Story

by Robert McKee

  When Gail Anne Hurd and James Cameron made the sequel, ALIENS, they not only switched genres from Horror to Action/Adventure, they reinvented the Image System to motherhood as Ripley becomes the surrogate mother of the child Newt (Carrie Henn), who in turn is the surrogate mother of her broken doll. The two are up against the most terrifying “mother” in the universe, the gigantic monster queen who lays her eggs in a womblike nest. In dialogue, Ripley remarks, “The monsters make you pregnant.”

  AFTER HOURS works on only one internalized refrain but with a rich variety: Art. But not as the ornament of life. Rather, art as a weapon. The art and artists of Manhattan’s Soho district constantly assault the protagonist, Paul (Griffin Dunne), until he’s encapsulated inside a work of art and stolen by Cheech and Chong.

  Going back through the decades, Hitchcock’s Thrillers combine images of religiosity with sexuality, while John Ford’s Westerns counterpoint wilderness with civilization. In fact, traveling back through the centuries we realize that Image Systems are as old as story itself. Homer invented beautiful motifs for his epics, as did Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides for their plays. Shakespeare submerged a unique Image System into each of his works, as did Melville, Poe, Tolstoy, Dickens, Orwell, Hemingway, Ibsen, Chekhov, Shaw, Beckett—all great novelists and playwrights have embraced this principle.

  And who, after all, invented screenwriting? Novelists and playwrights who came to the cradles of our art in Hollywood, London, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, and Moscow to write the scenarios of silent films. Film’s first major directors, such as D. W. Griffith, Eisenstein, and Murnau, did their apprenticeship in the theatre; they too realized that, like a fine play, a film can be taken to the sublime by the repetition of a subliminal poetics.

  And an Image System must be subliminal. The audience is not to be aware of it. Years ago as I watched Buñuel’s VIRIDIANA, I noticed that Buñuel had introduced an Image System of rope: A child jump ropes, a rich man hangs himself with a rope, a poor man uses rope as a belt. About the fifth time a piece of rope came on the screen the audience shouted in unison, “Symbol!”

  Symbolism is powerful, more powerful than most realize, as long as it bypasses the conscious mind and slips into the unconscious. As it does while we dream. The use of symbolism follows the same principle as scoring a film. Sound doesn’t need cognition, so music can deeply affect us when we’re unconscious of it. In the same way, symbols touch us and move us—as long as we don’t recognize them as symbolic. Awareness of a symbol turns it into a neutral, intellectual curiosity, powerless and virtually meaningless.

  Why, then, do so many contemporary writer/directors label their symbols? The hamhanded treatment of “symbolic” images in the remake of CAPE FEAR, BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA, and THE PIANO, to name three of the more barefaced examples. I can think of two likely reasons: First, to flatter the elite audience of self-perceived intellectuals that watches at a safe, unemotional distance while collecting ammunition for the postfilm ritual of cafe criticism. Second, to influence, if not control, critics and the reviews they write. Declamatory symbolism requires no genius, just egotism ignited by misreadings of Jung and Derrida. It is a vanity that demeans and corrupts the art.

  Some argue that the film’s Image System is the director’s work and that he or she alone should create it. And I’ve no argument with that, for ultimately the director is responsible for every square inch of every shot in the film. Except… how many working directors understand what I’ve explained above? Few. Perhaps two dozen in the world today. Just the very best, while, unfortunately, the vast majority cannot tell the difference between decorative and expressive photography.

  I argue that the screenwriter should begin the film’s Image System and the director and designers finish it. It’s the writer who first envisions the ground of all imagery, the story’s physical and social world. Often, as we write, we discover that spontaneously we’ve already begun the work, that a pattern of imagery has found its way into our descriptions and dialogue. As we become aware of that, we devise variations and quietly embroider them into the story. If an Image System doesn’t arrive on its own, we invent one. The audience won’t care how we do it; it only wants the story to work.

