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

by Robert McKee

Step Four: Note Closing Value and Compare with Opening Value

At the end of the scene, examine the value-charged condition of the character’s situation and describe it in positive/negative terms. Compare this note to the one made in Step Two. If the two notations are the same, the activity between them is a nonevent. Nothing has changed, therefore nothing has happened. Exposition may have been passed to the audience, but the scene is flat. If, on the other hand, the value has undergone change, then the scene has turned.

Step Five: Survey Beats and Locate ...

Start from the opening beat and review the gerund phrases describing the actions of the characters. As you trace action/reaction to the end of the...

COMPOSITION

Composition means the ordering and linking of scenes.

UNITY AND VARIETY

This sentence, drawn from any plot, should be logical: “Because of the Inciting Incident, the Climax had to happen.”

The Inciting Incident is the story’s most profound cause, and, therefore, the final effect, the Story Climax, should seem inevitable. The cement that binds them is the Spine, the protagonist’s deep desire to restore the balance of life.

PACING

Because a story is a metaphor for life, we expect it to feel like life, to have the rhythm of life. This rhythm beats between two contradictory desires: On one hand, we desire serenity, harmony, peace, and relaxation, but too much of this day after day and we become bored to the point of ennui and need therapy. As a result, we also desire challenge, tension, danger, even fear. But too much of this day after day and again we end up in the rubber room. So the rhythm of life swings between these poles.

We use our act structure to start at a base of tension, then rise scene by sequence to the Climax of Act One. As we enter Act Two, we compose scenes that reduce this tension, switching to comedy, romance, a counterpointing mood that lowers the Act One intensity so that the audience can catch its breath and reach for more energy.

Act by act, we tighten and release tension until the final Climax empties out the audience, leaving it emotionally exhausted but fulfilled. Then a brief Resolution scene to recuperate before going home.

RHYTHM AND TEMPO

Rhythm is set by the length of scenes. How long are we in the same time and place? A typical two-hour feature plays forty to sixty scenes. This means, on average, a scene lasts two and a half minutes. But not every scene. Rather, for every one-minute scene there’s a four-minute scene. For every thirty-second scene, a six-minute scene. In a properly formatted screenplay a page equals a minute of screen time.

Tempo is the level of activity within a scene via dialogue, action, or a combination. For example, lovers talking quietly from pillow to pillow may have low tempo; an argument in a courtroom, high tempo. A character staring out a window coming to a vital life decision may have low tempo; a riot, high tempo.

In a well-told story, the progression of scenes and sequences accelerates pace. As we head toward act climaxes, we take advantage of rhythm and tempo to progressively shorten scenes while the activity in them becomes more and more brisk.

EXPRESSING PROGRESSION

When a story genuinely progresses it calls upon greater and greater human capacity, demands greater and greater willpower, generates greater and greater change in characters’ lives, and places them at greater and greater jeopardy. How are we to express this? How will the audience sense the progressions? There are four primary techniques.

SOCIAL PROG...

Widen the impact of character actions into society.

Let your story begin intimately, involving only a few principal characters. But as the telling moves forward, allow their actions to ramify outward into the world around them, touching and changing the lives of more and more people.

This principle of starting with intimate problems that ramify outward into the world to build powerful progressions explains why certain professions are overrepresented in the roles of protagonists. This is why we tend to tell stories about lawyers, doctors, warriors, politicians, scientists—people so positioned in society by profession that if something goes haywire in their private lives, the writer can expand the action into society.

PERSONAL PROGRESSION

Drive actions deeply into the intimate relationships and inner lives of the characters.

Start with a personal or inner conflict that demands balancing, yet seems relatively solvable. Then, as the work progresses, hammer the story downward—emotionally, psychologically, physically, morally—to the dark secrets, the unspoken truths that hide behind a public mask.

SYMBOLIC ASCENSION

Build the symbolic charge of the story’s imagery from the particular to the universal, the specific to the archetypal.

Symbolic progression works in this way: start with actions, locations, and roles that represent only themselves. But as the story progresses, chose images that gather greater and greater meaning, until by the end of the telling characters, settings, and events stand for universal ideas.

IRONIC ASCENSION

Turn progression on irony.

Because irony is by nature slippery, it defies a hard and fast definition, and is best explained by example. Below are six ironic story patterns with an example for each.

He gets at last what he’s always wanted… but too late to have it.

He’s pushed further and further from his goal… only to discover that in fact he’s been led right to it.

He throws away what he later finds is indispensable to his happiness.

To reach a goal he unwittingly takes the precise steps necessary to lead him away.

The action he takes to destroy something becomes exactly what are needed to be destroyed by it.

He comes into possession of something he’s certain will make him miserable, does everything possible to get rid of it… only to discover it’s the gift of happiness.

PRINCIPLE OF TRANSITION

As we design cycles of rising action, we must at the same time transition the audience smoothly through them. Between two scenes, therefore, we need a third element, the link that joins the tail of Scene A with the head of Scene B. Generally, we find this third element in one of two places: what the scenes have in common or what they have in opposition.

Examples:

1. A characterization trait. In common: cut from a bratty child to a childish adult. In opposition: cut from awkward protagonist to elegant antagonist.

2. An action. In common: From the foreplay of lovemaking to savoring the afterglow. In opposition: From chatter to cold silence.

3. An object. In common: From greenhouse interior to woodland exterior. In opposition: Fr...

4. A word. In common: A phrase repeated from scene to scene. In opposition: F...

5. A quality of light. In common: From shadows at dawn to shade at sunset. In oppo...

6. A sound. In common: From waves lapping a shore to the rise and fall of a sleeper’s breath. In opposition: From silk cares...

7. An idea. In common: From a child’s birth to an overture. In opposition: From a painter’s empty...

CRISIS

Crisis is the third of the five-part form. It means decision.