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A review by adamskiboy528491
Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee
5.0
"First of all, you write a screenplay without conflict or crisis, you'll bore your audience to tears. Secondly, 'nothing happens in the world'? Are you out of your f--king mind? People are murdered every day. There's genocide, war, corruption. Every f--king day, somewhere in the world, somebody sacrifices his life to save somebody else. Every f--king day, someone, somewhere takes a conscious decision to destroy someone else. People find love, people lose it. For Christ's sake, a child watches a mother beaten to death on the steps of a church. Someone goes hungry. Somebody else betrays his best friend for a woman. If you can't find that stuff in life, then you, my friend, don't know crap about life. And why the f--k are you wasting my two precious hours with your movie? I don't have any use for it! I don't have any bloody use for it!" — McKee, “Adaptation.”
Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting is a 1999 book by Robert McKee about the elements at work in stories. Primarily concerned with film and television (McKee was a story analyst for United Artists and NBC back in the 80s), the text claims to apply to all storytelling mediums, such as stage plays and novels. Story borrows heavily from older texts, most specifically Aristotle's Poetics; McKee notes this, but often suggests the older work is essential if a proper understanding of narrative techniques is desired. Rather than defining story structure through rigid paradigms or formulas, Story has a very flexible framework with plenty of deep philosophy into what goes behind storytelling.
To limit the limitless possibilities of a story, you first need creative limitations to act as guard rails, so you don't fall off the road to your best possible story. They are made up of...
Placement on the Story Structure Spectrum: Is the story archetypal/realistic, minimalist, absurdist, or a combination?
Setting: Where does the story occur? When does it take place? For how long? What's the inherent level of conflict?
Genre: What is the story's focus? What are the medium and the limits of that medium? Is there a combination of genres?
Characters: What are my characters like on the surface? What will they do under pressure to get what they want? As McKee writes, "Likability is no guarantee of audience involvement; it's merely an aspect of characterisation" , whilst sometimes "the audience's emotional involvement is held by the glue of empathy."
Value Charge: The lifeblood of a story, as changes in values (life to death or death to life, hope to despair, love to hate, etc.) create the very substances from which we shape pleasurable or painful experiences. What is at stake in my story? How can I express what is at stake in my story? How can I fairly show all sides of the value?
A pattern emerges when you look at how value charges change within stories, resulting in the following five parts...
The Inciting Incident: The protagonist's life is more or less in the balance until something happens to throw a value charge in his/her life out of balance, either positive or negative. This first turning point sends the character on a quest to obtain an object of desire to restore the balance of life. They may have a conscious desire, or they might also have a contradictory unconscious desire.
Rising Conflict: The character will take a small, conservative step based on their experience of life, only to find that it won't work. Taking a risk, they take a more extensive action. It may work for the time being and bring the value back to the positive, but that brings about repercussions and new situations that force the character to take larger and more significant actions.
Crisis: Once the character has exhausted all of his/her options, they're left with one final method to achieve their object of desire to restore the balance of life. This action takes the character to the climax. A crisis can be placed anywhere in the story. When placed within the climax, one final action solves the story. When placed before the climax, it fills the final Act or final Sequence with climatic action. When placed at the very beginning, you get an entire story of relentless pursuit of the object of desire, typical of action films.
Climax: The most meaningful event of the story, expressing the controlling value with one final action. The climax can result in an idealistic ending, ending on the positive and celebrating the good in life. The climax can result in a downbeat ending, ending on the negative and reminding us of the horrors and perils of life. The climax can also end on two opposite charges, creative and Ironic Ending, which can be mostly good or bad.
Resolution: The after-effects of the story, which can be used to clear up any remaining loose ends.
The rest of the book goes into detail about the designing philosophies of each of these parts, how to use them, how to avoid pitfalls and other problems, and more.
The "Controlling Idea" is the story's main lesson, illustrated through how the different scenes play it straight, why it doesn't, why both sides are wrong, and who is worse than all sides combined. Discussed in the epilogue how writers who understand the principles of a story should not worry about how they write but continue doing what they've been doing with more excellent skill and insight.
Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting is a 1999 book by Robert McKee about the elements at work in stories. Primarily concerned with film and television (McKee was a story analyst for United Artists and NBC back in the 80s), the text claims to apply to all storytelling mediums, such as stage plays and novels. Story borrows heavily from older texts, most specifically Aristotle's Poetics; McKee notes this, but often suggests the older work is essential if a proper understanding of narrative techniques is desired. Rather than defining story structure through rigid paradigms or formulas, Story has a very flexible framework with plenty of deep philosophy into what goes behind storytelling.
To limit the limitless possibilities of a story, you first need creative limitations to act as guard rails, so you don't fall off the road to your best possible story. They are made up of...
Placement on the Story Structure Spectrum: Is the story archetypal/realistic, minimalist, absurdist, or a combination?
Setting: Where does the story occur? When does it take place? For how long? What's the inherent level of conflict?
Genre: What is the story's focus? What are the medium and the limits of that medium? Is there a combination of genres?
Characters: What are my characters like on the surface? What will they do under pressure to get what they want? As McKee writes, "Likability is no guarantee of audience involvement; it's merely an aspect of characterisation" , whilst sometimes "the audience's emotional involvement is held by the glue of empathy."
Value Charge: The lifeblood of a story, as changes in values (life to death or death to life, hope to despair, love to hate, etc.) create the very substances from which we shape pleasurable or painful experiences. What is at stake in my story? How can I express what is at stake in my story? How can I fairly show all sides of the value?
A pattern emerges when you look at how value charges change within stories, resulting in the following five parts...
The Inciting Incident: The protagonist's life is more or less in the balance until something happens to throw a value charge in his/her life out of balance, either positive or negative. This first turning point sends the character on a quest to obtain an object of desire to restore the balance of life. They may have a conscious desire, or they might also have a contradictory unconscious desire.
Rising Conflict: The character will take a small, conservative step based on their experience of life, only to find that it won't work. Taking a risk, they take a more extensive action. It may work for the time being and bring the value back to the positive, but that brings about repercussions and new situations that force the character to take larger and more significant actions.
Crisis: Once the character has exhausted all of his/her options, they're left with one final method to achieve their object of desire to restore the balance of life. This action takes the character to the climax. A crisis can be placed anywhere in the story. When placed within the climax, one final action solves the story. When placed before the climax, it fills the final Act or final Sequence with climatic action. When placed at the very beginning, you get an entire story of relentless pursuit of the object of desire, typical of action films.
Climax: The most meaningful event of the story, expressing the controlling value with one final action. The climax can result in an idealistic ending, ending on the positive and celebrating the good in life. The climax can result in a downbeat ending, ending on the negative and reminding us of the horrors and perils of life. The climax can also end on two opposite charges, creative and Ironic Ending, which can be mostly good or bad.
Resolution: The after-effects of the story, which can be used to clear up any remaining loose ends.
The rest of the book goes into detail about the designing philosophies of each of these parts, how to use them, how to avoid pitfalls and other problems, and more.
The "Controlling Idea" is the story's main lesson, illustrated through how the different scenes play it straight, why it doesn't, why both sides are wrong, and who is worse than all sides combined. Discussed in the epilogue how writers who understand the principles of a story should not worry about how they write but continue doing what they've been doing with more excellent skill and insight.