Story

by Robert McKee

  As audience we embrace the story artist and say: “I’d like a poetic experience in breadth and depth to the limits of life. But I’m a reasonable person. If I give you only a few minutes to read or witness your work, it would be unfair of me to demand that you to take me to the limit. Instead I’d like a moment of pleasure, an insight or two, no more than that. But if I give you important hours of my life, I expect you to be an artist of power who can reach the boundaries of experience.”

  In our effort to satisfy the audience’s need, to tell stories that touch the innermost and outermost sources of life, two major reversals are never enough. No matter the setting or scope of the telling, no matter how international and epic or intimate and interior, three major reversals are the necessary minimum for a full-length work of narrative art to reach the end of the line.

  Consider these rhythms: Things were bad, then they were good—end of story. Or things were good, then they were bad— end of story. Or things were bad, then they were very bad—end of story. Or things were good, then they were very good—end of story. In all four cases we feel something’s lacking. We know that the second event, whether positively or negatively charged, is neither the end nor the limit. Even if the second event kills the cast: Things were good (or bad), then everyone died—end of story—it’s not enough. “Okay, they’re all dead. Now what?” we’re wondering. The third turn is missing and we know we haven’t touched the limit until at least one more major reversal occurs. Therefore, the three-act story rhythm was the foundation of story art for centuries before Aristotle noted it.

  But it’s only a foundation, not a formula, so I’ll begin with it, then delineate some of its infinite variations. The proportions I’ll use are the rhythms of the feature film, but in principle they apply equally to the play and novel. Again, I caution that these are approximations, not formulas.

  The first act, the opening movement, typically consumes about 25 percent of the telling, the Act One Climax occurring between twenty and thirty minutes into a 120-minute film. The last act wants to be the shortest of all. In the ideal last act we want to give the audience a sense of acceleration, a swiftly rising action to Climax. If the writer tries to stretch out the last act, the pace of acceleration is almost certain to slow in mid-movement. So last acts are generally brief, twenty minutes or less.

  Let’s say a 120-minute film places its Central Plot’s Inciting Incident in the first minute, the Act One Climax at the thirty-minute point, has an eighteen-minute Act Three, and a two-minute Resolution to FADE OUT. This rhythm creates an Act Two that’s seventy minutes long. If an otherwise well-told story bogs down, that’s where it’ll happen—as the writer sloshes through the swamps of the long second act. There are two possible solutions: Add subplots or more acts.

  Subplots have their own act structure, although usually brief. Between the central plot’s three-act design above, let’s weave three subplots: a one-act Subplot A with an Inciting Incident twenty-five minutes into the film, climaxing and ending at sixty minutes: a two-act Subplot B with an Inciting Incident at the fifteen-minute point, an Act One Climax at forty-five minutes, ending with an Act Two Climax at seventy-five minutes; a three-act Subplot C is with its Inciting Incident happening inside the Inciting Incident of the Central Plot (lovers meet, for example, and start a subplot in the same scene cops discover the crime that launches the central plot), an Act One Climax at fifty minutes, an Act Two Climax at ninety minutes, and a third act climaxing inside the Central Plot’s last Climax (the lovers decide to marry in the same scene that they apprehend the criminal).

  Although the Central Plot and three subplots may have up to four different protagonists, an audience could empathize with all of them, and each subplot raises its own Major Dramatic Question. So the interest and emotions of the audience are hooked, held, and amplified by four stories. What’s more, the three subplots have five major reversals that fall between the Central Plot’s Act One and Act Two climaxes—more than enough storytelling to keep the overall film progressing, deepen the involvement of the audience, and tighten the soft belly of the Central Plot’s second act.

  On the other hand, not every film needs or wants a subplot: THE FUGITIVE. How then does the writer solve the problem of the long second act? By creating more acts. The three-act design is the minimum. If the writer builds progressions to a major reversal at the halfway point, he breaks the story into four movements with no act more than thirty or forty minutes long. David’s collapse after performing Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in SHINE is a superb example. In Hollywood this technique is known as the Mid-Act Climax, a term that sounds like sexual dysfunction, but means a major reversal in the middle of Act Two, expanding the design from three acts to an Ibsen-like rhythm of four acts, accelerating the mid-film pace.

