Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting

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

• Dialogue: The Art of Verbal Action for Page, Stage, and Screen
• Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting
• Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need
• The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller
• The Writers Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers, 3rd Edition
• The Screenwriter's Bible, 7th Edition, A Complete Guide to Writing, Formatting, and Selling Your Script
• Creating Character Arcs: The Masterful Author's Guide to Uniting Story Structure (Helping Writers Become Authors)
• The Art Of Dramatic Writing: Its Basis in the Creative Interpretation of Human Motives
• The Art of the Short Story
• The Hollywood Standard: The Complete and Authoritative Guide to Script Format and Style (Hollywood Standard: The Complete & Authoritative Guide to)