  TITLES

  A film’s title is the marketing centerpiece that “positions” the audience, preparing it for the experience ahead. Screenwriters, therefore, cannot indulge in literary, nontitle titles: TESTAMENT, for example, is actually a film about postnuclear holocaust; LOOKS AND SMILES portrays desolate lives on welfare. My favorite nontitle tile is MOMENT BY MOMENT. MOMENT BY MOMENT is the working title I always use until I figure out the title.

  To title means to name. An effective title points to something solid that is actually in the story—character, setting, theme, or genre. The best titles often name two or all elements at once.

  JAWS names a character, sets the story in the wilds, and gives us the theme, man against nature, in the Action/Adventure genre. KRAMER VS. KRAMER names two characters, a divorce theme, and Domestic Drama. STAR WARS titles an epic conflict of galactic warriors. PERSONA suggests a cast of psychologically troubled characters and a theme of hidden identities. LA DOLCE VITA places us in a decadent setting among the urban rich. MY BEST FRIEND’S WEDDING establishes characters, setting, and Romantic Comedy.

  A title, of course, isn’t the only marketing consideration. As the legendary Harry Cohn once observed, “MOGAMBO is a terrible title. MOGAMBO, starring Clark Gable and Ava Gardner, is a great f… ing title.”

  19

  A WRITER’S METHOD

  Professional writers may or may not receive critical acclaim, but they’re in control of the craft, have access to their talent, improve their performance over the years, and make a living from the art. A struggling writer may at times produce quality, but from day to day he cannot make his talent perform when and as he wants, doesn’t progress in quality from story to story, and receives little, if any, income from his efforts. On the whole, the difference between those who succeed and those who struggle is their opposed methods of work: inside out versus outside in.

  WRITING FROM THE OUTSIDE IN

  The struggling writer tends to have a way of working that goes something like this: He dreams up an idea, noodles on it for a while, then rushes straight to the keyboard:

  EXT. HOUSE—DAY

  Description, description, description. Characters A and B enter.

  CHARACTER A

  Dialogue, dialogue, dialogue.

  CHARACTER B

  Dialogue, dialogue, dialogue.

  Description, description, description, description, description.

  He imagines and writes, writes and dreams until he reaches page 120 and stops. Then he hands out Xerox copies to friends and back come their reactions: “Oh, it’s nice, and I love that scene in the garage when they threw paint all over each other, was that funny or what? And when the little kid came down at night in his pajamas, how sweet! The scene on the beach was so romantic, and when the car blew up, exciting. But I don’t know… there’s something about the ending… and the middle… and the way it starts… that just doesn’t work for me.”

  So the struggling writer gathers friends’ reactions and his own thoughts to start the second draft with this strategy: “How can I keep the six scenes that I love and that everyone else loves and somehow pretzel this film through them in a way that’ll work?” With a little more thought he’s back at the keyboard:

  INT. HOUSE—NIGHT

  Description, description, description. Characters A and C enter while Character B watches from hiding.

  CHARACTER A

  Dialogue, dialogue, dialogue.

  CHARACTER C

  Dialogue, dialogue, dialogue.

  Description, description, description, description, description.

  He imagines and writes, writes and dreams, but all the while he clings like a drowning man to his favorite scenes until a rewrite comes out the other end. He makes copies and hands them out to friend
s and back come reactions: “It’s different, decidedly different. But I’m so glad you kept that scene in the garage and with the kid in his pajamas and the car on the beach… great scenes. But… there’s still something about that ending and the middle and the way it starts that just doesn’t work for me.”

  The writer then does a third draft and a fourth and a fifth but the process is always the same: He clings to his favorite scenes, twisting a new telling through them in hopes of finding a story that works. Finally a year’s gone by and he’s burned out. He declares the screenplay perfect and hands it to his agent, who reads it without enthusiasm, but because he’s an agent, he does what he must. He too makes copies, papers Hollywood, and back come reader reports: “Very nicely written, good crisp, actable dialogue, vivid scene description, fine attention to detail, the story sucks. PASS ON IT.” The writer blames the Philistine tastes of Hollywood and gears up for his next project.

