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

by Robert McKee

Given the choice between trivial material brilliantly told versus profound material badly told, an audience will always choose the trivial told brilliantly.

The young are taught that Hollywood and art are antithetical.

In other words, the story tells you its meaning; you do not dictate meaning to the story.

Misusing and abusing art to preach, your screenplay will become a thesis film, a thinly disguised sermon as you strive in a single stroke to convert the world.

Ask: What is the risk? What does the protagonist stand to lose if he does not get what he wants? More specifically, what’s the worst thing that will happen to the protagonist if he does not achieve his desire?

A story is a design in five parts: The Inciting Incident, the first major event of the telling, is the primary cause for all that follows, putting into motion the other four elements—Progressive Complications, Crisis, Climax, Resolution.

Nothing moves forward in a story except through conflict.

Life is conflict.