44 pages • 1 hour read
Robert McKeeStory: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting
Nonfiction | Reference/Text Book | Adult | Published in 1997A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Key Figures
Robert McKee
Robert McKee is a writer, seminar leader, and story consultant whose storytelling workshops are famous around the world. In addition to Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting, McKee is also the author of Dialogue: the Art of Verbal Action for Stage, Page and Screen, Storynomics: Story-Driven Marketing in the Post-Advertising World, and Character: The Art of Role and Cast Design for Page, Stage, and Screen. Story, however, remains his most famous and widely referenced book. In addition to his full-length works, he has written articles on screenwriting for major newspapers across the globe, including The Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker. In 2017, McKee was honored at the Final Draft Awards with an induction into their hall of fame for his service to the film industry.
McKee began acting from a very young age, going on to study drama and English literature in university. After receiving a professional theater fellowship he went on to earn his master's degree in theater arts. After graduating he became artist-in-residence at the National Theatre Company in London before returning to New York to work as an actor and director. In 1983, McKee began teaching his story seminar at the University of Southern California before opening it up to an international audience. Since then, more than 100,000 students have attended his workshops and gone on to have successful careers in film and television. Past students have included Peter Jackson, Meg Ryan, David Bowie, and others. Story has become required reading for film and cinema programs at universities worldwide, as well as for all professional writers at Pixar.
Ingmar Bergman
McKee’s great love and respect for the screenwriter Ingmar Bergman shines throughout the text: “Ingmar Bergman is one of the cinema’s best directors because he is, in my opinion, the cinema’s finest screenwriter” (203). Though now deceased, Bergman was still alive and active in the film industry at the time McKee wrote Story.
Ingmar Bergman was a Swedish writer, director, and producer who directed more than 60 films. Some of them, such as Through a Glass Darkly, have become cornerstones of film study and have influenced new generations of writers. Sight & Sound, a popular British film magazine, put him at number eight on their list of “The Greatest Directors of All Time.”
Bergman studied art and literature at Stockholm University, spending much of his time there involved in student theater. He began his career writing and directing several films in Sweden until he was arrested in 1976 for tax evasion; these charges were later dismissed, but the stress and public embarrassment alienated him from the Swedish film industry. He then went on to produce films based in Germany, Britain, and America before later returning to Sweden. In 1978, the Swedish Film Institute launched the annual Ingmar Bergman Prize for excellence in filmmaking. Bergman died in 2007, 10 years after the release of Story.
Aristotle
McKee often references Aristotle’s foundations of storytelling; in fact, McKee himself has been called “The Aristotle of Our Time.” Opening Story, McKee says: “In the twenty-three centuries since Aristotle wrote The Poetics, the ‘secrets’ of story have been as public as the library down the street” (5).
Aristotle was a philosopher during the classical period of ancient Greece and a student of Plato’s, studying with him until the age of 37. Later he founded the Lyceum, an influential library and school of philosophy. In addition to Poetics, his treatise on dramatic theory that informs much of this text, Aristotle also wrote extensively on a range of subjects, including physics, metaphysics, biology, psychology, and linguistics.
Aristotle’s influence informs every subject taught in Western education. His teachings are still being discussed today at every level. Every film that Story references, as well as every form of storytelling that we read or hear or watch today, is directly or indirectly influenced by Aristotle’s dramatic theory.
