I’ve always been interested in narrative filmmaking, so out of the three readings this week Robert McKee’s “The Substance of Story” stood out for me the most.

McKee attempts to break down the structure of narrative to find out what is the substance of a good story. While I don’t necessarily agree that there is one single formula to creating a well structured narrative, McKee makes some strong arguments about trends seen in stories and prognostics that are commonly accepted as being well structured.

For example, McKee looks at how protagonists need have conscious desires, but having self-contradictory unconscious desire may contribute to making a more interesting narrative.

He also describes a phenomenon he calls The Gap, which is the gap between the characters expectation of an action and its result. This may occur numerous times throughout a film and may expose inner, personal or extra-personal conflicts.

The argument I think I found to be the most sensible was that there must be a risk involved in the protagonists search for the object of their desire, otherwise it is of no value and neither is the story. This makes a lot of sense, as it is also true of real life. Something isn’t really worth doing if it makes no difference to our lives and the world around us. And in a narrative, this risk has to be heightened, as the aim is to encourage the audience to be invested in the protagonists story. Audiences aren’t automatically ready to feel as strongly about a fiction characters problems as they are their own. Narratives must position the audience to sympathise with characters either by placing them in situations the audience may have experienced themselves and find relatable, or in more extreme situations that the audience can’t possible imagining being in and therefore sympathise with them.