Robert McKee - Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

I'm not much of a hero worshipper. When I studied Philosophy, someone asked me who my favorite philosopher was. I replied, "Me." Truth is, I'm not interested in carrying anyone's books. If they have something to teach, I'll learn. Beyond that, I have no other reason to hang around. I've got better things to do.

That's how I feel about Robert McKee, a man some people revere as the ultimate screenwriting guru of our time, a man whom others hate as the script nazi from Hell. McKee's seminal book, Story, is a ten-pound brick, nearly five hundred pages in length. What makes it hardest to cross is the thick academic language, particularly in the first chapter or so. For many, McKee is a blowhard of the worst order.

I have to laugh because I don't "believe" he's a blowhard - I know he is - yet I find him to have produced one of the coolest manuals on screenwriting, once you learn to read it like an academic. You see, I'm a nerd, too, so I didn't find Story to be overly daunting. If anything, I found it refreshing.

Story was the first textbook on screenwriting that struck me as, well, academic. Most of these books are written in the tone of a sales pitch. Everybody wants to convince the potential reader that screenwriting is oh, so, easy. McKee doesn't think so. Like a philosopher seeking truth, he knows the secrets of screenwriting are as evasive as sophia, herself. Wisdom comes, not from casual acquaintance, but from diligent study.

When I speak, praisingly, of McKee's academic style, I am not speaking of the introduction to Story, which IS written as if McKee were hawking the book from an alley in New York. I even find his distinction between rules and principles a little fuzzy, not because the two are anything but different, but because McKee doesn't always treat them differently. He introduces his book with the following distinction:

"A rule says, 'You must do it this way.' A principle says, 'This works ... and has through all remembered time.'" (3)

Actually, McKee's distinction between rules and principles is a little bogus. I'll go along with him on the idea that a RULE is a set way of doing things, or even a general pattern of how they're done. But a PRINCIPLE is the "why" behind a particular rule. It's the underlying set of circumstances on which a rule is based.

That's important. Why? Because rules are made to be broken, or at least bent - not always but every now and then. If you study the rules, you won't know when to ignore them. If you ignore the rules, you won't know when to apply them. By studying principles, you come to realize when to apply the rule and when to apply its exception.

This is why I hate it when people quote McKee, especially that first line - which is repeated in the dialogue of Adaptation. It's like a mistake being bronzed, copied and sold to the public to hang on their mantels.

What's worse, this grand mistake is not really representative of McKee, except his ability to go down with the ship. In fact, it's the worst stuff from McKee that people tend to remember, instead of all the stuff he gets right.

McKee's best observations begin to kick in around chapter seven. Until then, everything is a series of basics: vocabulary lessons, preferences for conventional narrative, genre distinctions, and a nice distinction between character and characterization. (McKee wonderfully says that character is revealed through choices, whereas characterization is just the sum of a character's observable qualities.) McKee also talks about character and structure arcs, and their respective climaxes. In chapter six, he talks about theme.

It's in chapter seven that McKee finally gets down to business, and not a moment too soon. What he throws down here is classic stuff. It's the essence of drama, in a nutshell. Somebody wants something and takes action, expecting to get it. There's a disconnect, exposing a gap. Our hero can either quit or take greater risks. This sets up the next move, which will be matched by the other side in what is becoming a game of higher and higher stakes, leading to the climax, or final showdown between the two sides. This is called rising tension and it's why we end the story, on the edge of our seats.

McKee deserves a huge pat on the back for nailing this observation. To say that the substance of story is the gap between expectations and result is to identify a huge factor in whether or not the story satisfies our desire for a "night on the town." All too often, stories are a parade of predictable events, lacking that spark of life. It only took seven chapters of wading to get there, but this is one of the reasons McKee's book is worth having.

McKee's chapter eight (the inciting incident) is pretty standard stuff, but his chapter nine (act design) contains a nice distinction between complications and complexity, as well as a lengthy discussion of why there is no set page number at which one act ends and another begins (nor is there a set number of acts).

Chapter ten (scene design) creates the best model I have ever seen for this sort of thing. Every story can be broken down into a series of changes occurring at different levels of scale. From large to small, they are: story, act, sequence, scene and beat. The smallest unit of change is the beat. Several beats form a scene, several of which form a sequence, several of which form an act, several of which form a story.

All of this is a set up for discussion of turning points. As McKee explains it, scenes, sequences and acts have turning points. This is that moment when conditions begin to change from one condition to its opposite. Turning points are introduced by a kind of inciting incident (or setup), then build or mature to a climax (called the turning point) which results in a resolution or ending. The glory of McKee's model is that it creates a single, unifying theory for story progression. In each scene, sequence and act, the same kind of progression is taking place that ultimately brings the story from beginning to end.

McKee, by the way, is the only one out there who has gone to the trouble to make this sort of model. He's the only one selling a single unifying theory of story progression.

In chapter eleven (scene analysis), McKee introduces the idea of subtext, before introducing his method for breaking a scene down for analysis. His method is a bit laborious, though it works. He then brings in an excerpt from the film, Casablanca. Chapters twelve and thirteen are primarily academic and, for my money, felt more like filler.

In part four of the book, McKee lays down some good observations, nothing on the order of what he has already laid down, but still some pretty good stuff. In chapter 14, he argues that the story is only as good, or compelling, as the force of opposition within it. In chapter 15, he goes over the use of exposition, arguing that writers should show more than tell, and that voice-over narration is an unnecessary crutch.

Chapters sixteen, seventeen and eighteen are a series of grasscatchers. McKee makes some good observations. He points out that audiences want to root for the Center of Good (the character whose side sparks them as the right one, even among villains). Coincidence, he argues, should get your hero into trouble, but not out of it. In chapter 18, McKee offers some ideas on how to improve dialogue.

McKee's stiff, often barking, academic style can be off-putting to a lot of people, which is probably why he generates the opposite of fan clubs (and why UCLA professor Richard Walter dedicated a portion of his book, The Whole Picture, to bashing McKee). It also produces its share of sheep, people who love to be abused, Marine-Corp style. To each his (or her) own, I guess.

I, for one, am neither a lover or a fighter. I'm a snatcher. If I see something that works, I incorporate it. I don't worry about personalities. Life is too short. As I see it, there's a lot of good in McKee's book, even if McKee may turn out to be a disagreeable old crank.

I don't buy into everything McKee is selling, nor do I feel a need to. If McKee was smart enough to use his head and steal from the best, so can I. When McKee bashes the misuse of voice-over narrations, for example, I heartily agree. That device is badly abused in our time - and by people who don't know how to use it in the first place. But when he argues that voice-overs are always a bad idea, I have to disagree. For a man who began his book by distancing himself from rules, McKee has moments when he sounds as if he's coming down from the mount with tablets in hand.

Oh well. As I've said before, the successful screenwriter must learn to hear different voices - many of whom may be in conflict with one another. It's not about choosing one's shepherd so much as developing independent judgment - so that you don't need a shepherd. As these things go, I'm glad I have McKee sitting on my shelf. Every now and then, I pull him down to remind myself of what he stands for.