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

by Robert McKee

A CONTROLLING IDEA may be expressed in a single sentence describing how and why life undergoes change from one condition of existence at the beginning to another at the end.

The Controlling Idea has two components: Value plus Cause.

Value means the primary value in its positive or negative charge that comes into the world or life of your character as a result of the final action of the story.

Cause refers to the primary reason that the life or world of the protagonist has turned to its positive or negative value.

“Justice triumphs because the protagonist is more violent than the criminals.”

“Justice is restored because the protagonist is more clever than the criminal.”

justice is restored because a perceptive black outsider sees the truth of white perversion.

happiness fills our lives when we learn to love unconditionally.

tyranny prevails because it’s supporte...

hatred destroys us when we fear the ...

Looking at your ending, ask: As a result of this climatic action, what value, positively or negatively charged, is brought into the world of my protagonist?

Next, tracing backward from this climax, digging to the bedrock, ask: What is the chief cause, force, or means by which this value is brought into his world? The sentence you compose from the answers to those two questions becomes your Controlling Idea.

PROGRESSIONS build by moving dynamically between the positive and negative charges of the values at stake in the story.

A note of caution: In creating the dimensions of your story’s “argument,” take great care to build the power of both sides.

A PROTAGONIST is a willful character.

The PROTAGONIST has a conscious desire.

The PROTAGONIST may also have a self-contradictory unconscious desire.

The PROTAGONIST has the capacities to pursue the Object of Desire convincingly.

The PROTAGONIST must have at least a chance to attain his desire.

The PROTAGONIST has the will and capacity to pursue the object of his conscious and/or unconscious desire to the end of the line, to the human limit established by setting and genre.

A STORY must build to a final action beyond which the audience cannot imagine another.

The PROTAGONIST must be empathetic; he may or may not be sympathetic.

Your character, indeed all characters, in the pursuit of any desire, at any moment in story, will always take the minimum, conservative action from his point of view.

In story, we concentrate on that moment, and only that moment, in which a character takes an action expecting a useful reaction from his world, but instead the effect of his action is to provoke forces of antagonism. The world of the character reacts differently than expected, more powerfully than expected, or both.

The inner circle or level is his own self and conflicts arising from the elements of his nature: mind, body, emotion.

The second circle inscribes personal relationships, unions of intimacy deeper than the social role.

The third circle marks the level of extra-personal conflict—all the sources of antagonism outside the personal:

with social institutions and individuals—government/citizen, church/worshipper; corporation/client; conflict with individuals—cop/criminal/victim, boss/worker, customer/waiter, doctor/patient; and conflict with both man-made and natural environments—time, space, and every object in it.

STORY is born in that place where the subjective and objective realms touch.

When objective necessity contradicts a character’s sense of probability, a gap suddenly cracks open in the fictional reality. This gap is the point where the subjective and objective realms collide, the difference between anticipation and result, between the world as the character perceived it before acting and the truth he discovers in action.

Once the gap in reality splits open, the character, being willful and having capacity, senses or realizes that he cannot get what he wants in a minimal, conservative way. He must gather himself and struggle through this gap to take a second action. This next action is something the character would not have wanted to do in the first case because it not only demands more willpower and forces him to dig more deeply into his human capacity, but most important, the second action puts him at risk. He now stands to lose in order to gain.

The measure of the value of a character’s desire is in direct proportion to the risk he’s willing to take to achieve it; the greater the value, the greater the risk.

Now he takes a second, more difficult and risk-taking action, an action consistent with his revised vision of reality, an action based on his new expectations of the world. But again his action provokes forces of antagonism, splitting open a gap in his reality.

You ask: “If I were this character in these circumstances, what would I do?”

Using Stanislavski’s “Magic if,” you act the role.

Now the writer’s problem is this: how to progress the scene? To build a next beat, the writer must move out of the character’s subjective point of view and take an objective look at the action he just created. This action anticipates a certain reaction from the character’s world. But that must not occur. Instead, the writer must pry open the gap. To do so, he asks the question writers have been asking themselves since time began: “What is the opposite of that?”

Having done this, you then go back into the mind of the first character, and find your way to a new emotional truth by asking again: “If I were this character under these new circumstances, what would I do?” Finding your way to that reaction and action, you then step right out again, asking: “And what is the opposite of that?”

A story is a design in five parts:

Inciting Incident,

Progressive Complications,

Crisis,

Cl...

Resol...

But at some point as you create your universe, you’ll face these questions: How do I set my story into action? Where do I place this crucial event?

The INCITING INCIDENT radically upsets the balance of forces in the protagonist’s life.

In most cases, the Inciting Incident is a single event that either happens directly to the protagonist or is caused by the protagonist.

The protagonist must react to the Inciting

the Inciting Incident first throws the protagonist’s life out of balance, then arouses in him the desire to restore that balance.

Object of Desire: something physical or situational or attitudinal that he feels he lacks or needs to put the ship of life on an even keel.

Lastly, the Inciting Incident propels the protagonist into an active pursuit of this object or goal.