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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Robert McKee
Read between
July 6 - August 6, 2019
For better or worse, an event throws a character’s life out of balance, arousing in him the conscious and/or unconscious desire for that which he feels will restore balance, launching him on a Quest for his Object of Desire against forces of antagonism (inner, personal, extra-personal). He may or may not achieve it. This is story in a nutshell.
To understand the Quest form of your story you need only identify your protagonist’s Object of Desire. Penetrate his psychology and find an honest answer to the question: “What does he want?”
DESIGN OF THE INCITING INCIDENT
An Inciting Incident happens in only one of two ways: randomly or causally, either by coincidence or by decision. If by decision, it can be made by the protagonist—
by coincidence, it may be tragic—
or serendipitous—
The Inciting Incident of the Central Plot must happen onscreen—not in the Backstory, not between scenes offscreen.
In Hollywood jargon, the Central Plot’s Inciting Incident is the “big hook.” It must occur onscreen because this is the event that incites and captures the audience’s curiosity.
LOCATING THE INCITING INCIDENT
Where to place the Inciting Incident in the overall story design? As a rule of thumb, the first major event of the Central Plot occurs within the first 25 percent of the telling.
Bring in the Central Plot’s Inciting Incident as soon as possible… but not until the moment is ripe.
An Inciting Incident must “hook” the audience, a deep and complete response. Their response must not only be emotional, but rational.
the location of the Central Plot’s Inciting Incident is found in the answer to this question: How much does the audience need to know about the protagonist and his world to have a full response?
If it arrives too soon, the audience may be confused. If it arrives too late, the audience may be bored. The instant the audience has a sufficient understanding of character and world to react fully, execute your Inciting Incident.
If we writers have a common fault in design and placement of the Inciting Incident, it’s that we habitually delay the Central Plot while we pack our opening sequences with exposition. We consistently underestimate knowledge and life experience of the audience, laying out our characters and world with tedious details the filmgoer has already filled in with common sense.
THE QUALITY OF THE INCITING INCIDENT
The quality of the Inciting Incident (for that matter, any event) must be germane to the world, characters, and genre surrounding it. Once it is conceived, the writer must concentrate on its function. Does the Inciting Incident radically upset the balance of forces in the protagonist’s life? Does it arouse in the protagonist the desire to restore balance? Does it inspire in him the conscious desire for that object, material or immaterial, he feels would restore the balance? In a complex protagonist, does it also bring to life an unconscious desire that contradicts his conscious need? Does it
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CREATING THE INCITING INCIDENT
The Climax of the last act is far and away the most difficult scene to create: It’s the soul of the telling. If it doesn’t work, the story doesn’t work. But the second most difficult scene to write is the Central Plot’s Inciting Incident.
What is the worst possible thing that could happen to my protagonist? How could that turn out to be the best possible thing that could happen to him?
Or: What’s the best possible thing that could happen to my protagonist? How could it become the worst possible thing?
The impact of the Inciting Incident creates our opportunity to reach the limits of life. It’s a kind of explosion.
No matter how subtle or direct, it must upset the status quo of the protagonist and jolt his life from its existing pattern, so that chaos invades the character’s universe. Out of this upheaval, you must find, at Climax, a resolution, for better or worse, that rearranges this universe into a new order.
PROGRESSIVE COMPLICATIONS
The second element of the five-part design is Progressive Complications: that great sweeping body of story that spans from Inciting Incident to Crisis/Climax of the final act. To complicate means to make life difficult for characters. To complicate progressively means to generate more and more conflict as they face greater and greater forces of antagonism, creating a succession of events that passes points of no return.
Points of No...
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The Inciting Incident launches the protagonist on a quest for a conscious or unconscious Object of Desire to restore life’s balance. To begin the pursuit of his desire, he takes a minimum, conservative action to provoke a positive response from his reality. But the effect of his action is to arouse forces of antagonism from inner, personal, or social/environmental...
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When the Gap opens, the audience realizes that this is a point of no return. Minimal efforts won’t work. The character can’t restore the balance of life by taking lesser actions. Henceforth, all action like the character’s first effort, actions ...
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Progressions build by drawing upon greater and greater capacities from characters, demanding greater and greater willpower from them, putting them at greater and greater risk, constantly passing points of no return in terms of the magnitude or quality of action.
A story must not retreat to actions of lesser quality or magnitude, but move progressively forward to a final action beyond which the audience cannot imagine another.
The only way to keep a film’s current flowing and rising is research—imagination, memory, fact.
Generally, a feature-length Archplot is designed around forty to sixty scenes that conspire into twelve to eighteen sequences that build into three or more acts that top one another continuously to the end of the line. To create forty to sixty scenes and not repeat yourself, you need to invent hundreds. After sketching this mountain of material, tunnel to find those few gems that will build sequences and acts into memorable and moving points of no return. For if you devise only the forty to sixty scenes needed to fill the 120 pages of a screenplay, your work is almost certain to be
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The Law of C...
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When the protagonist steps out of the Inciting Incident, he enters a world governed by the Law of Conflict. To wit: Nothing moves forwa...
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The music of story is conflict. As long as conflict engages our thoughts and emotions we travel through the hours unaware of the voyage.
Story is metaphor for life, and to be alive is to be in seemingly perpetual conflict. As Jean-Paul Sartre expressed it, the essence of reality is scarcity, a universal and eternal lacking.
while the quality of conflict changes as it shifts from level to level, the quantity of conflict in life is constant.
Boredom is the inner conflict we suffer when we lose desire, when we lack a lacking.
Life is conflict. That is its nature. The writer must decide where and how to orchestrate this struggle.
Act Design
As a symphony unfolds in three, four, or more movements, so story is told in movements called acts—the macro-structure of story.
A story can be told in one act— a series of scenes that shape a few sequences that build up to one major reversal, ending the story.
A story can be told in two acts: two major reversals and it’s over.
No matter the setting or scope of the telling, no matter how international and epic or intimate and interior, three major reversals are the necessary minimum for a full-length work of narrative art to reach the end of the line.
The first act, the opening movement, typically consumes about 25 percent of the telling, the Act One Climax occurring between twenty and thirty minutes into a 120-minute film.
The last act wants to be the shortest of all. In the ideal last act we want to give the audience a sense of acceleration, a swiftly rising action to Climax.
First, the multiplication of act climaxes invites clichés.
When the writer multiplies acts, he’s forcing the invention of five, perhaps six, seven, eight, nine, or more brilliant scenes. This becomes a creative task beyond his reach, so he resorts to the clichés that infest so many action films.
Second, the multiplication of acts reduces the impact of climaxes and results in repetitiousness.
Subplots and Multiple Plots
