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Scriptapalooza Interviews Screenwriting Guru Robert McKee

Mark Andrushko, President of Scriptapalooza interviews Screenwriting Guru, Mr. Robert McKee. Like a good screenplay his answers will hook, hold and payoff.

"Despite it's frivolous name, Scriptapalooza is the best screenwriting competition I know."

Scriptapalooza: What is the biggest mistake first time screenwriters make when writing their first screenplay?

McKee: They make every mistake imaginable. I can generally say the impression that you get from reading a writer’s early work is that in their enthusiasm, as a first time writer, they do not doubt or question their work. They are not self-critical. Writers come up to me and they say, “I love to write, I love to write, I get up at three o’clock in the morning to write,” and I think nothing good will come of this. Professional writers do not love to write in that sense of the word because they know how terribly dangerous and difficult it is to write. They are extremely critical of everything they write; they are constantly tearing up their pages, pacing the room, tearing their hair out. They don’t love it. It’s painful, it’s difficult and they hate 99% of what they do. Every once in a while they write an acceptable page and think, “Well, that’s not bad.” So, great writers are extremely critical of their own work. Young writers, first time writers, as a generality of course, seem to love everything they write. When I look at their work, I say “Look,” and I show them a page, or a problem in the story, and then suddenly they see how awful it is and they say, “My God, you’re right. It’s terrible.” My question is, “Why didn’t you see that before you sent the script to me? It’s glaringly bad.” Young writers’ greatest weakness is their inability to criticize themselves.

Scriptapalooza: How important is the process of rewriting?

McKee: It’s absolutely critical. I quote Hemingway in my book who said, “The first draft of anything is shit”. What’s difficult for writers to come to terms with, and this is an extension of your first question, is to recognize that 90% of what we all do, no matter our talent, is not our best work. We are only capable of excellence maybe 10% of the time. So, how are you going to fill a screenplay with 100% of excellence? Everything has to have been experimented with, improvised, played with, ten times over. Ninety percent of our work must be thrown away in order to ultimately end up with the precious 10% of excellence. If, for example, you write a 120-page screenplay with 40 to 60 scenes, if you keep every single scene you write, and your so-called rewriting is just paraphrasing and re-paraphrasing dialogue, that’s not rewriting, that’s just polishing. Rewriting means deep structural change in character and story. THAT’S rewriting. If you keep the first draft of your 40 to 60 scenes, you can be sure that, at best, four to six of those scenes are of real quality. The rest is crap. Rewriting doesn’t mean drudgery. Rewriting means re-imagining, recreating, improvising and trying all kinds of crazy ideas. That’s rewriting.

Scriptapalooza: What is the most important thing to know when you are adapting a book into a screenplay?

McKee: You have to strip the story out of the book, expressing it in one or two sentence statements per event. You might reduce an entire chapter to one sentence. “He comes into the room expecting to find her, discovers a note that she’s left him for good” period. In the book, that little moment might be a whole chapter. So you strip the novel down to its pure events, then you look through the design of events that you’ve abstracted from the novel and the most important question you ask is, “Is this a well told story?” Ninety percent of the time you will discover that it is not. Just because a novelist publishes a work doesn’t mean that he or she is any better a storyteller than you. The storytelling in most novels is not very good. Therefore, you will not be able to adapt it, and you will have to reinvent it. You will have to tell the same essential story that the novelist told but in a very different, more effective way.

Scriptapalooza: What are the typical weaknesses in a script?

McKee: It’s a long list: “On the nose” dialogue is common. People have a very difficult time writing dialogue these days. The dialogue I read gets worse and worse, it seems, every year. Instead of taking verbal action, the characters constantly explain their motivations, explain the situation. Characters praise themselves, or praise each other for being really wonderful people, or condemn each other for being really bad people. But neither of them has done anything good or bad. The reason I think the dialogue is so often on the nose, so dreadful, is because the underlying story is dreadful. Because the storytelling is bad, the dialogue struggles to make up for its ineptness.

Scriptapalooza: You use the words “story design” frequently. What does that mean?