  A film could have a Shakespearean rhythm of five acts: FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL. Or more. RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK is in seven acts; THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE & HER LOVER in eight. These films turn a major reversal every fifteen or twenty minutes, decisively solving the long second act problem. But the five- to eight-act design is the exception, for the cure of one problem is the cause of others.

  First, the multiplication of act climaxes invites clichés.

  Generally, a three-act story requires four memorable scenes: the Inciting Incident that opens the telling, and an Act One, Act Two, and Act Three Climax. In the Inciting Incident of KRAMER VS. KRAMER Mrs. Kramer walks out on her husband and her son. Act One Climax: She returns, demanding custody of the child. Act Two Climax: The court awards custody of the son to his mother. Act Three Climax: Like her ex-husband, she realizes that they must act selflessly for the best interest of the child they love and returns the boy to Kramer. Four powerful turning points spanned with excellent scenes and sequences.

  When the writer multiplies acts, he’s forcing the invention of five, perhaps six, seven, eight, nine, or more brilliant scenes. This becomes a creative task beyond his reach, so he resorts to the clichés that infest so many action films.

  Second, the multiplication of acts reduces the impact of climaxes and results in repetitiousness.

  Even if the writer feels he’s up to creating a major reversal every fifteen minutes, turning act climaxes on scenes of life and death, life and death, life and death, life and death, life and death, seven or eight times over, boredom sets in. Before too long the audience is yawning: “That’s not a major turn. That’s his day. Every fifteen minutes somebody tries to kill the guy.”

  What is major is relative to what is moderate and minor. If every scene screams to be heard, we go deaf. When too many scenes strive to be powerhouse climaxes, what should be major becomes minor, repetitious, running downhill to a halt. This is why a three-act Central Plot with subplots has become a kind of standard. It fits the creative powers of most writers, provides complexity, and avoids repetition.

  Design Variations

  First, stories vary according to the number of major reversals in the telling: from the one- or two-act design of Miniplots, LEAVING LAS VEGAS, through the three- or four-acts plus subplots of most Archplots, THE VERDICT, to the seven or eight acts of many action genres, SPEED, to the helter-skelter patterns of Antiplots, THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE, and beyond to Multiplot films that have no Central Plot, THE JOY LUCK CLUB, but may contain a dozen or more major Turning Points over their various story lines.

  Second, the shapes of stories vary according to the placement of the Inciting Incident. Conventionally, the Inciting Incident occurs very early in the telling and progressions build to a major reversal at the Act One Climax twenty or thirty minutes later. This pattern requires the writer to place two major scenes in the first quarter of the film. However, the Inciting Incident may enter as late as twenty, thirty, or more minutes into the telling. ROCKY, for example, has a very late-arriving Central Plot Inciting Incident. The effect of this is that the Inciting Incident becomes, in effect, the first act Climax and serves two purposes.

  This
, however, cannot be done for the convenience of the writer. The only reason to delay the entrance of the Central Plot is the audience’s need to know the protagonist at length so it can fully react to the Inciting Incident. If this is necessary, then a setup subplot must open the telling. ROCKY has one, the Adrian/Rocky Love Story; CASABLANCA uses five with Laszlo, Ugarte, Yvonne, and the Bulgarian wife as single protagonists and refugees as the plural protagonist. Story must be told to hold the audience while it waits for a late-arriving Central Plot to ripen.

  Suppose, however, the ripe moment is reached somewhere between the first and thirtieth minute. Does a film then need a setup subplot to carry the opening? Maybe… maybe not. The Inciting Incident of THE WIZARD OF OZ occurs at the fifteen-minute mark when a cyclone carries Dorothy (Judy Garland) to Munchkinland. There’s no subplot to set this up, rather we’re held by dramatized exposition of her longing to go “somewhere over the rainbow.” In ADAM’S RIB the Inciting Incident also arrives fifteen minutes into the film, as district attorney Adam Bonner (Spencer Tracy) and his defense attorney wife Amanda (Katharine Hepburn) discover themselves on opposing sides of a trial. In this case, the film opens with a setup subplot as defendant (Judy Holliday) discovers her husband’s philandering and shoots him. This hooks and carries us to the Central Plot’s Inciting Incident.

