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

This chapter opens with “The Terminology of Story Design,” which explores and defines the key elements of story structure. A “Story Event” is a change in the situation of a story character based on a shifting value between polarities such as freedom and slavery, courage and cowardice, life and death, etc. Every scene in a script should be a Story Event.

The next story element is a “Beat,” which is the smallest structural element. It refers to a moment of action and reaction between two characters. These beats compound one by one to become a Story Event, or a scene. These scenes then compound into the next essential term, “Sequence.” A sequence is a series of story events that leads to a final, impactful change. McKee uses a three-scene sequence to illustrate how these separate scenes work independently and together to culminate in a major change of circumstance for the main character. This takes us to the next story element, which is “Act,” followed by “Story.” Story represents an entire arc made up of beats, scenes, sequences, and acts to arrive at a major, irreversible shift in value from beginning to end.

The next section, “The Story Triangle,” deals in McKee’s proposed pyramid of plot types: the “Archplot,” or the classical story design; the “Miniplot,” which is the Archplot stripped down and internalized; and the “Antiplot,” which is an inversion of the Archplot that exists in nonlinear time.