Story Quotes

“The repetition of “serious” emotion is, in fact, a favorite comic device.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“In storytelling, logic is retroactive.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“Turning Points fail when we overprepare the obvious and underprepare the unusual.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“The storyteller leads us into expectation, makes us think we understand, then cracks open reality”
― Robert McKee, Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“A storyteller puts a friendly arm around the audience, saying: “Let me show you something.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“The music of story is conflict.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“a convincing impossibility is preferable to an unconvincing possibility.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“storytelling is a ritual surrounding a metaphor for life.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“Hope, after all, is not unreasonable. It’s simply hypothetical.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“In 388 B.C. Plato urged the city fathers of Athens to exile all poets and storytellers. They are a threat to society,”
― Robert McKee, Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“We shape the telling to fit the substance, rework the substance to support the design.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“As you create your story, you create your proof; idea and structure intertwine in a rhetorical relationship”
― Robert McKee, Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“An honest story is at home in one, and only one, place and time.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“There is no such thing as a portable story.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“The writer works at his skills until knowledge shifts from the left side of the brain to the right,”
― Robert McKee, Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“The minimalist storyteller deliberately gives this last critical bit of work to the audience.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“an audience will always choose the trivial told brilliantly”
― Robert McKee, Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“Designing story tests the maturity and insight of the writer, his knowledge of society, nature, and the human heart.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“Story is about thoroughness, not shortcuts.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“A beautifully told story is a symphonic unity in which structure, setting, character, genre, and idea meld seamlessly. To find their harmony, the writer must study the elements of story as if they were instruments of an orchestra—first separately, then in concert.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“We go to the movies to enter a new, fascinating world, to inhabit vicariously another human being who at first seems so unlike us and yet at heart is like us, to live in a fictional reality that illuminates our daily reality.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“We go to the movies to enter a new, fascinating world, to inhabit vicariously another human being who at first seems so unlike us and yet at heart is like us,”
― Robert McKee, Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“Sí yo fuera este personaje y en estas circunstancias nuevas, ¿qué haría?". Tras encontrar el camino hasta esa reacción y esa acción, volvemos a salir de ese punto de vista y preguntamos, "¿qué sería lo contrario?”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“Buscamos lo trágico en lo cómico, lo político en lo personal, lo personal que guía lo político, lo extraordinario detrás de lo usual, lo trivial en lo exaltado.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“La escena no trata de lo que parece tratar en la escena. Trata de otra cosa.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“All fine stories take place within a limited, knowable world.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“Within the first pages of a screenplay a reader can judge the relative skill of the writer simply by noting how he handles exposition.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“When talented people write well, it is generally for this reason: They’re moved by a desire to touch the audience.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“When talented people write badly it’s generally for one of two reasons: Either they’re blinded by an idea they feel compelled to prove or they’re driven by an emotion they must express.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“live in a fictional reality that illuminates our daily reality.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting