Protect the ugly baby

The first version of Up was about two feuding princes in a floating sky-city. No balloons. No Carl. No grumpy old man tying 10,000 balloons to his house.

Early Toy Story was worse: Woody was so mean that test screenings tanked and production shut down for two weeks.

Pixar has a name for these early drafts: ugly babies. Ed Catmull, Pixar's co-founder, says every one of their films is terrible at first. His word. The skill was never producing brilliant first drafts. The skill was protecting the ugly baby long enough for it to grow.

Protect the ugly baby

Catmull's warning: the "hungry beast" (deadlines, budgets, perfectionism) wants to eat new ideas before they mature. Feed it a fragile draft and it will shred it.

Frozen was a mess 17 months before release. Elsa was the villain. Then "Let It Go" got written, the team realised the song made her sympathetic, and they rebuilt the story around it. $1.28 billion at the box office.

"Originality is fragile. And, in its first moments, it's often far from pretty." — Ed Catmull

Yet we compare our week-old drafts to someone's finished, polished masterpiece, and quit.

Every masterpiece you love was once embarrassing. You just never saw that version.

Guard the ugly phase. It's where the good stuff gestates.

— Dan

P.S. What's sitting half-finished in your drafts folder right now? Name it. That's the first step to protecting it.