Story Quotes

“Story isn’t a flight from reality but a vehicle that carries us on our search for reality,”
― Robert McKee, Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“in comedy laughter settles all argument
فى الكوميديا، الضحك ينهى أى جدل”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“Many producers state without blinking that the audience wants a happy ending. They say this because up-ending films tend to make more money than down-ending films. The reason for this is that a small percentage of the audience won't go to any film that might give it an unpleasant experience. Generally their excuse is that they have enough tragedy in their 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 dark films. They go because such stories resonate with their past and are deeply cathartic.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“THE PRINCIPLE OF CREATIVE LIMITATION Limitation is vital. The first step toward a well-told story is to create a small, knowable world. Artists by nature crave freedom, so the principle that the structure/setting relationship restricts creative choices may stir the rebel in you. With a closer look, however, you’ll see that this relationship couldn’t be more positive. The constraint that setting imposes on story design doesn’t inhibit creativity; it inspires it.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“The mark of a master is to select only a few moments but give us a lifetime.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“Politics is the name we give to the orchestration of power in any society.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“An archetypal story creates settings and characters so rare that our eyes feast on every detail, while its telling illuminates conflicts so true to humankind that it journeys from culture to culture.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“When you think about it, going to the movies is bizarre. Hundreds of strangers sit in a blackened room, elbow to elbow, for two or more hours. They don't go to the toilet or get a smoke. Instead, they stare wide-eye at a screen, investing more uninterrupted concentration than they give to work, paying money to suffer emotions they'd do anything to avoid in life.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“Difference for the sake of difference is as empty an achievement as slavishly following the commercial imperative. Write only what you believe.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“As he chooses, he is.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“Because 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.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“When forced to work within a strict framework the imagination is taxed to its utmost—and will produce its richest ideas. Given total freedom the work is likely to sprawl. —T. S. ELIOT”
― Robert McKee, Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“The Law of Diminishing Returns is true of everything in life, except sex, which seems endlessly repeatable with effect.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“an ending must be both “inevitable and unexpected.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“If the scene is about what the scene is about, you’re in deep shit.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“A working imagination is research.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“Values are the soul of storytelling.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“A rule says, “You must do it this way.” A principle says, “This works … and has through all remembered time.” The difference is crucial. Your work needn’t be modeled after the “well-made” play; rather, it must be well made within the principles that shape our art. Anxious, inexperienced writers obey rules. Rebellious, unschooled writers break rules. Artists master the form.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“Scholarly acumen sharpens taste and judgment, but we must never mistake criticism for art. Intellectual analysis, however heady, will not nourish the soul.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“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.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“For those protagonists we tend to admire the most, the Inciting Incident arouses not only a conscious desire, but an unconscious one as well. These complex characters suffer intense inner battles because these two desire are in direct conflict with each other. No matter what the character consciously thinks he wants, the audience senses or realizes that deep inside he unconsciously wants the very opposite.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“You may think you know, but you don't know you know until you can write it down. Research is not daydreaming. Explore your past, relive it, then write it down. In your head it's only memory, but written down it becomes working knowledge. Now with the bile of fear in your belly, write an honest, one-of-a-kind scene.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“To retreat behind the notion that the audience simply wants to dump its troubles at the door and escape reality is a cowardly abandonment of the artist’s responsibility. Story isn’t a flight from reality but a vehicle that carries us on our search for reality, our best effort to make sense out of the anarchy of existence.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“Thought can be controlled and manipulated, but emotion is willful and unpredictable.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“Who are these characters? What do they want? Why do they want it? How do they go about getting it? What stops them? What are the consequences? Finding the answers to these grand questions and shaping them into story is our overwhelming creative task.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“When society repeatedly experiences glossy, hollowed-out, pseudo-stories, it degenerates.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“Al reducirse nuestra fe en las ideologías tradicionales, nos dirigimos hacia la fuente en la que todavía creemos: el arte de contar historias.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“What seems is not what is. People are not what they appear to be.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“Cliche is at the root of audience dissatisfaction, and like a plague spread through ignorance, it now infects all story media.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“Only by using everything and anything you know about the craft of storytelling can you make your talent forge story. For talent without craft is like fuel without an engine. It burns wildly but accomplishes nothing.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting