The Biggest Differences Between Writing Live Action and Animation

When it comes to screenwriting, I’m a big believer in honing your niche. If you want to make a career writing vampire romance movies, you should probably get good at writing vampire romance movies. As someone who wants to write adult animation, I spend most of my time trying to perfect that hyperspecific tone and structure. But I also believe in experimentation. I think there’s real benefit in writing different genres and formats, just to see how you like it. I don’t really like writing horror, but the only reason I know that is because I wrote a horror short and thought “I don’t really like this.” All that to say, I think anyone who wants to write television, especially comedies, should try their hand at writing both live action and animation.

Now, anyone who knows me knows that I am not qualified to speak on much, due to the fact that I am, as doctors have put it, “an idiot”. But this is something I feel pretty confident talking about. To date, I have written 12 live action scripts and 11 animated ones (plus one upcoming script that is neither live action nor animated. Stay tuned for that 👀). In writing those scripts, I’ve noticed some pretty major differences between how I go about the process, and what points are important to hit in each format. I want to talk about some of those differences today.

Before we get started, it’s important to note that these thoughts are specifically about writing television. The difference between an animated movie and a live action one is a lot less dramatic, at least on the writing side. Shoutout Madagascar.

PACING:

One of the biggest differences between writing animation and live action is the pacing. Animation, in general, has to be a lot quicker. Dramatic pauses and character moments generally don’t work as well as they do in live action. Whether they know it or not, audiences have an expectation for the speed of the plot and delivery in animation, and they can tell when the pacing is off. Not sure if anyone has seen Captain Fall (I don’t blame you if you haven’t), but that was an animated show that tried to do a slower burn type of comedy and it just felt like it dragged foreverrrrr. Not saying every show needs to be Smiling Friends, but if you watch any of your favorite animated shows with a critical eye, chances are you’ll notice they move a lot quicker than you might have realized.

RULES OF THE WORLD:

Another big difference between animation and live action TV is, in general, animation doesn’t really have to justify the rules of the world. Take Regular Show, for example. The main characters are a talking blue jay and a raccoon, their boss is a gumball machine, and I don’t even know what the fuck Muscle Man is supposed to be. At no point does the show ever explain why any of them are this way…they just are. If you want a less extreme example, look no further than Family Guy. That’s a show where characters experience horrific injuries regularly, and by the next scene they’re completely fine, like nothing happened. If it was live action, the audience would call that a plot hole, but because it’s animation, they just kind of roll with it. That’s not to say your world doesn’t have to have rules, it absolutely does, and the audience will still notice if you don’t adhere to the rules that you set. But you don’t have to explicitly justify them. That’s part of why I love writing cartoons so much. You get a lot more wiggle room for what the audience will let you get away with.

“WHY IS THIS ANIMATED?”:

That said, animation does have to justify its own existence in a way that live action shows generally don’t. When watching a sitcom, most audience members aren’t thinking “why is this live action?” If you do raise that point, you’re generally met with some version of “who cares? Shut up.” But with animation, that question comes up almost instantly. Most animated shows have a clear reason for being animated; whether it’s the absurd tone, like American Dad or The Amazing World of Gumball, or high budget sci-fi/fantasy elements, like Rick and Morty or Gravity Falls. Of course, there are more grounded animations too, but even those have a logic behind why they’re animated. Bob’s Burgers, for example, allows the cast to remain the same age throughout the show’s 16 seasons. Live action family sitcoms inevitably come up against the problem of child actors growing up (or, as Dan Schneider calls it, “code red”), yet this is avoided entirely with animation.

THIS IS NOT GOSPEL:

It’s important to note that by no means are any of these “rules” laws. If you can think of a clever and new way to write animation that breaks the mold, by all means, go for it. But it’s good to know the general differences between writing animation and live action, even if you chose to ignore them. And if you want to see these differences put into practice, check out my production company, Priam’s Productions, where my writing partner Gage and I have written both live action and animated comedy shows.