An Interview With Robert Mckee

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28/10/13 StoryLink: An Interview with Robert McKee

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An Interview with Robert McKee

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Robert McKee

Debra Eckerling

Interviewed by Debra EckerlingAugust 18, 2009

Q: Are there basic components to what makes for a compelling story?

Robert McKee: This question literally takes 500 pages of my book Story to answer. It is the equivalentof asking a question such as, "What are the basic components of music?" or "What are the basiccomponents of painting?" Trying to determine what is basic is very difficult. Some people, for example,think dialogue is a basic component of story. But not in a silent film. Not in ballet. There are various

forms of story told beautifully in various media that have no common elements with other forms. So

determining exactly what elements are basic depends on the medium of expression.

But let me try to answer that question by making a simple and clear definition of story itself. Storybegins when an event, either by human decision or accident in the universe, radically upsets the balance

of forces in the protagonist's life, arousing in that character the need to restore the balance of life. To doso, that character will conceive of what is known as an "Object of Desire," that which they feel theyneed to put life back into balance. They will then go off into their world, into themselves, in the variousdimensions of their existence, seeking that Object of Desire, trying to restore the balance of life, andthey will struggle against forces of antagonism that will come from their own inner natures as human

beings, their relationships with other human beings, their personal and/or social life, and the physicalenvironment itself. They may or may not achieve that Object of Desire; they may or may not finally beable to restore their life to a satisfying balance. That, in the simplest possible way, defines the elementsof story - an event that throws life out of balance, the need and desire to restore the balance, and theObject of Desire the character conceives of consciously or unconsciously that they can pursue against


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the forces of antagonism from all of the levels of their life that they may or may not achieve.

Q: How important is the process of rewriting?

Robert McKee: It's absolutely critical. I quote Hemingway in my book who said, "The first draft of

anything is shit." What's difficult for writers to come to terms with is to recognize that 90% of what weall do, no matter our talent, is not our best work. We are only capable of excellence maybe 10% of thetime. So, how are you going to fill a screenplay with 100% of excellence? Everything has to have been

experimented with, improvised, played with, ten times over. Ninety percent of our work must be thrownaway in order to ultimately end up with the precious 10% of excellence. If, for example, you write a

120-page screenplay with 40 to 60 scenes, if you keep every single scene you write, and your so-calledrewriting is just paraphrasing and re-paraphrasing dialogue, that's not rewriting, that's just polishing.Rewriting means deep structural change in character and story. THAT'S rewriting. If you keep the firstdraft of your 40 to 60 scenes, you can be sure that, at best, four to six of those scenes are of real quality.

The rest is crap. Rewriting doesn't mean drudgery. Rewriting means re-imagining, recreating,improvising and trying all kinds of crazy ideas. That's rewriting.

Q: Quentin Tarantino once said, "The thing that distinguishes an American artist is his capacity

to tell a good story." Would you agree?

Robert McKee: I generally would agree with Tarantino, but only in a limited way. First of all, it isn'tjust Americans; it's the whole English language tradition. Anywhere that English is the dominantlanguage, from America to Britain, Australia to India, the English language has a grand tradition ofstorytelling that is very rich, and a world view, as a result of this tradition, that inspires stories that weconsider are well told. On the other hand, I would argue that the most impressive and creative film

culture in the world right now is in Asia, and they are telling stories out of their great traditions andcultures that are just as compelling, comic and/or tragic, as anything coming out of the English-speakingworld. But Quentin Tarantino is overstating it, because every great language tradition, certainly theSpanish language, has magnificent storytellers, but there is a tendency outside of the English language,

especially in the romance languages, the cultures rooted in the romance languages, to put more emphasison mood than emotion. Or they put more emphasis on static moments of life rather than dynamicmoments of life, and consequently the storytelling on the continent of Europe is often more open, moremoody, more contemplative, more intellectual perhaps, than the stories that are told in the Anglo-American tradition. But those are broad generalities, and one could argue that many writers outside of

the English language tradition are trying to use story to explore aspects of life that the English languagetradition tends to ignore, and those aspects of life are more static and more contemplative, more moodthan emotion. But no matter what, the tradition of every great culture in the world produces masterworks. So Tarantino's statement tends to imply that stories told in the English-language tradition are

better than stories told outside of that tradition, and that's simply not true. They're just different, not

necessarily better.

Q: Is good storytelling a lost art?

