Andrew Stanton: The clues to a great story


Filmmaker Andrew Stanton ("Toy Story," "WALL-E") shares what he knows about storytelling -- starting at the end and working back to the beginning. (Contains graphic language ...)

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Author interview: Chuck Heintzelman

How did you become interested in short stories? As a reader, I fell in love with short stories as a kid.  Especially Edgar Allen Poe.  Then Lovecraft and anything bizarre and weird I could get my hands on.  I plowed through magazines like Ripley's Believe It or Not, but really I became an indiscriminant reader, consuming anything and everything.
Unlike most authors, I wasn't pounding away at a typewriter in the womb.  I didn't start writing until my mid-30's.  Wow, that's ten years ago now.  After writing several deservedly unpublishable novels I started on short stories and began having lots of fun.  My goal this year is to create 50 new short stories.  I'm currently writing my seventh and having a blast doing it.
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Review of "The Truth about Rebecca," a short story by E.M. Youman

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Summary: She's a banshee screaming, sugar-starved monster, and her zookeeper has left you all alone with her.
That's what's running through twenty-nine-year-old Henry Dalton's mind, when his five-year-old stepdaughter, Rebecca, enters the room and utters these fatal words. "Where's Mommy?"

 Review: This is a touching story about two people in need of love and forming an unlikely family.  Henry Dalton, the protagonist, is your very typical bachelor that has absolutely no interest in having a family.  He's just "a guy" that wants to date Rebecca's mom.
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