McKee: An event comes along in life we call the “Inciting Incident.” Either by choice, accident, or both life is thrown out of balance. That imbalance arouses in the protagonist a desire to put life back on an even keel. To do that, they conceive of something that they need, an object of desire so to speak, that they feel would restore life’s balance. It could be justice, it could be putting the bad guy in jail, or, as in the film About Schmidt, it could be a reason for living. Whatever it is, they pursue that desire. The design of the story is built from that inciting incident, when life went out of balance, to the climax when balance is restored for better or worse. Events must be shaped in a progressive way to hold the emotional and intellectual interest of the audience for two hours without interruption and deliver them a satisfying experience. Exactly how that works, film to film, story to story, is infinitely variable. The task of a good design is to hook, hold and payoff the audience’s interest. If that works, then the story can be in one act or ten acts; it can be mono-plot or multi-plot in any genre.

Scriptapalooza: Speaking of genres, you talk about Thriller, Horror and Comedy in your seminars, as opposed to other genres, why is that?

McKee: I talk about all genres in the Story Seminar. The one-day seminars I give are on Comedy, the Thriller, Horror and Film Masterpieces where we look at the so-called “art movie.” I give these seminars because they are genres I love and have studied closely.

Scriptapalooza: What’s do you think is the difference between reading your book and taking your seminar?

McKee: It’s a big difference, apparently. I always thought when I published the book that the seminar would become unnecessary. Then I realized that people need to learn both ways, through the eye and ear. At the university we have a textbook and lectures. In theory, you don’t need to go to the lectures. You could memorize the book and pass every exam with an ‘A’. But you go to the lectures because you read things that somehow aren’t clear and you hear it explained in the lecture, and you get it. Or you hear things in the lecture that didn’t make sense, but then you read it in the textbook and get it. There are two doors into the mind, reading and listening. Apparently when you both read and listen to the same idea you get a deeper understanding.

Scriptapalooza: You have a new publication coming out this Fall called the Writers Quarterly, can you tell us a little bit about that?

McKee: Every three months I’m going to bring out a journal for writers that will contain new lessons that are not in the book or the lecture. In addition, I will do close analysis of films, novels and plays. One section I entitled called Works and another I call Doesn’t Work. In Works I will take a story apart moment-by-moment to show a writer why exactly this works. In Doesn’t Work, I will do the same close analysis to demonstrate why the story fails. In the Doesn’t Work section, I will not examine writing that is clearly bad, but rather look at examples that had great potential – a great cast, a renowned director, a prize-winning author. In other words, a story that should have worked but doesn’t. This too, I will take apart moment-by-moment to show the writer how and why it failed. [For Details: www.WritersQuarterly.com]

Scriptapalooza: This interview will be read by a lot of new writers that are just starting out. When you meet these new writers at your seminars, what do you find that they all have in common?

McKee: Stars in their eyes. Stanislavski asked this question of actors, and I would ask this same question of anybody wants to be a writer. Stanislavski said, “You have to decide whether you are in love with the art in yourself or yourself in the art.” Too many people are in love with themselves in the art. They want to be in Hollywood for the glamour, the glitz, the vanity. They want to be a part of the great world of media. What I want are writers that are in love with the art in themselves, writers who have a passion for writing, for telling story, fiction or non-fiction.

Scriptapalooza: Do you have a final statement?

McKee: The best advice I have is patience. The writer must realize that in all probability he or she is not going to sell his or her first screenplay. The odds against them are astronomical. Write your first screenplay with all the passion you have. But if it doesn’t sell, are you going to quit? If so, you’re dilettante and should give up now. Be realistic and realize that in all probability it will take you ten years and ten unproduced screenplays before you find success.

Scriptapalooza: Do you tell everyone that at your seminar?

McKee: I do.

Scriptapalooza: Wow, what’s their reaction?

McKee: They all sit there with their mouths open. It’s the truth, it’s reality, ok? But they have to understand screenwriting is not a hobby. It is an art form and a profession.

Scriptapalooza: You know, I’ll tell you, I love your answers; they’re very hard-core, very straight and to the point. There’s no time for BS here.

McKee: [chuckles]

Updated: 04/29/2004

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