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

by Robert McKee

The protagonist’s quest has carried him through the Progressive Complications until he’s exhausted all actions to achieve his desire, save one. He now finds himself at the end of the line. His next action is his last. No tomorrow. No second chance. This moment of dangerous opportunity is the point of greatest tension in the story as both protagonist and audience sense that the question “How will this turn out?” will be answered out of the next action.

The Crisis is the story’s Obligatory Scene.

The Crisis must be true dilemma—a choice between irreconcilable goods, the lesser of two evils, or the two at once that places the protagonist under the maximum pressure of his life.

This dilemma confronts the protagonist who, when face-to-face with the most powerful and focused forces of antagonism in his life, must make a decision to take one action or another in a last effort to achieve his Object of Desire.

How the protagonist chooses here gives us the most penetrating view of his deep character, the ultimate expression of his humanity.

Placement of the Crisis

The location of the Crisis is determined by the length of the climactic action.

Generally, Crisis and Climax happen in the last minutes and in the same scene.

Design of the Crisis

Although the Crisis Decision and climactic action usually take place in continuous time within the same location at the very end of the telling, it’s not uncommon for the Crisis decision to occur in one location, the Story Climax later in another setting.

If the Crisis takes place in one location and the Climax later in another, we must splice them together on a cut, fusing them in filmic time and space. If we do not, if we cut from the Crisis to other material—a subplot, for example—we drain the pent-up energy of the audience into an anticlimax.

The Crisis decision must be a deliberately static moment.

This is the Obligatory Scene. Do not put it offscreen, or skim over it. The audience wants to suffer with the protagonist through the pain of this dilemma.

CLIMAX

Story Climax is the fourth of the five-part structure. This crowning Major Reversal is not necessarily full of noise and violence. Rather, it must be full of meaning.

MEANING: A revolution in values from positive to negative or negative to positive with or without irony—a value swing at maximum charge that’s absolute and irreversible. The meaning of that change moves the heart of the audience.

The action that creates this change must be “pure,” clear, and self-evident, requiring no explanation. Dialogue or narration to spell it out is boring and redundant.

William Goldman argues that the key to all story endings is to give the audience what it wants, but not the way it expects.

What the audience wants is emotional satisfaction—a Climax that fulfills anticipation.

In Aristotle’s words, an ending must be both “inevitable and unexpected.” Inevitable in the sense that as the Inciting Incident occurs, everything and anything seems possible, but at Climax, as the audience looks back through the telling, it should seem that the path the telling took was the only path. Given the characters and their world as we’ve come to understand it, the Climax was inevitable and satisfying. But at the same time it must be unexpected, happening in a way the audience could not have anticipated.

RESOLUTION

The Resolution, the fifth of the five-part structure, is any material left after Climax and has three possible uses.

THE PRINCIPLE OF ANTAGONISM

THE PRINCIPLE OF ANTAGONISM: A protagonist and his story can only be as intellectually fascinating and emotionally compelling as the forces of antagonism make them.

The more powerful and complex the forces of antagonism opposing the character, the more completely realized character and story must become.

If we study a protagonist at the moment of the Inciting Incident and weigh the sum of his willpower along with his intellectual, emotional, social, and physical capacities against the total forces of antagonism from within his humanity, plus his personal conflicts, antagonistic institutions, and environment, we should see clearly that he’s an underdog. He has a chance to achieve what he wants—but only a chance.

Does your story contain negative forces of such power that the positive side must gain surpassing quality? Below is a technique to guide your self-critique and answer that critical question.

Begin by identifying the primary value at stake in your story. For example, Justice. Generally, the protagonist will represent the positive charge of this value; the forces of antagonism, the negative. Life, however, is subtle and complex, rarely a case of yes/no, good/evil, right/wrong. There are degrees of negativity.

First, the Contradictory value, the direct opposite of the positive. In this case, Injust...

Between the Positive value and its Contradictory, however, is the Contrary: a situation that’s somewhat negative but not fully the opposite. The Contrary of justice is unfairness, a situation that’s negative but not necessarily illegal: nepotism, racism, bureaucratic delay, bias, inequities of all kinds.

The Contradictory, however, is not the limit of human experience. At the end of the line waits the Negation of the Negation, a force of antagonism that’s doubly negative.

A story that progresses to the limit of human experience in depth and breadth of conflict must move through a pattern that includes the Contrary, the Contradictory, and the Negation of the Negation.

The Negation of the Negation is at the limit of the dark powers of human nature. In terms of justice, this state is tyranny.

When a story is weak, the inevitable cause is that forces of antagonism are weak.

The first step is to question the values at stake and their progression. What are the positive values? Which is preeminent and turns the Story Climax? Do the forces of antagonism explore all shades of negativity? Do they reach the power of the Negation of the Negation at some point?

Generally, progressions run from the Positive to the Contrary in Act One, to the Contradictory in later acts, and finally to the Negation of the Negation in the last act, either ending tragically or going back to the Positive with a profound difference.

EXPOSITION

Exposition means facts—the information about setting, biography, and characterization that the audience needs to know to follow and comprehend the events of the story.

The famous axiom “Show, don’t tell” is the key. Never force words into a character’s mouth to tell the audience about world, history, or person. Rather, show us honest, natural scenes in which human beings talk and behave in honest, natural ways… yet at the same time indirectly pass along the necessary facts. In other words, dramatize exposition.

To dramatize exposition apply this mnemonic principle: Convert exposition to ammunition. Your characters know their world, their history, each other, and themselves. Let them use what they know as ammunition in their struggle to get what they want.

Never include anything the audience can reasonably and easily assume has happened. Never pass on exposition unless the missing fact would cause confusion. You do not keep the audience’s interest by giving it information, but by withholding information, except that which is absolutely necessary for comprehension.

Pace the exposition. Like all else, exposition must have a progressive pattern: Therefore, the least important facts come in early, the next most important later, the critical facts last. And what are the critical pieces of exposition? Secrets. The painful truths characters do not want known.

where in a well-crafted story is pressure the greatest? At the end of the line. The wise writer, therefore, obeys the first principle of temporal art: Save the best for last. For if we reveal too much too soon, the audience will see the climaxes coming long before they arrive.

THE USE OF BACKSTORY

We can turn scenes only one of two ways: on action or on revelation. There are no other means.

Powerful revelations come from the BACKSTORY—previous significant events in the lives of the characters that the writer can reveal at critical moments to create Turning Points.

FLASHBACKS

The flashback is simply another form of exposition.

A flashback can work wonders if we follow the fine principles of conventional exposition.

First, dramatize flashbacks.