Robert McKee: No, I don't think it's a lost art, but I think it has lost energy. The ability to tell great

stories today is alive and well. It's just that due to certain restraints, the tendency today is towardspectacle over substance. It's not just in film, but it holds true with the theatre, the most extravagantforms of theatre, and the often vastly overwritten novels that are published today. There's a tendencytoday in all media to substitute spectacle for substance. But storytelling has gone through bad periodslike this in the past. As was true 100 years ago in both the novel and the theatre, we're going through

another period again where the storytelling is atrophying underneath the effort of too many writers being

drawn to the surface and not the substance of their work, and they produce works that are dazzling onthe surface but often hollow. For this reason, I think the best storytelling in the world today tends to beon television, because the television screen does not lend itself to spectacle. It's small, and so the most


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expressive shot tends to be the close-up, and when you move the camera in those heads start to talk. Inthe best of television today, and especially in America where we're experiencing a golden age oftelevision, the dramas that are created are long, and rich, and deep and very complex and fascinating. Ithink one of the reasons television is growing in its influence everywhere in the world is because in

television there is no point in trying to be spectacular, and writers are forced to go back into thesubstance of human conflict in relationships and within human beings, and, as a result, they areproducing, overall, the finest work. So it's not lost, it's just changed its address and moved over totelevision

Q: You use the words "story design" frequently. What does that mean?

Robert McKee: An event comes along in life we call the "Inciting Incident." Either by choice,accident, or both - life is thrown out of balance. That imbalance arouses in the protagonist a desire to putlife back on an even keel. To do that, they conceive of something that they need, an object of desire so

to speak, that they feel would restore life's balance. It could be justice, it could be putting the bad guy injail, or, as in the film About Schmidt, it could be a reason for living. Whatever it is, they pursue thatdesire. The design of the story is built from that inciting incident, when life went out of balance, to theclimax when balance is restored for better or worse. Events must be shaped in a progressive way to hold

the emotional and intellectual interest of the audience for two hours without interruption and deliverthem a satisfying experience. Exactly how that works, film to film, story to story, is infinitely variable.The task of a good design is to hook, hold and payoff the audience's interest. If that works, then thestory can be in one act or ten acts; it can be mono-plot or multi-plot in any genre.

Q: Are there "ground rules" for creating the inciting incident?

Robert McKee: The term "ground rules" is inappropriate when talking about any aspect of writing,Inciting Incident included. As I've said many times: Art forms have no rules; all art is guided byprinciples. Rules are rigid. They say, "You must do it this way!" Principles are flexible. They say, "Thisform underlies the nature of the art and is conventional in practice. However, it may be bent, broken,

hidden or turned upside down to serve unconventional uses that may enhance the telling." Rules areobjective applications that require no feeling for the story's characters or events; their use is justified bytheir traditional function and their comfortable familiarity to the audience/readers. Principles require adeeply subjective understanding of a technique's effect forward and backward along the timeline of astory's events. A principle guides the writer's use of his materials - motivations, characterizations,

coincidences, settings, flash-backs/flash-forwards, set-ups/pay-offs and the like - in terms of their effecton both characters and audience/readers. A rule is microscopic; a principle is macroscopic.

In terms of Inciting Incident, to name just two of its many principles, Placement and Effect areinterrelated, mutually influential, and dependent on the writer's subjective sense of function.

One, Placement: The Inciting Incident radically upsets the life of an empathetic protagonist. Therefore,do not waste the audience/reader's time. Bring the Inciting Incident into the story as soon as possible.

Two, Effect: But do not introduce the Inciting Incident until it will have its full emotional andintellectual effect on the audience/reader.

When is that moment? Who can say? In every story it is different. How much understanding of setting,history and character does an audience/reader need to know prior to the Inciting Incident so that when itarrives it will have its full effect? In some stories nothing; in some stories a lot. How and when will anaudience/reader fall into empathy with a protagonist? In some stories immediately; in some stories never;

in some stories somewhere along the way. The answers to all these questions require the writer todevelop a rich intellectual understanding of their story world and its characters as well as a deepsubjective sense of the feelings, textures and emotions flowing within the story and outward to its


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audience/reader. There are no rules. All artists who wish to write must stop thinking that way.

Q: What are the key essentials in defining the plot of the story?

Robert McKee: By "defining," do you mean by genre or by creation? A plot could be defined by

genre, which is to say defining the story by elements it shares with other stories, or a plot could bedefined by elements within itself. I'll take your question to mean the latter, but again point out the phrase"key essentials" is inappropriate in art, because all the elements of an art form are mutually essential. It's

not as if, let's say, a writer could render every element of his story exquisitely, except for his dialogue,which rakes on the audience/reader's ear like fingernails on a blackboard, and then expect the world to

forgive him because everything else he did was of quality. So I'll give you a very short list of threeelements of plot that come to mind, in no particular order of importance, leaving out dozens more:Hook, Hold, Pay Off. These elements come in the form of questions the writer asks him- or herself asthey work:

Hook: Does my Inciting Incident hook, or engage, the curiosity of the audience/reader and raise in theirminds the Major Dramatic Question: "How will this turn out?"

