

Loading... Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting (1997)by Robert McKee
![]() Craft Books (11) No current Talk conversations about this book. This book was hard going at first. Forgive me if a book aimed at helping writers loses some credibility for me if it's not well written. Nor did the in-your-face typography help. But I stuck with the book, and it taught me a lot about how to "read" a film: character (including text vs. subtext), value (or would it be clearer to call it valence?), inciting incident, turning points, challenges, crisis, climax, resolution. Perhaps I could have learned some of this from Aristotle, but he was even harder for me to read. And McKee earns one of the three points of my rating by his cameo in Adaptation. ( ![]() Interesting analysis of principles of writing. Eventually becomes too specific to screenwriting to be of further use. There's a lot of shouting at young people but I have no interest in screen writing so I don't mind that much. It's all very preachy and the author is very sure of his rules despite them being so vague that you can apply them any which way you like and still be right. If this is meant to be guidance for young screen writers I can't see what possible help this would be. I don't get the world of entertainment. It's not a blight like marketing but I'm lukewarm on it. It took me months to finish this book. Not because it is boring, but because it is so full of knowledge, so dense with useful information about how to create good stories. I'm sure I will go through it again and again and learn something new every time. If you're creating stories, I think you can't miss this book. I've dabbled before into articles, blogposts, youtube videos about screenwriting and wrongly believed this book would act merely as a refresher of knowledge. Boy was I wrong. It started off on shaky grounds. It quoted too much, gave too many references and used examples where it could have left them out. The interesting bits start out after 1/4 of the book. It becomes more about the nuances of screenwriting. It made me realize screenwriting is more intricate, with more depth than I previously thought, and I had a great deal of admiration for screenwriters to begin with. It made me want to pick up screenplays of my favorite movies and read them, which I'll probably gonna start doing this year. Great read for anybody interested in knowing more about screenwriting or wanting to write themselves. no reviews | add a review
For more than 15 years, Robert McKee's students have been taking Hollywood's top honors. His "Story Seminar" is the world's ultimate seminar for screenwriters, filmmakers, and novelists. Now, Robert McKee's Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting reveals the award-winning methods of the man universally regarded as the world's premier teacher on screenwriting and story. With Hollywood and publishing companies paying record sums for great stories, and audiences clamoring for originality, McKee's Story gives you the strategies you need to win the war on clichš. Story is about form, not formula. McKee's insights cut to the hidden sources of storytelling, the decisive differences between mediocrity and excellence. This audio goes well beyond the essential mechanics of screenwriting and is packed with examples from such film classics as "Casablanca" and "Chinatown." Then, scene by sequence by act, he illuminates the principles of story design that take a writer's vision to brilliant realization. Story elevates the craft of screenwriting to an art form. Take it from the pros; if you're serious about your writing, this is the audio that will help you to get your story from page to screen. No library descriptions found.
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![]() GenresNo genres Melvil Decimal System (DDC)808.23 — Literature By Topic Rhetoric and anthologies Rhetoric of drama Scriptwriting for filmLC ClassificationRatingAverage:![]()
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