the climax.
  
• Resolution. Resolution brings an outcome to the story. Readers are able to see the new equilibrium established and how the future looks like for the main characters.
  

Character

You want to make your main characters likeable and relatable. The way you make characters alive is by describing their physical appearance, convey what they feeling, and portray how they react in different situations.

One thing to keep in mind that characters can be round, flat, dynamic, or static. Round characters are fully developed by story’s events. Flat characters are one dimensional. Dynamic characters go through changes and grow throughout the story. Finally, static characters do not change at all.

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Setting

Setting is where the story takes place. It is highly related to world building, especially when you’re writing fantasy and science fiction. To make it real, you have to describe how the place looks like, what time or age the characters in, the weather and environment, social conditions, as well as mood atmosphere.

In WALL-E we learn that the future Earth was a sad place where hope is nowhere to be found except in WALL-E. We know that humans become comfortable in the spaceship where life is easier than ever.

Point of View

Shifting perspectives is honestly a fun experience.

• You can try writing from a first-person, second person, or third person’s perspectives. With first-person, you can use ‘I’ or ‘we’. As a writer, you get more ownership of the character and can even identify them as part of yourself.
  
• Meanwhile with the second-person, you address the readers directly. It is an intimate way to communicate with them and it’s usually for short-length stories. For example, Ted Chiang used the second-person perspective to write “Stories of Your Life” in 2000. It is the story that adapted to the Hollywood movie “Arrival” in 2016.
  
• The third person is more common in classical books, such as Jane Austen’s novels. You refer to the main characters as ‘he’ or ‘she’ or ‘it’ or ‘they’. By being the narrator of the story, you can take a limited perspective or omniscient, God-like perspective.
  

Theme

Your story should have a central theme and a message you want to deliver. In WALL-E, it’s about finding hope, finding love, awareness and ignorance, and performing duties. You can use different tools to reinforce the theme.

For example, a character can question moral issues again and again. Or you can have symbolisms in the story that signifies the theme. Another way is to use foreshadowing for readers to get a sense that a bigger issue will arise in the future.

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Overall, your story should have a plot, character, setting, point of view, and theme. If you have time, check Andrew Stanton’s TED in 2012. He’s the co-writer of WALL-E. One of the key points he made is that a story should invoke wonder.

“There’s no greater ability than the gift of another human being giving you that feeling – to hold them still just for a brief moment in their day and have them surrender to wonder.” [4]

Happy writing!

Sources:

1. https://www.rcboe.org/cms/lib010/GA01903614/Centricity/Domain/4395/Elements%20of%20a%20Story.pdf
   
2. https://i0.wp.com/www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Third-Act-Timeline1.png?ssl=1
   
3. https://i2.wp.com/www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Eat-breakfast.png?ssl=1
   
4. https://www.ted.com/talks/andrew_stanton_the_clues_to_a_great_story/transcript?language=en