Hold: Does the protagonist's constant pursuit of his or her desire hold the audience/reader's interestwithout interruption?

Pay-Off: Does the Story Climax close all of the audience/reader's open emotions and answer all of theaudience/reader's questions of cause and effect, of why and how?

Q: What are the critical questions that a writer should be asking prior to crafting a story?

Robert McKee: Beyond imagination and insight, the most important component of talent isperseverance - the will to write and rewrite in pursuit of perfection. Therefore, when inspiration sparksthe desire to write, the artist immediately asks: Is this idea so fascinating, so rich in possibility, that I

want to spend months, perhaps years, of my life in pursuit of its fulfillment? Is this concept so excitingthat I will get up each morning with the hunger to write? Will this inspiration compel me to sacrifice all

of life's other pleasures in my quest to perfect its telling? If the answer is no, find another idea. Talentand time are a writer's only assets. Why give your life to an idea that's not worth your life?

Q: How do you feel trends affect the story and the craft?

Robert McKee: People come up to me all the time talking about movie trends and how the future of

story is going to be in 3D technology and virtual reality, the young especially, because they're alwaysfascinated with new technology. But not me. I know that no matter what the technology is, if they don'thave anything to say, and they don't know how to say whatever it is they have to say, it really doesn't

matter what medium or technology they're using. All I'm concerned with is the quality of the storytellingthat inspires the work. The medium they choose or the technology they use after that is their problem,because in the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter. If the future of story is in chalking out pictureson the sidewalk, it really doesn't matter. What matters is the form, the content and the inspiration andtalent of the artist.

Q: You've recently expanded the Story Seminar from three days to four days. What can studentsexpect?

Robert McKee: The new four day, 32-hour format does four important things: One, it adds important

subjects to the lecture such as the adaptation of novels and plays to the screen, the key differences inwriting for television vs. film, the theory of titles, irony in plotting and the like. Two, it gives me time to

go into far more depth on conventional subjects. Three, it allows far more time for Q & A, face-to-face,


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between me and my students. Four, it is more civilized in terms of its breaks within the lecture and itsevening break for dinner and sleep.

Q: Does a story always need to be believable? What makes it believable?

Robert McKee: Yes. The audience/reader must believe in the world of your story. Or, more precisely,

in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's famous phrase, the audience/reader must willingly suspend its disbelief.This act allows the audience/reader to temporarily believe in your story world as if it were real. The

magic of as if transports the reader/audience from their private world to your fictional world. Indeed, allthe beautiful and satisfying effects of story - suspense and empathy, tears and laughter, meaning and

emotion - are rooted in the great as if. But when audiences or readers cannot believe as if, when theyargue with the authenticity of your tale, they break out of the telling. In one case people sit in a theatre,sullen with anger, soaked in boredom; in the other, they simply toss your novel in the trash. In bothcases, audiences and readers bad mouth you and your writing, inflicting the obvious damage on yourcareer.

Bear in mind, however, that believability does not mean actuality.

The genres of non-realism, such as Fantasy, Sci-fi, Animation and the Musical, invent story worlds thatcould never actually exist. Instead, works such as THE PRINCESS BRIDE, THE MATRIX,FINDING NEMO and SOUTH PACIFIC create their own special versions of reality. No matter how

bizarre some of these story worlds may be, they are internally true to themselves. Each story establishesits own one-of-a-kind rules for how things happen, its principles of time and space, of physical actionand personal behavior. This is true even for works of avant-garde, postmodern ambition that deliberatelycall attention to the artificiality of their art. No matter what your story's unique fictional laws may be,

once you establish them, the audience/reader will freely follow your telling as if it were real - so long asyour laws of action and behavior are never broken.

Therefore, the key to believability is unified internal consistency. Whatever the genre, no matter your

story's specific brand of realism or non-realism, your setting must be self-validating. You must give yourstory's setting in time, place and society enough detail to satisfy the audience/reader's natural curiosityabout how things work in your world, and then your telling of the tale must stay true to its own rules ofcause and effect. Once you have seduced the audience/reader into believing in the credibility of yourstory's setting as if it were actuality, you must not violate your own rules. Never give theaudience/reader a reason to question the truth of your events, nor to doubt the motivations of your

characters.

Q: How do you design an ending that keeps people talking?

Robert McKee: By "an ending that keeps people talking" do you mean the hook at the end of a seriesepisode that keeps people wondering so that they'll tune in the following week? Or do you mean a Story

Climax that sends the reader/audience into the world praising your brilliant story to their friends andfamily?

