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

by Robert McKee

lives. But if we were to look closely, we’d discover that they not only avoid negative emotions in movies, they avoid them in life. Such people think that happiness means never suffering, so they never feel anything deeply. The depth of our joy is in direct proportion to what we’ve suffered. Holocaust survivors, for example, don’t avoid da...

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.

So that as the protagonist improvises his final effort, he may or may not achieve his desire, but the flood of insight that pours from the gap delivers the hoped-for emotion but in a way we could never have foreseen.

Truffaut is asking us to create the Key Image of the film—a single image that sums up and concentrates all meaning and emotion.

RESOLUTION The Resolution, the fifth of the five-part structure, is any material left after Climax and has three possible uses. First, the logic of the telling may not provide an opportunity to climax a subplot before or during the Climax of the Central Plot, so it’ll need a scene of its own at the very end. This, however, can be

awkward. The story’s emotional heart is in the main plot. Moreover, the audience will be leaning toward the exits, yet forced to sit through a scene of secondary interest.

A second use of a Resolution is to show the

spread of climactic effects. If a film expresses progressions by widening into society, its Climax may be restricted to the principal characters. The audience, however, has come to know many supporting roles whose lives will be changed by the climactic action. This motivates a social event that satisfies our curiosity by bringing the entire cast to one location where the camera can track around to show us how these lives have been changed: the birthday party, the picnic at the beach, an Easter Egg hunt in STEEL MAGNOLIAS, a satiric title roll in ANIMAL HOUSE.

Resolution as a courtesy to the audience. For if the Climax has moved the filmgoers, if they’re laughing helplessly, riveted with terror, flushed with social outrage, wiping away tears, it’s rude suddenly to go black and roll the titles. This is the cue to leave, and they will attempt to do so jangling with emotion, stumbling over one another in the dark, dropping their car keys

on the Pepsi-sticky floor. A film needs what the theatre calls a “slow curtain.” A line of description at the bottom of the last page that sends the camera slowly back or tracking along images for a few seconds, so the audience can catch its breath, gather its thoughts, and leave the cinema with dignity.

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.

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. Although conflict from one aspect of his life may seem solvable, the totality of all levels should seem overwhelming as he begins his quest. We pour energy into the negative side of a story not only to bring the protagonist and other characters to full realization—roles to challenge and attract the world’s finest actors—but to take the story itself to the end of the line, to a brilliant and satisfying climax.

TAKING STORY AND CHARACTER TO THE END OF THE LINE 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, Injustice. Laws have been broken. 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. Perpetrators of unfairness may not break the law, but they’re neither just nor fair.

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.

Lastly, consider a story in which the positive value is sanctioned natural sex. Sanctioned meaning

condoned by society; natural meaning sex for procreation, attendant pleasure, and an expression of love. Under the Contrary falls acts of extramarital and premarital sex that, although natural, are frowned on. Society often does more than frown on prostitution, but it’s arguably natural. Bigamy, polygamy, polyandry, and interracial and common-law marriage are condoned in some societies, unsanctioned in others. Chastity is arguably unnatural, but no one’s going to stop you from being celibate, while sex with someone who has taken a vow of celibacy, such as a priest or a nun, is frowned on by the Church. Under the Contradictory, humanity seems to know no limit of invention: voyeurism, pornography,

satyriasis, nymphomania, fetishism, exhibitionism, frottage, transvestism, incest, rape, pedophilia, and sadomasochism, to name only a few acts that are unsanctioned and unnatural. Homosexuality and bisexuality are difficult to place. In some societies they’re thought natural, in others, unnatural. In many Western countries homosexuality is sanctioned; in some Third World countries it’s still a hanging offense. Many of these designations may seem arbitrary, for sex is relative to social and personal perception. But common perversions are not the end of the line. They’re singular and committed, even with violence, with another...

