top notch advice you wont find anywhere else | Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of...

the best book on script writting essence and technique. | Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting | Robert Mckee

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	• Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting Robert Mckee HarperEntertainment, 1997 - 480 pages average customer review:based on 174 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

I wish I had this book 20 years ago...

I took McKee's seminar back in the early '80s and learned a lot from it, but apparently it's evolved quite a bit since then if his book is any indication. The book is more refined and focused than what I remember from the seminar.

I've read Story a total of three times. I used to carry it with me everywhere and would read a few pages whenever I had a few moments. My copy is dog-eared, falling apart, with coffee and teriyaki stains all over it and looks like a dog's been chewing and sleeping on it. I guess I'm that dog.

McKee says right in the book that the secrets of story telling and story structure have never really been a secret. The ideas he explains here have been available in books on playwriting for decades. But the problem was that the ideas were spread out in many different sources and times. McKee brings them all together in one book and explains them in a way that shows how they fit together.

McKee's explanation of the "Gap" between expectation and actuality has been of infinite help to me in understanding how a scene and a story work. Also, his explanation of what it means to "turn" a scene has also improved my writing a great deal. His chapters character arc and also the difference between surface characterization and deep character have opened up my writing and breathed depth into it.

If you can't go to film school and want a solid understanding of classic Hollywood story structure, here you go. With this book under your belt you can go on to study more subtle techniques of story structure. I've found it helpful as a foundation from which to study scripts from the French New Wave as well as Scripts by the late Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu. Really.

I think the book got a bum rap in the film Adaptation. They made it sound simplistic and formulaic, and maybe it is to some degree. But I can say this book's taught me more about the underlying forces at play in a story than any other book I've read and I've read a bunch.

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top notch advice you wont find anywhere else

This is the best book about storytelling Ive ever read. McKee offers honest, real world advice on how to handle characters, dialogue, pacing, climax, etc. He tells us exactly what makes a story compelling to the audience. He gives an in depth analysis of why some films are blockbusters while others fail.

Some of it is repetitive and verbose, but all in all, you cannot go wrong with this book. ALL WRITERS, NOT JUST SCREENWRITERS, SHOULD BUY THIS.

the best book on script writting essence and technique.

mckee writes an impartial view on what's writting quality for the screen. he destroys the myth of Hollywood x independent film and goes on to point where a scene w/ ingrid bergman and another written by ingmar bergman show brilliance and punch.
reading mckee and understanding his concepts, you are much closer to quality writting than w/ any other method or school.

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Not the be all end all

Just to make this clear, I enjoy this book. It can serve as a font for great inspiration but be sure to heed the words included in this text: that these principles are not set in stone (paraphrased). Do not read this book and think "Alright, now I know how to write a screenplay" because you don't, I don't, nobody does, that's the point! Very rarely if ever is there only one particular way to do anything especially in an artistic endeavor. A movie could have three acts, or five, or twenty, or one, it doesn't matter as long as there is progression, flow, and strong characters. Characters are everything, they are the plot, they are the action, the entire film. So don't get all on McKee's nuts and ESPECIALLY DON'T LISTEN TO SOMEONE WHO ONLY GOES ON ABOUT MCKEE MCKEE MCKEE. I've had the unfortunate experience of having a few film teachers who you would think the only word they knew how to pronounce was McKee. It's an extremely limiting way to go about learning anything. I must also confess to a prejudice regarding Story because of these experiences. What I discovered later on it was not McKee that I found limiting but the attitudes of the few professors. I realized that the greatest sin a writer can commit is to be posessed of the nature that, "I have read the RIGHT books, memorized EVERY last definition, stick to the strictest TECHNIQUE and have my head stuck FIRMLY up my ASS!" These ego driven individuals were not interested in furthering education but only affirming what they knew to be the correct procedure for writing a screenplay, thus affirming their view of themself as a great writer. So read McKee, but also read Lajos Egri "The Art of Dramatic Writing" or "The Zen of Writing" by Ray Bradbury or any of the other million books on technique or about what it is to write, be inspired and how you can nurture that. For that matter, just read books, see movies, judge for yourself. Read what great writers (not just screenwriters) have to say, their opinions and interpretations. McKee is a crutch too long held onto and for that matter Poetics is a very basic 2000 year old interpretation of tradgedy and comedy so don't go getting your [...] in a twist over what a rotting corpse had to say before the invention of the toilet. Read, read, read and never let anyone tell you that THIS is the be-all-end-all-how-to-guide-that-YOU-MUST-READ. Just relax, don't let McKee or his followers intimidate you if you find another source more helpful, disagree with his mandates, or just find the book to be a bit boring. Don't let rousing speech about the highest high's and lowest low's of human experience take away your dream of a quiet little film about simple human experience. McKee doesn't say not to do that either but he can be a bit intimidating and the goose-stepping fascists brow beating you with the text will say that. Perhaps I'm still upset about my experiences but it is just the type of elitist nonsense that puts a strangle hold over the creative process and the exploration of the art. So be a rebel, go read something else.

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