Story is the first of our Media readings that I have previously encountered in my media travels and by encountered I mean, I read the whole book about a year and half ago and loved it

My theatre studies teacher and mentor Mr Asher Johnson, who is also my interview subject for Project Brief 3 was a screenwriter in L.A before coming to Australia a second time. After he discovered a passion for writing, he flew to the US and had training at the Act One school of Screenwriting. On an overseas theatre trip, he then took us to the school and we were given a class in screenwriting and got a chance to talk to the writer behind the film Blended which, of course, she claims was a good script that was ruined by Adam Sandler’s people. In year 10, we were taught the fundamentals of American Hollywood screenwriting and structure including all the specifics the feature film formula and when and how to break the rules. As a young filmmaker, this was crucial to my understanding of writing and story and since then I have written six screenplays including a feature length one (which was admittedly the worst thing I’ve ever committed to paper). And in my quest to become better and better as I made short films for festivals, I picked up a recommendation by my mother’s cousin’s husband, (who also works in Hollywood) Story!. 

I absolutely love McKee’s book and the way he constantly uses examples of how screenwriters successfully (and spectacularly unsuccessfully) use and break the rules of modern screenwriting. And the most important thing that both the Act One school and Robert McKee taught me is that the rules are not simply in place to make money, and they’re not there to stifle creativity or to create a safe, easy money making machine, they are there because audiences identify with them. The three act structure Hollywood screenplay works because it’s brilliant, it captures something innate within us as story consumers and storytellers that speaks to us. A good strong protagonist, someone to root for, is important! I have seen so many people, particularly in academic circles that seek to push the boundaries of film structure and firmly believe that conventional narrative structure is pop trash, without acknowledging the reason it was developed, or more accurately discovered.

McKee’s taxonomy is based entirely on the academic study of what film writers have done well for years. No screenwriter sets out to write a three act film with an inciting incident on page 10, a wafer scene on page 91 and a change of the hero’s plans on page 65 but it happens, naturally, constantly, because for some bizarre reason, we are hardwired to respond to a story like that and therefore we create stories like that.

I leave you with my favourite quote from the book, it has not only inspired my work but also inspired the way that I think about creativity.

Talent is a muscle: without something to push against, it atrophies. So we deliberately put obstacles in our path – barriers that inspire.