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

This chapter seeks to outline and quantify exactly where stories come from. Unlike other art forms, McKee argues, story has no malleable raw material—it is intangible. The first section, “The Protagonist,” explains the role of the protagonist (including plural-protagonists and multiprotagonists) and what makes them engaging and empathetic to the audience. A protagonist must have will, a conscious desire (and perhaps a contradicting unconscious desire), a real chance of reaching their goal, and enough in common with the audience that we can see ourselves reflected in them. McKee further explores this idea in “The Audience Bond,” which discusses the concept of audience-character empathy.

“The First Step” and “The World of Character” begin breaking down how to create empathy for your character and build a story from their point of view. A character must make choices based on the information they have, and the result of those choices must be contrast with or contradict expectation. These choices are usually responses to conflict, which McKee divides into three levels: Inner, Personal, and Extra-personal Conflict. The disconnect between expectation and reality is what McKee calls “The Gap,” and it requires that the protagonist recalibrate their worldview.