  With an Inciting Incident at the fifteen-minute point, does the writer need a major reversal at the thirty-minute point? Maybe… maybe not. In THE WIZARD OF OZ Dorothy is threatened by the Wicked Witch of the West, given the red slippers, and sent on her quest along the yellow brick road fifteen minutes after the Inciting Incident. In ADAM’S RIB the next major reversal of the Central Plot happens forty minutes after the Inciting Incident when Amanda wins a key point in court. However, a relationship subplot complicates this stretch as a composer (David Wayne), to Adam’s great annoyance, flirts openly with Amanda.

  The rhythm of act movements is established by the location of the Central Plot’s Inciting Incident. Act structure, therefore, varies enormously. The number and placement of the major reversals for both main plot and subplots are choices made in the creative play between artist and material, depending on quality and number of protagonists, sources of antagonism, genre, and, ultimately, the personality and worldview of the writer.

  False Ending

  Occasionally, especially in Action genres, at the Penultimate Act Climax or within the last act’s movement, the writer creates a False Ending: a scene so seemingly complete we think for a moment the story is over. E.T. is dead—end of movie, we think. In ALIEN Ripley blows up her spaceship and escapes, we think. In ALIENS she blows up an entire planet and escapes, we hope. In BRAZIL Jonathan (Sam Lowry) rescues Kim (Jill Layton) from a tyrannical regime, the lovers embrace, happy ending… or is it?

  TERMINATOR devised a double False Ending: Reese (Michael Biehn) and Sarah (Linda Hamilton) blow up the Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) with a tankard of gasoline, its flesh burning away. The lovers celebrate. But then the chrome inner version of this half-man/half-robot rises out of the flames. Reese sacrifices his life to put a pipe bomb in the belly of the Terminator and blow it in half. But then the creature’s torso revives and crawls claw over claw toward the wounded heroine until Sarah finally destroys him.

  False Endings may even find their way into Art Films. Near the climax of JESUS OF MONTREAL Daniel (Lothaire Bluteau), an actor playing Christ in a Passion Play, is bludgeoned by his falling crucifix. Other actors rush him unconscious to the emergency room, but he awakes, resurrected, we pray.

  Hitchcock loved False Endings, placing them unconventionally early for shock effect. The “suicide” of Madeleine (Kim Novak) is the Mid-Act Climax of VERTIGO before she reappears as Judy. The shower murder of Marion (Janet Leigh) marks the Act One Climax of PSYCHO, suddenly shifting genres from Caper to Psycho-Thriller and switching protagonists from Marion to a plural protagonist of the dead woman’s sister, lover, and a private eye.

  For most films, however, the False Ending is inappropriate. Instead, the Penultimate Act Climax should intensify the Major Dramatic Question: “Now what’s going to happen?”

  Act Rhythm

  Repetitiousness is the enemy of rhythm. The dynamics of story depend on the alternation of its value-charges. For example, the two most powerful scenes in a story are the last two act climaxes. Onscreen they’re often only ten or fifteen minutes apart. Therefore, they cannot repeat the same charge. If the protagonist achieves his Object of Desire, making the last act’s Story Climax positive, then the Penultimate Act Climax must be negative. You cannot set up an up-ending with an up-ending: “Things were wonderful… then they got even better!” Conversely, if the protagonist fails to achieve his desire, the Climax of the Penultimate Act cannot be negative. You cannot set up a down-ending with a down-ending: “Things were terrible… then they got even worse.” When emotional experience repeats, the power of the second event is cut in half. And if the power of the Story Climax is halved, the power of the film is halved.

