Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

For the first time in book form, Robert McKee's Story reveals the award-winning methods of the man universally regarded as the world's premier screenwriting teacher. For more than 17 years, Robert McKee's students have been taking Hollywood's top honors. His Story Structure seminar is the ultimate class for screenwriters and filmmakers, playing to packed auditoriums across the world and boasting more than 35,000 graduates. With Hollywood currently paying record sums for great stories -- and audiences clamoring for originality -- this book is the weapon you need to win the war on clichés and to get your story from page to screen. Unlike other popular approaches to screenwriting, Story is about form, not formula. Employing examples from more than 100 films, McKee imparts a philosophy that reaches beyond rigid rules to identify the more elusive components that distinguish quality stories from the rest of the pack. Beginning with basic definitions (What is a beat? A scene? A scene sequence? An act climax? A film climax?), McKee not only brilliantly unravels the mysteries of standard three-act dramatic structures but also demystifies atypical structures such as two-act, seven-act, and even eight-act films, exposing the limitations of each genre; spotlighting the importance of theme, setting, and atmosphere; and highlighting the importance of character versus characterization. But this book goes well beyond the essential mechanics of screenwriting. From concept through final manuscript, Story elevates writing from an intellectual exercise to an emotional one, transforming the craft of screenwriting into an art form by carefully exploring the subtler considerations at work in film, such as the nature of irony and the symbolic power of image systems. Packed with examples from such film classics as Casablanca and Chinatown, McKee expertly dissects classic scenes, guiding us step-by-step as only he can to reveal not only how a scene works but why it works, getting beyond the fundamentals of composition to the enduring values and conflicts that separate the classics from the clichés. This insightful, practical book has become the gospel for screenwriters everywhere. Hollywood studios don't buy great ideas -- they buy great stories that can capture an audience's imagination. And no one has helped more writers turn great ideas into great stories into great screenplays than Robert McKee. - Jacket flap.