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

McKee, Robert

4.28

15,907 ratings by Goodreads

9780060856182: Story CD: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

ISBN 10: 0060856181 ISBN 13: 9780060856182

Publisher: HarperAudio, 2006

For more than 15 years, Robert McKee's students have been taking Hollywood's top honors. His “Story Seminar” is the world's ultimate seminar for screenwriters, filmmakers, and novelists. Now, Robert McKee's Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting reveals the award-winning methods of the man universally regarded as the world's premier teacher on screenwriting and story. With Hollywood and publishing companies paying record sums for great stories, and audiences clamoring for originality, McKee's Story gives you the strategies you need to win the war on clich�s.

Story is about form, not formula. McKee's insights cut to the hidden sources of storytelling, the decisive differences between mediocrity and excellence.

This audio goes well beyond the essential mechanics of screenwriting and is packed with examples from such film classics as “Casablanca” and “Chinatown.” Then, scene by sequence by act, he illuminates the principles of story design that take a writer's vision to brilliant realization. Story elevates the craft of screenwriting to an art form.

Take it from the pros; if you're serious about your writing, this is the audio that will help you to get your story from page to screen.

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Review:

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

About the Author:

Robert McKee teaches his 3Story Structure2 class annually to sold out auditoriums in Los Angeles, New York, London and film capitals throughout the world. A Fulbright Scholar, this award-winning film and television writer has also served as project and talent development consultant to major production companies such as Tri-Star and Golden Harvest Films. He lives in Los Angeles and Cornwall, England.

Robert McKee teaches his 3Story Structure2 class annually to sold out auditoriums in Los Angeles, New York, London and film capitals throughout the world. A Fulbright Scholar, this award-winning film and television writer has also served as project and talent development consultant to major production companies such as Tri-Star and Golden Harvest Films. He lives in Los Angeles and Cornwall, England.

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