Stuart Moore's A Thousand Flowers: Rules, McKee, and Adaptations

[MattBrady]

A THOUSAND FLOWERSComics, Pop Culture, and the World OutsideInstallment 23by Stuart Moore


The Rules

First, a disclaimer: A lot of people disagree with me on this. A lot of people I like, and greatly respect, disagree with me on this. Joe Quesada, Denny O’Neil, and Brian Bendis are the first three who come to mind. This isn’t going to be one of those nice, uncontroversial columns, like the anti-war one or the America’s Next Top Model lovefest. You’ve been warned.

In 1995, a short book called The Rules became a surprise bestseller. A deliberate throwback to earlier, pre-feminist, women’s self-help books, this hard-as-nails tome promised surefire, can’t-fail tips on snagging and keeping a man. (Example: Rule Five -- Don’t Call Him and Rarely Return His Calls.) Some women swore by it and others castigated it as unenlightened game-playing. I’m sure it worked for some couples, but I will say this: It sure didn’t sound like a recipe for any relationship I’d want to be in.

Which brings us to Robert McKee.

Since the late 1980s, Robert McKee’s Story Seminar has travelled, carnie-like, from town to town, selling out its intensive three-day seats to prospective writers and assorted Hollywood hangers-on. In 1997, McKee boiled the seminar down to a book called, simply, Story, which became an immediate hardcover bestseller and has continued to sell steadily.

McKee’s teachings have become The Rules of Hollywood. Production assistants solemnly recite the flaws of a story, based solely on McKee’s principles. According to his website ( http://www.mckeestory.com ), graduates of the McKee course have won 19 Academy Awards, 110 Emmy Awards, 20 Writers’ Guild Awards, and 16 DGA Awards. They’ve written hit movie after hit movie, including A Beautiful Mind, Bruce Almighty, and Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers.

And recently, McKee’s influence has spread to the comics field. Now, on balance, it’s great that the worlds of filmmaking and comics are drawing closer together. The more writers and artists you have switching back and forth between the fields, the more techniques and influences get stirred up, and the more work opportunities open up to talented people. (Britain’s always had more interaction between the various creative arts; the ‘80s-‘90s British Invasion of comics creators owed a lot to currents in British pop music, filmmaking, and prose writing.) That kind of cross-pollination is healthy for everyone.

That said: When you cross-pollinate, you’ve got to be critical, and not let the crap in with the good stuff. Expand the gene pool, don’t pollute it.

Robert McKee is a bunch of crap.

But don’t take my word for it. Let’s look at Story itself, starting with the introduction. In setting up his program, McKee first lays out a few baffling principles (“Story is about the realities, not the mysteries of writing”). Then, to be sure you won’t think he’s just advocating films-by-the-numbers, he appeals to his audience:

“But my hope for you goes beyond competence and skill. I’m starved for great films. Over the last two decades I’ve seen good films and a few very good films, but rarely, rarely a film of staggering power and beauty. Maybe it’s me; maybe I’m jaded. But I don’t think so. Not yet. I still believe that art transforms life…I’ve written Story to empower your command of the craft, to free you to express an original vision of life, to lift your talent beyond convention to create films of distinctive substance, structure, and style.”

Okay. Does this sound like:

(a) a heartfelt appeal for better films
(b) a used-car salesman trying to close the deal
(c) an attempt to sucker would-be writers into taking a high-priced writing course, or
(d) both (b) and (c)?

The heart of the McKee program is the Three-Act Structure. This is the most often-quoted part of the plan, the structural template you’re most likely to hear producers (or anyone in Hollywood, really) trying to impose on a given script. In Story, McKee first defines an act as follows:

“An ACT is a series of sequences that peaks in a climactic scene which causes a major reversal of values, more powerful in its impact than any previous sequence or scene.”

Uh, okay. McKee then posits that three acts -- three “reversals of values” -- are the minimum for a work of the length of a motion picture. (Comic books are different; most of them are only 22 pages, often barely enough for one or two acts given current pacing techniques -- which will be the subject of a future column.) He acknowledges that scripts can be written with more than three acts (a detail usually left out by his students), but cautions that this can lead to cliché, to artificial twists.