  WRITING FROM THE INSIDE OUT

  Successful writers tend to use the reverse process. If, hypothetically and optimistically, a screenplay can be written from first idea to last draft in six months, these writers typically spend the first four of those six months writing on stacks of three-by-five cards: a stack for each act—three, four, perhaps more. On these cards they create the story’s step-outline.

  Step-Outline

  As the term implies, a step-outline is the story told in steps.

  Using one- or two-sentence statements, the writer simply and clearly describes what happens in each scene, how it builds and turns. For example: “He enters expecting to find her at home, but instead discovers her note saying she’s left for good.”

  On the back of each card the writer indicates what step in the design of the story he sees this scene fulfilling—at least for the moment. Which scenes set up the Inciting Incident? Which is the Inciting Incident? First Act Climax? Perhaps a Mid-Act Climax? Second Act? Third? Fourth? Or more? He does this for Central Plot and subplots alike.

  He confines himself to a few stacks of cards for months on end for this critical reason: He wants to destroy his work. Taste and experience tell him that 90 percent of everything he writes, regardless of his genius, is mediocre at best. In his patient search for quality, he must create far more material than he can use, then destroy it. He may sketch a scene a dozen different ways before finally throwing the idea of the scene out of the outline. He may destroy sequences, whole acts. A writer secure in his talent knows there’s no limit to what he can create, and so he trashes everything less than his best on a quest for a gem-quality story.

  This process, however, doesn’t mean the writer isn’t filling pages. Day after day a huge stack grows on the side of the desk: but these are biographies, the fictional world and its history, thematic notations, images, even snippets of vocabulary and idiom. Research and imaginings of all kinds fill a file cabinet while the story is disciplined to the step-outline.

  Finally, after weeks or months, the writer discovers his Story Climax. With that in hand, he reworks, as needed, backward from it. At last he has a story. Now he goes to friends, but not asking for a day out of their lives—which is what we ask when we want a conscientious person to read a screenplay. Instead he pours a cup of coffee and asks for ten minutes. Then he pitches his story.

  The writer never shows his step-outline to people because it’s a tool, too cryptic for anyone but the writer to follow. Instead, at this critical stage, he wants to tell or pitch his story so he can see it unfold in time, watch it play on the thoughts and feelings of another human being. He wants to look in that person’s eyes and see the story happen there. So he pitches and studies the reactions: Is my friend hooked by my Inciting Incident? Listening and leaning in? Or are his eyes wandering? Am I holding him as I build and turn the progressions? And when I hit the Climax, do I get a strong reaction of the kind I want?

  Any story pitched from its step-outline to an intelligent, sensitive person must be able to grab attention, hold interest for ten minutes, and pay it off by moving him to a meaningful, emotional experience—just as my LES DIABOLIQUE pitch hooked, held, and moved you. Regardless of genre, if a story can’t work in ten minutes, how will it work in 110 minutes? It won’t get better when it gets bigger. Everything that’s wrong with it in a ten-minute pitch is ten times worse onscreen.

  Until a good majority of listeners respond with enthusiasm, there’s no point going forward. “With enthusiasm” doesn’t mean people leap up and kiss you on both cheeks, rather they whisper “Wow” and fall silent. A fine work of art—music, dance, painting, story—has the power to silence the chatter in the mind and lift us to another place. When a story, pitched from a step-outline, is so strong it brings silence—no comments, no criticism, just a look of pleasure—that’s a hell of a thing and time is too precious to waste on a story that hasn’t that power. Now the writer’s ready to move to the next stage—the treatment.

