BigThink.com conducted this interview with Robert McKee, the renowned screenwriting guru, who wrote one of the most influential books on the craft of storytelling, Story – Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting. The video interview below provides several insights into the technique and art of screenwriting.
Robert McKee, is a creative writing instructor who is widely known for his popular “Story Seminar”, which he developed when he was a professor at the University of Southern California. “Story Seminar” runs twice yearly in New York, Los Angeles, and London, and less regularly in other major cities around the world, including Amsterdam, Rio de Janeiro, Beijing, Mumbai, and Paris. The seminar covers how story fits the human mind, from the philosophical to the structural. McKee’s one-day “Genre Seminars”, often held 5 days in a row, delve into the conventions of the Thriller, the Comedy, the Love Story, the Action Story, and Television.
Rather than simply handling “mechanical” aspects of fiction technique such as plot or dialogue taken individually, McKee examines the narrative structure of a work and what makes a story compelling or not. This could work equally as well as an analysis of any other genre or form of narrative, whether in screenplay or any other form, and could also encompass nonfiction works as long as they attempt to tell a story.
McKee is quite brilliant, and his book and seminars are recommended.