All of this sounds okay on the surface. But how does it really help us when we sit down in front of a blank page? More on that in a moment…

McKee also loves diagrams, which, of course, make everything look scientific. In the chapter “The Substance of Story,” he presents one titled “The Three Levels of [Character] Conflict,” a dartboard-shaped mess with “Innermost Self” at the center, radiating out at top to “Inner Conflicts/Personal Conflicts/Extra-Personal Conflicts”; at right to “Body/Lovers/Physical Environment”; at left to “Mind/Family/Individuals in Society”; and at bottom to “Emotions/Friends/Social Institutions.”

Now, this isn’t as nonsensical as it might sound when pulled out of context. Like most of the book, it’s a way of dividing out the various elements of character and plot into component parts.

The problem is: So what? How does it enlighten us to have this information presented in such complicated terms? I can tell you I’ve organized my entertainment time into cathode ray tube absorption hours and mass-production papyrus scanning time, but it really doesn’t add anything to the concepts of watching TV and reading books.

And, more importantly: Do you really want all this rattling around in your brain while you’re writing? Writers -- real writers -- have stories to tell, and an instinctive sense of where they start and finish. They’re not thinking about pessimistic controlling ideas, the gap between expectation and result, or negation of the negation. They’ve got characters who come alive and move in a particular direction, external events that impinge on them without too much contrivance, and an instinctive sense of structure.

They’re not flipping to the handbook every time they get to the end of an “act.” They’re writing.

What McKee is doing here, is attempting to teach writing to people who aren’t writers, and who don’t want to go through the hard work of learning their craft by reading, observing the way people act, studying the way successful stories are structured, and making mistakes along the way. They want shortcuts, they want tricks. They want rules.

McKee’s rules seem complex, disguised as they are by jargon. But they’re actually very simple. And because they’re simple, they’re easy to enforce -- especially by Hollywood producers, most of whom have never written anything in their lives, and have no particular desire to, but know they could do it better than those damn writers, if they wanted to.

But fiction doesn’t work that way. Yes, there are useful tricks here. A writer needs a bag of tricks (what Stephen King, in his highly recommended On Writing, calls a toolbox), the bigger the better. McKee’s scene-by-scene analysis of Casablanca -- why it works, where it doesn’t -- is particularly fascinating.

I’d also say that, in comics, McKee’s guidelines are more useful to editors than writers. As an editor, sometimes you’re presented with a story or scene that just doesn’t work, and it can be useful to poke at it with various scalpels. Personally, I’ve always preferred a more instinctual approach to editorial work; I think it lets me judge each work more purely on its own merits, rather than trying to fit it into a template. But I can see the value of the other approach.

And every writer is his own editor at some point, of course. Sometimes you finish a story and something’s just mysteriously off: a scene that sounded fine in the outline just isn’t coming across with the weight, or the humor, it’s supposed to have, or a character just isn’t going where you need him to go in order to make the rest of the story work. At that point, it might be useful to step back and apply one of McKee’s tools as a diagnostic device.

But in writing, often the fun is in the “mistakes” -- the places where a story deviates from the expected structure. That’s where the human moments happen, the surprises, the parts you remember. You don’t remember the structure of Taxi Driver; you remember Robert DeNiro’s speech to himself in the mirror.

Sometimes, when you deviate from your planned structure, it just doesn’t work; then you’re better off going back to the outline. But when it does, you don’t want to throw it out just because the second act looks weak on paper. Sometimes the second act just doesn’t matter.

Now, I’m certainly not advocating writing purely on instinct. For myself, I always need a written outline or I get lost along the way, and the more complex the story, the more detailed the outline. It can also be very helpful to pattern an original work on a familiar template. Chinatown follows the basic outline of a traditional hardboiled detective story, and Watchmen is a superhero tale, complete with alien invasion and surprise villain. But both use their base-genres as launching pads for much more ambitious, weighty stories.

And writing often takes you places you don’t expect. Here’s a minor example: I’ve been working on this essay for quite a while -- longer than most of my columns. I knew I wanted to make a statement against the McKee method, which, to my mind, has been overpraised to a ridiculous degree. That was the starting point.

