What makes a good story?

What makes a good story? 

Yesterday in Paolo's lesson we spoke about the subject of Story Telling.

In my opinion it comes down to a good plot - having a beginning, a middle and an end is the core. When we were discussing this I thought about storyboarding and how throughout my animation course, we were taught not to think about the fiddly bits inbetween so much, but to focus on what the beginning would be, what the middle would be and how it would end. Of course there are many other things that make a good story in terms of what we see on TV or in movies whether it be the genre or the way people can relate to certain situations and characters that are part of a movie or TV drama.

We watched a video of Andrew Stanton (writer of Pixar movies such as Toy Story and A Bugs Life) speak about this very topic and he boiled it all down to three words - "Make someone care."

So with this in mind, we had discussions and were told to have a think about our own lives and think of a story we could take from it in which we could tell people and 'make them care.'