Product Description:
Writing for the screen is quirky business. A writer must labor meticulously over his or her prose, yet very little of that prose is ever heard by filmgoers. The few words that do reach the audience, in the form of the characters' dialogue, are, according to Robert McKee, best left to last in the writing process. ("As Alfred Hitchcock once remarked, 'When the screenplay has been written and the dialogue has been added, we're ready to shoot.' ") In Story, McKee puts into book form what he has been teaching screenwriters for years in his seminar on story structure, which is considered by many to be a prerequisite to the film biz. (The long list of film and television projects that McKee's students have written, directed, or produced includes Air Force One, The Deer Hunter, E.R., A Fish Called Wanda, Forrest Gump, NYPD Blue, and Sleepless in Seattle.) Legions of writers flock to Hollywood in search of easy money, calculating the best way to get rich quick. This book is not for them. McKee is passionate about the art of screenwriting. "No one needs yet another recipe book on how to reheat Hollywood leftovers," he writes. "We need a rediscovery of the underlying tenets of our art, the guiding principles that liberate talent." Story is a true path to just such a rediscovery. In it, McKee offers so much sound advice, drawing from sources as wide ranging as Aristotle and Casablanca, Stanislavski and Chinatown, that it is impossible not to come away feeling immeasurably better equipped to write a screenplay and infinitely more inspired to write a brilliant one.--Jane Steinberg
COMMENTS by readers / customers:
| You can't break the rules unless you know and understand the rules. These are some of the rules brought to you in an easy to understand format. The book gets more and more interesting as it goes. So much information, I am going to read it again. Read this book along with The Hero with 1000 Faces and How NOT to Write a Screenplay. These 3 books are essential for all screenwriters to read.
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McKee knows his stuff but the material is dry and presented in a very rgid fashion. 5 stars for content. 1 star for presentation.
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| Very sound exposition of story writing in general and screenwriting in particular. Lots of good examples and detailed analyses. Quite tedious to read - it is really a textbook - and somewhat demanding with lots of big words and foreign language quotes. If you have a poor vocabulary and the concentration span of a gnat, give this one a miss. Useful to anyone building stories, or evaluating them, or even consumers of books or movies. Good as background for the after movie discusion in the cafe. Likely to be unpopular with many as it questions many received truths and conforting assumptions. Highly recommended.
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