  Treatment

  To “treat” the step-outline, the writer expands each scene from its one or two sentences to a paragraph or more of double-spaced, present-tense, moment by moment description:

  Dining Room—Day Jack walks in and tosses his briefcase on the chair next to the door. He looks around. The room is empty. He calls her name. Gets no answer. He calls it again, louder and louder. Still no answer. As he pads to the kitchen, he sees a note on the table. Picks it up, reads it. The note says that she has left him for good. He drops in the chair, head in hands, and starts to cry.

  In treatment the writer indicates what characters talk about—“he wants her to do this, but she refuses,” for example—but never writes dialogue. Instead, he creates the subtext—the true thoughts and feelings underneath what is said and done. We may think we know what our characters are thinking and feeling, but we don’t know we know until we write it down:

  Dining Room—Day The door opens and Jack leans on the jamb, exhausted from a day of failed and frustrating work. He looks around the room, sees she’s not around, and hopes like hell she’s out. He really doesn’t want to have to deal with her today. To be sure he has the house to himself, he calls her name. Gets no answer. Calls out louder and louder. Still no answer. Good. He’s finally alone. He lifts his briefcase high in the air drops it with a thud onto her precious Chippendale chair next to the door. She hates him for scratching her antiques but today he doesn’t give a damn.

  Hungry, he heads for the kitchen, but as he crosses the room he notices a note on the dining-room table. It’s one of those damn, annoying notes that she’s always leaving around, taped to the bathroom mirror or the refrigerator or whatever. Irritated, he picks it up and tears it open. Reading it, he discovers that she’s left him for good. As his legs go weak, he drops into a chair, a knot twisting in his gut. His head falls into his hands and he starts to cry. He’s surprised by his outburst, pleased he can still feel some emotion. But his tears are not grief; they’re the dam breaking with relief that the relationship is finally over.

  * * *

  The forty to sixty scenes of a typical screenplay, treated to a moment by moment description of all action, underlaid with a full subtext of the conscious and unconscious thoughts and feelings of all characters, will produce sixty, eight, ninety, or more double-spaced pages. In the studio system from the 1930s to the 1950s when producers ordered treatments from writers, they were often two hundred to three hundred pages long. The strategy of studio writers was to extract the screenplay from a much larger work so nothing would be overlooked or unthought.

  The ten- or twelve-page “treatments” that pass around show business today are not treatments but outlines given enough words that a reader can follow the story. A ten-page outline is not nearly enough material for a screenplay. Today’s writers may not return to the vast treatments of the studio system, but when a step-outline is expanded to a treatment of sixty to ninety pages, creative achievement expands correspondingly.

  At the treatment stage, we inevitably discover that things we thought would work a cer
tain way in the step-outline now want to change. Research and imagination never stop, and so the characters and their world are still growing and evolving, leading us to revise any number of scenes. We won’t change the overall design of the story because it worked every time we pitched it. But within that structure scenes may need to be cut, added, or reordered. We rework the treatment until every moment lives vividly, in text and subtext. That done, then and only then does the writer move to the screenplay itself.

  SCREENPLAY

  Writing a screenplay from a thorough treatment is a joy and often runs at a clip of five to ten pages per day. We now convert treatment description to screen description and add dialogue. And dialogue written at this point is invariably the finest dialogue we’ve ever written. Our characters have had tape over their mouths for so long, they can’t wait to talk, and unlike so many films in which all characters speak with the same vocabulary and style, dialogue written after in-depth preparation creates character-specific voices. They don’t all sound like one another and they don’t all sound like the writer.

  At the first draft stage, changes and revisions will still be needed. When characters are allowed to speak, scenes in treatment you thought would work a certain way now want to alter direction. When you find such a fault, it can rarely be fixed with a simple rewrite of dialogue or behavior. Rather, you must go back into the treatment and rework the setups, then perhaps go beyond the faulty scene to redo the payoff. A number of polishes may be necessary until you reach the final draft. You must develop your judgment and taste, a nose for your own bad writing, then call upon a relentless courage to root out weaknesses and turn them into strengths.