As I worked on the essay, various things happened. A former boss wrote me with some points to think about. A careful look at the Story book suggested some elements of value, which I wanted to be fair and point out. And, unexpectedly, the film Adaptation came out, dealing with several of these points from a different angle.

Adaptation is an interesting exercise, as well as a hugely entertaining movie. It’s been discussed widely, but it seems to me what it says about the McKee method is this: It’s a defeat, but for some stories, a necessary one. Charlie Kaufman, the character and the screenwriter, is completely blocked on his heartfelt, meaningful screenplay, while his twin brother Donald chugs away happily on his commercial potboiler, consciously following the McKee rules. It’s only when Charlie accepts Donald’s help, and meets McKee in person, that he actually manages to finish his screenplay. He manages to tie various characters together in a way that completely violates the spirit of the rest of the piece and provides a pretty dull final half-hour to the film. But the alternative, the film tells us, is not to finish it at all. Not exactly a ringing endorsement of the McKee method.

Adaptation was one of the many surprises I dealt with as I wrote this piece. It wasn’t in my original outline, but it wound up being a vital part of the essay (I hope). Maybe it’s even the part you’ll remember.

An essay, a critical work, isn’t the same thing as a story, of course. But both are narratives, and many of the same principles apply. A similar surprise cropped up in my upcoming Penny-Farthing miniseries Para. The central character spends the series on a quest to find out what happened to her father -- but neither she nor I knew the whole reason it was important to her, until the final issue. Then it all snapped into place, and cast the ending in a very different light than I’d originally planned.

Writing doesn’t happen by the numbers. No two writers I know work the same way, use the same system or the same routine. And I don’t want to live and work in a world where they all use the same color-chart to plot their stories.

As I say: People I respect swear by McKee. I admit right here: I don’t get it. All jargon aside, if you apply the three-act structure in all its details as an iron rule, you’re excluding a lot of terrific work. If, under criticism, you broaden its definition to prove that all good stories follow it (Act I: Setup, Act II: Conflict, Act III: Resolution), then you’ve generalized the definition to a point where it’s meaningless. At that point, it’s not a guide to writing or editing stories; it’s a fortune cookie. It’s a .sig at the end of your e-mail.

Let’s take back the night. Let’s reclaim story from STORY. Let’s turn to real writers for stories, and leave this cookie-cutter nonsense to the hacks. And no, this isn’t a call for creator ownership or self-publishing or any of the usual comics controversies. Inspired storytelling can appear in Daredevil or Cerebus or Love & Rockets or Stray Bullets or Batman.

But one thing’s for sure: You won’t find it by following The Rules.

**

Stuart Moore has been a writer, a comics editor for Vertigo and Marvel Knights, a kitchen worker, a book editor, and the nighttime manager of the Lawrenceville, NJ Woolworth's curtain department. He has won the Will Eisner award for Best Editor 1996 and the Don Thompson Award for Favorite Editor 1999.

My current comics work: JUSTICE LEAGUE ADVENTURES #22, out next week, features a nice stand-alone story spotlighting Green Lantern and Hawkgirl; details and a great cover image here . Within that issue, page 6, panels 3-4, and page 7, panel 1, form a complete story that follows the McKee rules absolutely. Check it out.

Next up is LONE, a new future-western series from Dark Horse/Rocket Comics in September, drawn by Jerome Opena, this year’s Russ Manning Award-winner for best newcomer. It’s likewise previewed here . More details on these and other new projects, including GIANT ROBOT WARRIORS, VAMPIRELLA, and PARA, here and here.

See you in two weeks…

**

[fish1000]

Another interesting column.

I first heard of this method in a Peter David column, years back in Comics International magazine.

I see what you are saying, that true genius is restricted by rulebooks. However, for works that are not quite to the level of genius, I can see where structure can be a useful tool.

A well structured piece may keep up the required tension in a story for a proportionate length of time to entertain the viewer. Some films/comics/etc that do not follow a structure can appear laboured, with a plodding plot.

Just because something is a crowd-pleaser, that does not mean it is bad, in the same way that a pop song has value, despite being 'inferior' in execution to a piece of classical music.