  On the other hand, a story may climax in irony, an ending that’s both positive and negative. What then must be the emotional charge of the Penultimate Climax? The answer’s found in close study of the Story Climax, for although irony is somewhat positive, somewhat negative, it should never be balanced. If it is, the positive and negative values cancel each other out and the story ends in a bland neutrality.

  For example, Othello finally achieves his desire: a wife who loves him and has never betrayed him with another man—positive. However, when he discovers this, it’s too late because he’s just murdered her—an overall negative irony. Mrs. Soffel goes to prison for the rest of her life—negative. But she goes into jail with her head up because she’s achieved her desire, the transcendent romantic experience—an overall positive irony. With careful thought and feeling the writer studies his irony to make certain it leans one way or the other, and then designs a Penultimate Climax to contradict its overall emotional charge.

  Working back from the Penultimate Climax to the opening scene, previous act climaxes are further apart, often with subplot and sequence climaxes coming into emotional play between them, creating a unique rhythm of positive and negative turnings. Consequently, although we know that the Ultimate and Penultimate Climaxes must contradict each other, from story to story there is no way to predict the charges of the other act climaxes. Each film finds its own rhythm and all variations are possible.

  Subplots and Multiple Plots

  A subplot receives less emphasis and screentime than a Central Plot, but often it’s the invention of a subplot that lifts a troubled screenplay to a film worth making. WITNESS, for example, without its Love Story subplot of big-city cop and Amish widow would be a less than compelling Thriller. Multiplot films, on the other hand, never develop a Central Plot; rather they weave together a number of stories of subplot size. Between the Central Plot and its subplots or between the various plot lines of a Multiplot, four possible relationships come into play.

  A subplot may be used to contradict the Controlling Idea of the Central Plot and thus enrich the film with irony.

  Suppose you were writing a happy-ending Love Story with the Controlling Idea “Love triumphs because the lovers sacrifice their needs for each other.” You believe in your characters, their passion and self-sacrifice, yet you feel the story’s becoming too sweet, too pat. To balance the telling, you might then create a subplot of two other characters whose love ends tragically because they betray each other out of emotional greed. This down-ending subplot contradicts the up-ending Central Plot, making the film’s overall meaning more complex and ironic: “Love cuts two ways: we possess it when we give it freedom, but destroy it with possessiveness.”

  Subplots may be used to resonate the Controlling Idea of the Central Plot and enrich the film with variations on a theme.

  If a subplot expresses the same Controlling Idea as the main plot, but in a different, perhaps unusual way, it creates a variation that strengthens
and reinforces the theme. All the many love stories in A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM, for example, end happily—but some sweetly, some farcically, some sublimely.

  The principle of thematic contradiction and variation is the genesis of Multiplot films. A Multiplot has no Central Plot Spine to structurally unify the telling. Instead, a number of plot lines either cross-cut, as in SHORT CUTS, or connect via a motif such as the twenty-dollar bill that passes from story to story in TWENTY BUCKS or the series of swimming pools that link the tales in THE SWIMMER—a collection of “ribs” but no individual plot line strong enough to carry from first scene to last. What then holds the film together? An idea.

  PARENTHOOD plays variations on the notion that in the game of parenthood you cannot win. Steve Martin plays the world’s most attentive father whose child still ends up in therapy. Jason Robards plays the world’s most neglectful father whose kid comes back late in life needing him, then betraying him. Dianne Wiest portrays a mother who tries to make all the safe life decisions for her child, but the child knows better than she does. All parents can do is love their children, support them, pick them up when they fall. But there’s no such thing as winning this game.

  DINER resonates with the idea that men cannot communicate with women. Fenwick (Kevin Bacon) cannot bring himself to speak to a woman. Boogie (Mickey Rourke) talks nonstop to women, but only to get them into bed. Eddie (Steve Guttenberg) won’t marry his fiancée until she can pass a test in football trivia. When Billy (Timothy Daly) faces his emotional issues with the woman he loves, he lets his guard down and talks honestly with her. Once able to communicate with a woman, he leaves his friends—a resolution that contradicts all others to add a layer of irony.