Fine writers have always understood that opposite

values are not the limit of human experience. If a story stops at the Contradictory value, or worse, the Contrary, it echoes the hundreds of mediocrities we suffer every year. For a story that is simply about love/hate, truth/lie, freedom/slavery, courage/cowardice, and the like is almost certain to be trivial. If a story does not reach the Negation of the Negation, it may strike the audience as satisfying—but never brilliant, never sublime. All other factors of talent, craft, and knowledge being equal, greatness is found in the writer’s treatment of the negative side. If your story seems unsatisfying and lacking in some way, tools are needed to penetrate its confusions and perceive its flaws. When a story is weak, the inevitable cause is that forces of antagonism are weak. Rather than spending your creativity trying to invent likable, attractive aspects of protagonist and world, build the negative side to create a chain reaction that pays off naturally and

honestly on the positive dimensions. 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 Negati...

Skill in exposition means making it invisible. As the story progresses, the audience absorbs all it needs to know effortlessly, even unconsciously. 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. Dramatized exposition serves two ends: Its primary purpose is to further the immediate conflict. Its secondary purpose is to convey information. The anxious novice reverses that order, putting expositional duty ahead of dramatic necessity.

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. Converting the above to ammunition: Jack, reacting to Harry’s stifled yawn and bloodshot eyes, says, “Harry, look at you. The same hippie haircut, still stoned by noon, the same juvenile

stunts that got you kicked out of school twenty years ago. Are you ever gonna wake up and smell the coffee?” The audience’s eye jumps across the screen to see Harry’s reaction and indirectly hears “twenty years” and “school.”

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.

“Wow! If that’s the prepared deep dark secret he tells people over the guacamole, what’s the real stuff?” For there’s always something else. Whatever is said hides what cannot be said.

These are honest and powerful moments because the pressure of life is squeezing these characters between the lesser of two evils. And 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. Reveal only that exposition the audience absolutely needs and wants to know and no more.

Put the question “Why?” in the filmgoer’s mind.

Because lifelong Spines are rare, we take Aristotle’s advice to begin stories in medias res, “in the midst of things.” After locating the date of the climactic event of the protagonist’s life, we begin as close in time to it as possible.

Rather, we tell stories about people who have something to lose—family, careers, ideals, opportunities, reputations, realistic hopes and dreams.

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.

Revelations, in fact, tend to have more impact, and so we often reserve them for the major Turning Points, act climaxes.

Voice-over to add nonnarrative counterpoint can be delightful.

It seeks the Center of Good. Once finding this core, emotions flow to it.

At the very least the Center of Good must be located

in the protagonist. Others may share it, for we can empathize with any number of characters, but we must empathize with the protagonist. On the other hand, the Center of Good doesn’t imply “niceness.” “Good” is defined as much by what it’s not as by what it is. From the audience’s point of view, “good” is a judgment made in relationship to or against a background of negativity, a universe that’s thought or felt to be “not good.”

Mystery, Suspense, Dramatic Irony

In Mystery the audience knows less than the characters.

In Suspense the audience and characters know the same information.

In Suspense, however, curiosity is not about fact but outcome.

the Suspense story could end “up” or “down” or in irony.

In Dramatic Irony the audience knows more than the characters.

Dramatic Irony creates interest primarily through concern alone, eliminating curiosity about fact and consequence. Such stories often open with the ending, deliberately giving away the outcome. When the audience is given the godlike superiority of knowing events before they happen, its emotional experience switches. What in Suspense would be anxiety about outcome and fear for the protagonist’s well-being, in Dramatic Irony becomes dread of the moment the character discovers what we already know and compassion for someone we see heading for disaster.

Placing the audience in the position of Dramatic Irony does not eliminate all curiosity. The result of showing the audience what will happen is to cause them to ask, “How and why did these characters do what I already know they did? Dramatic Irony encourages the audience to look more deeply into the motivations and causal forces at work in the characters’ lives. This is why we often enjoy a fine film more, or at least differently, on second viewing. We not only flex the often underused emotions of compassion and dread, but freed from curiosity about facts and outcome, we now concentrate on inner lives, unconscious energies, and the subtle workings of society.

As a rule of thumb do not use coincidence beyond the midpoint of the telling. Rather, put the story more and more into the hands of the characters. Second, never use coincidence to turn an ending. This is deus ex machina, the writer’s greatest sin.

The dramatist admires humanity and creates works that say, in essence: Under the worst of circumstances the human spirit is magnificent. Comedy points out that in the best of circumstances human beings find some way to screw up.