[Franklin Harris]

Rules like McKee's are essential to good storytelling. You have to know the rules to know when to break them.

[Rich Johnston]

Originally posted by Franklin Harris
Rules like McKee's are essential to good storytelling. You have to know the rules to know when to break them.

But those rules aren't essential to good storytelling.

[db]

Excellent article Stuart!

Adaptation was my favourite film of the year, and (rightly or wrongly) it put me off signing up for the McKee lecture when it came to London. I didn't like the sound of writing by numbers.
I still planned to get and read the book (at some point) though.

I've been reading Danny Fingeroth's Write Now! and a few writers interviewed therein spoke highly of it.

Anyone here read it / been to the lecture weeknd?

[Dave Hudson]

In the 'Q & A' section of this month's Empire magazine someone writes in to ask what screenplays McKee and fellow 'Screenwriting Gurus' Syd Field and Christopher Vogel had actually written.

For Vogel they couldn't find anything, Field had a co-writing credit on 'Mnemosyne' (anyone seen this?) and McKee himself had managed the biblical tv-movie 'Abraham' and one episode (as co-writer) of the series 'Kate Loves a Mystery' from 1979.

So not quite in the same class as, say, William Goldman.

[meverat]

(Example: Rule Five -- Don’t Call Him and Rarely Return His Calls.)

Hey, I'm in this kind of relationship right now. Maybe it's not over after all!

[dollman]

Bravo Stuart! Bravo!

I'm currently enrolled in a writing program and I've had two instructors rave about McKee. And I'm with you on this, I don't believe you can formulalize the creative process.

To be fair, I haven't picked up McKee's book. However, his seminars sure smacks of other "get rich quick" schemes. My litmus test for the effectiveness of the McKee method is this. If it works, then why isn't McKee writing screenplays? Why isn't he a top selling author comparable to King or Rowling? It kinda leads me back to the old saying: "Those who can do, those who can't teach."

[Mr Wesley]

Note: I have not yet read Story. I have it reserved at the local library. Having said that, it appears that the thing about is that it's a double-bluff. For television and movie producers (and by extrapolation, book and comic editors and publishers), it is the rulebook of how to write a great story. For us actual writers, we still have to read the book so we can learn to define our stories by Story's guidelines, in order to sell it to the producers and publishers who think it's the bible.

Am I making any sense here?

[Mister Farrell]

When I was in art school, an excellent teacher gave the class advice which I never forgot:

"Learn anatomy, then forget about it."

Once you've committed the points of structure to memory, once you've soaked up the fundamentals of what should go where, close the book and eyes on your own paper.

Books like McKee's, and the one I read years ago, Screenplay by Syd Field, both have the same essential message: character drives plot; three act structure; conflict at the end of each act setting the stage for the next act. Beginning, middle and end.

I agree with Mr. Moore to a point. I think these kinds of books are a good look into the sometimes opaque process of storytelling, but when guidelines calcify into hard and fast rules, we have a problem.

Learn it, then forget about it.

[L'Zoril]

Before anything else is said, I want to say I support Stuart's point of view. I agree on the idea that writing cannot be done by following rules but by true inspiration.

But, I find something wrong with it. The problem with this, as I see it, is that there are in fact rules for writing. Almost every Nobel prize winner will agree on this. They are aware of patterns and structure and techniques that will help the story in different moments. The concept of having 3 arcs is a legendary one and most great stories use it.

As someone else said, it is true that you must know the rules so you can break them. Someone else said that this shouldn't be done if they are not essentially good. The problem with this is that the only true way for leaning this supposed "rules" is to read. Read novels, read short stories, read plays, read anything good. Let's face it.

Anyone who reads becomes a better writer.

Frankly, I don't know any great writer who doesn't read. Everyone encourages reading. By reading the writer becomes more aware of different techniques and styles. Therefore he or she becomes more capable to craft a better story.

Though it's true that inspiration is elementary, what I think we can agree on is that there are no RULES for inspiration. No one can make a story from 0 just by using a McKee's book. No one can teach you how to create. How to get inspired.

I think everyone has their own personal rules for getting inspired and thus writing. Wether it is talking with people, watching people, watching the sky, sitting before a blank page waiting for enlightment or just plain imagining, inspiration is somthing that has to be done by yourself.

