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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Robert McKee
Read between
July 27 - August 12, 2017
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).
personal). He may or may not achieve it. This is story in a nutshell.
by looking into the heart of the protagonist and discovering his desire, you begin to see the arc of your story, the Quest on which the Inciting Incident sends him.
The Obligatory Scene (AKA Crisis) is an event the audience knows it must see before the story can end. This scene will bring the protagonist into a confrontation with the most powerful forces of antagonism in his
quest,
If the quest for meaning has brought about a profound inner change in Sledge, how is Foote to express this? Not through declarations of a change of heart. Self-explanatory dialogue convinces no one. It must be tested by an ultimate event, by pressure-filled character choice and action—the Obligatory (Crisis) Scene and Climax of the last act.
An Inciting Incident must “hook” the audience, a deep and complete response. Their response must not only be emotional, but rational. This event must not only pull at audience’s feelings, but cause them to ask the Major Dramatic Question and imagine the Obligatory Scene. Therefore,
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?
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 launch the protagonist on a quest for his desire? Does it raise the Major Dramatic Question in the mind of the audience? Does it project an image of the Obligatory Scene? If it does all this, then it can be as little as a woman putting her hand on the table, looking at you “that certain
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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? KRAMER VS. KRAMER. The worst: Disaster strikes the workaholic Kramer (Dustin Hoffman) when his wife walks out on him and her child. The best: This turns out to be the shock he needed to fulfill his unconscious desire to be a loving human being. AN UNMARRIED WOMAN. The worst: When her husband says he’s leaving her for another woman, Erica (Jill Clayburgh) retches. The best: His exit turns out to be the freeing experience that allows this
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Or: What’s the best possible thing that could happen to my protagonist? How could it become the worst possible thing?
A story may turn more than one cycle of this pattern. What is the best? How could that become the worst? How could that reverse yet again into the protagonist’s salvation? Or: What is the worst? How could that become the best? How could that lead the protagonist to damnation? We stretch toward the “bests” and “worsts” because story—when it is art—is not about the middle ground of human experience.
The impact of the Inciting Incident creates our opportunity to reach the limits of life. It’s a kind of explosion. In Action genres it may be in fact an explosion: in other films, as muted as a smile. 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...
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PROGRESSIVE COMPLICATIONS
Nothing moves forward in a story
except through conflict.
As Jean-Paul Sartre expressed it, the essence of reality is scarcity, a universal and eternal lacking. There isn’t enough of anything in this world to go around. Not enough food, not enough love, not enough justice, and never enough time. Time, as Heidegger observed, is the basic category of existence. We live in its ever-shrinking shadow, and if we are to achieve anything
in our brief being that lets us die without feeling we’ve wasted our time, we will have to go into heady conflict with the forces of scarcity that deny our desires.
Writers at these extremes fail to realize that while the quality of conflict changes as it shifts from level to level, the quantity of conflict in life is constant. Something is always lacking. Like squeezing a balloon, the volume of conflict never changes, it just bulges in another direction. When we remove conflict from one level of life, it amplifies ten times over on another level. If, for example, we manage to satisfy our external desires and find harmony with the world,
in short order serenity turns to boredom. Now Sartre’s “scarcity” is the absence of conflict itself. Boredom is the inner conflict we suffer when we lose desire, when we lack a lacking.
By and large, the struggle for physical survival has been eliminated for the educated classes of the industrialized nations. This security from the outside world gives us time to reflect on the world inside. Once housed, dressed, fed, and medicated, we take a breath and realize how incomplete we are as human beings. We want more than physical comfort, we want, of all things, happiness, and so begin the wars of the inner life.
Death is like a freight train in the future, heading toward us, closing the hours, second by second, between now and then. If we’re to live with any sense of satisfaction, we must engage life’s forces of antagonism before the train arrives.
An artist intent on creating works of lasting quality comes to realize that life isn’t about subtle adjustments to stress, or hyper-conflicts of master criminals with stolen nuclear devices holding cities for ransom. Life is about the ultimate questions of finding love and self-worth, of bringing serenity to inner chaos, of the titanic social inequities everywhere around us, of time running out. Life is conflict. That is its nature.
The writer must decide where and how to orchestra...
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Stories that are complicated only on the level of personal conflict are known as Soap Opera, an open-ended combination of Domestic Drama and Love Story in which every character in the story has an intimate relationship with every other character in the story—a multitude of family, friends, and lovers, all needing sets to house them: living rooms, bedrooms, offices, nightclubs, hospitals. Soap Opera characters have no inner or extra-personal conflicts. They suffer when they don’t get what they want, but because they’re either good people or bad, they rarely face true inner dilemmas. Society
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their air-conditioned worlds. If, for example, a murder should bring a detective, a representative of society, into the story, you can be certain that within a week this cop will have an intimate and personal relationship with every other character in the Soap.
design
relatively simple but complex stories. “Relatively simple” doesn’t mean simplistic. It means beautifully turned and told stories restrained by these two principles: Do not proliferate characters; do not multiply locations. Rather than hopscotching through time, space, and people, discipline yourself to a reasonably contained cast and world, while you concentrate on creating a rich complexity.
Beats, changing patterns of human behavior, build scenes. Ideally, every scene becomes a Turning Point in which the values at stake swing from the positive to the negative or the negative to the
positive, creating significant but minor change in their lives. A series of scenes build a sequence that culminates in a scene that has a moderate impact on the characters, turning or changing values for better or worse to a greater degree than any scene. A series of sequences builds an act that climaxes in a scene that creates a major reversal in the characters’ lives, greater than any sequence accomplished.
If an otherwise well-told story bogs down, that’s where it’ll happen—as the writer sloshes through the swamps of the long second act. There are two possible solutions: Add subplots or more acts.
What is major is relative to what is moderate and minor. If every scene screams to be heard, we go deaf. When too many scenes strive to be powerhouse
climaxes, what should be major becomes minor, repetitious, running downhill to a halt. This is why a three-act Central Plot with subplots has become a kind of standard. It fits the creative powers of most writers, provides complexity, and avoids repetition.
False Ending
Repetitiousness is the enemy of rhythm. The dynamics of story depend on the alternation of its value-charges. For example, the two most powerful scenes in a story are the last two act climaxes. Onscreen they’re often only ten or fifteen minutes apart. Therefore, they cannot repeat the same charge. If the protagonist achieves his Object of Desire, making the last act’s Story Climax positive, then the Penultimate Act Climax must be negative. You cannot set up an up-ending with an up-ending: “Things were wonderful… then they got even better!” Conversely, if the protagonist fails to achieve his
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With careful thought and feeling the writer studies his irony to make certain it leans one way or the other, and then designs a Penultimate Climax to contradict its overall emotional charge.
A subplot may be used to contradict the Controlling Idea of the Central Plot and thus enrich the film with irony.
“Love cuts two ways: we possess it when we give it freedom, but destroy it with possessiveness.”
Subplots may be used to resonate the Controlling Idea of the Central Plot and enrich the film with variations on a theme.
Multiplot films.
What then holds the film together? An idea. PARENTHOOD plays variations on the notion that in the game of parenthood you cannot win.
All parents can do is love their children, support them, pick them up when they fall. But there’s no such thing as winning this game.
The Multiplot frames an image of a particular society, but, unlike the static Nonplot, it weaves small stories around an idea, so that these group photos vibrate with energy.
Multiplot gives the writer the best of both worlds: a portrait that captures the essence of a culture or community along with ample narrative
drive to compel interest.
When the Central Plot’s Inciting Incident must be delayed, a setup subplot may be needed to open the storytelling.
A subplot may be used to complicate the Central Plot.