If the former, I know two methods to hook and hold the audience's curiosity over a span of time.

A. Create a Cliffhanger. Start a scene of high action, cut in the middle, put the audience into high

suspense, then finish the action in the head of the next episode. 24 does this brilliantly week after week.

B. Create a turning point with the power and impact of an Act Climax. A major reversal naturally raises

the question "What's going to happen next?" in the audience's mind and will hold interest over thecommercials of a single episode (for example,Law and Order), or over the week between episodes (for

example, The Sopranos).


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If the latter, the most satisfying, and therefore talked about, Story Climaxes tend to be those in which thewriter has saved one last rush of insight that sends the audience's mind back through the entire story. Ina sudden flash of insight the audience realizes a profound truth that was buried under the surface ofcharacter, world and event. The whole reality of the story is instantly reconfigured. This insight not only

brings a flood of new understanding, but with that, a deeply satisfying emotion. As a recent example:the superb Climax ofGran Torino.

Q: What are the typical weaknesses you find in scripts?

Robert McKee: Three that jump to mind:

Dull scenes. For reasons of weak conflict or perhaps the poor shaping of beats of behavior, the scenefalls flat. The value-charged condition of the characters' lives at the tale of the scene is exactly what itwas at the head of the scene. Activity never becomes story action. In short, nothing actually happens,nothing changes.

Awkward exposition. To convenience the writer, characters tell each other what they all already knowso the eavesdropping reader/audience can gather in the information. This false behavior causes thereader/audience to lose empathy.

Clichs. The writer recycle the same events and characters we have seen countless times before,

thinking that if he or she writes like other writers have, they too will find success.

Q: In the Story Seminar you say the best way to succeed in Hollywood is by writing a script ofsurpassing quality. If you have a great script, how do you get past the Hollywood system so that

your script ends up in the right hands?

Robert McKee: If you write a lousy script, you haven't a prayer. But if you create a work of surpassingquality, Hollywood is still a motherfucker. Because unless you can network a back pathway to an A-list

actor or top-shelf director, you must sign with an agent. And the first thing to understand about literaryagents is that although they may or may not have taste, they all have careers. Selling scripts is how they

put gas in their BMWs. What's more, like everybody else, they want their gas money today. So theyhave little or no patience for spending months or even years submitting your work, one submission at atime, to dozens of production companies, and then waiting forever to hear back. They want to readwork they can sell and sell fast. So the quality of the writing absolutely matters, but what any particularagent feels is fresh vs. clichd, arty vs. commercial, hot or cold, who can say? Luck is a big part of a

writer's life.

[But] to get started, first rent every recent film and television show that is somehow like your script.Write down the names on the writing credits. Call the WGA, ask for the representation office and findout who agents these writers. This creates a list of agents who have actually made money selling scripts

very much like the one you've written. Next, go to Amazon.com and buy The Hollywood CreativeDirectory and find the addresses of these agents. Do not call them. Instead, write an intriguing letterabout you and your story and send it to every agent on your list. Wait, God knows how long, to hearback. If your letter captivates curiosity, and if you send out enough of them, the odds are that a few

agents will actually want to read what you've written. When that happens, pray that your work is ofsurpassing quality.

Q: As a beginning fiction writer, the greatest challenge always seems to be the start. What advicewould you give?

Robert McKee: By "start" do you mean writing the opening chapter or just getting into your pit andhitting keys? If the latter, you're blocked by fear. I suggest you read Steven Pressfield's The War of Art.


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He'll help you find the courage to face the blank page. If the former is your problem, first scenes oropening chapters are usually discovered after you have conceived of your Inciting Incident.

If you feel that your Inciting Incident, without any prior knowledge of your characters' biographies or

sociologies, will immediately grip the reader, then use the Inciting Incident to launch the story. Forexample, the Inciting Incidents SHARK EATS SWIMMER/SHERIFF DISCOVERS CORPSE inPeter Benchley'sJaws, or MRS. KRAMER WALKS OUT ON MR. KRAMER AND HER LITTLEBOY in Avery Corman's Kramer Vs. Kramer, dramatize Chapter One of each of these novels

respectively.

If, conversely, you feel that you need to provide your readers with exposition about history, charactersand setting in order for them to grasp the importance of your Inciting Incident, then this exposition -well-dramatized, of course, perhaps even building into a set-up subplot - must start the telling.

The principle is: Bring the Inciting Incident into your story as soon as possible, but not until it will hook

reader empathy and arouse curiosity. Finding the perfect placement of the Inciting Incident is the key tostarting any story.

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An Interview With Robert Mckee