But then, how is McKee's book useful? If you saw Finding Forrester, you should remember this scene in which Forrester says the following or something very similar: "the first draft is done with the heart, the second with the brain". Or was it mind, or somthing? Don't remember the exact words. But I think the idea is shown clearly.

There are no rules for getting inspired or if you prefer 'writing'. But, there are rules for making your story, a better one. Anyone who writes anything, read their 1st draft after it is finished. What do they do then? Rewrite. Dump some thing, or change others. Gradually, the story gets some shape and might become an excellent one. I doubt anyone is satisfied with their 1st draft.

In conclusion, I think that writing is above all an art. There are of course, classes of art. Thus meaning, that it can be taught. Yet, what cannot be taught is the inspiration, the precise moment in which one says: 'oh yes, that is the story and begins writing like crazy nonstop'. That, cannot be taught. But one can learn how to polish your story and make a better one. How to use literary resources or techniques to show in a better way your idea.

I'm one of those who think that writers are born and not made. A writer is someone who naturally sees the world from a different perspective. That can see in a common action a whole world and a story. Not everyone can do this.

McKee, I prefer to think is someone who is a great reader, but maybe not such a great writer. (I could be totally wrong of course). He is capable of reading and studying structure and techniques and thus crafting 'rules' for writing. Yet maybe, he won't be able to craft rules for inspiration.

A writer here in Peru said some time ago that critics and maybe people like Mckee are like eunuchs. The know exactly how it should be be done, yet they cannot do it.

[Simon DelMonte]

1. McKee uses the word "empowerl" I hate that word. That alone makes me distrust him. Jargon is a substitute for thought.

2. Now I understand how Akiva Goldsman, writer of two worst screenplays ever in the form of the Schumaker Batman films, won an Oscar. He used the recognized handbook of easy screenwriting. (He certainly used as little of the book "Beautiful Mind" was based on as possible.)

[Elayne Riggs]

Originally written by Stuart Moore:
In 1995, a short book called The Rules became a surprise bestseller. A deliberate throwback to earlier, pre-feminist, women’s self-help books, this hard-as-nails tome promised surefire, can’t-fail tips on snagging and keeping a man. (Example: Rule Five -- Don’t Call Him and Rarely Return His Calls.) Some women swore by it and others castigated it as unenlightened game-playing. I’m sure it worked for some couples, but I will say this: It sure didn’t sound like a recipe for any relationship I’d want to be in.

Not to mention, either one or both of the women who wrote it are now divorced.

What McKee is doing here, is attempting to teach writing to people who aren’t writers, and who don’t want to go through the hard work of learning their craft by reading, observing the way people act, studying the way successful stories are structured, and making mistakes along the way. They want shortcuts, they want tricks. They want rules.

Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with that - totally unstructured people need something to start with - as long as it's recognized he's only talking to the most basic wanna-be's.

I’d also say that, in comics, McKee’s guidelines are more useful to editors than writers.

I'm not sure, based on your description of them (I've never heard of McKee), that they'd be useful to anyone in comics. All the stuff you mentioned before - observation, voracious reading outside of just reading other comics, trial and error - sounds much more useful. Plus, writing is like art - there is no One Right Way. The same methods don't work the same way for everyone.

An essay, a critical work, isn’t the same thing as a story, of course. But both are narratives, and many of the same principles apply.

To an extent. I find essays much, much easier than fiction writing. You usually don't have to worry about world-building with essays.

Writing doesn’t happen by the numbers. No two writers I know work the same way, use the same system or the same routine. And I don’t want to live and work in a world where they all use the same color-chart to plot their stories.

Hear hear.

Let’s take back the night. Let’s reclaim story from STORY. Let’s turn to real writers for stories, and leave this cookie-cutter nonsense to the hacks.

It drives me nuts whenever I hear a professional comics writer start talking about how you have to do this and that in a superhero comic, things must fit into this or that box, in order for it to be a proper story. That's the sort of inside-the-box thinking that completely stultifies the genre for me. A genre can only grow by rethinking and reimagining and bringing in viewpoints from people whose life experiences differ from the writers who've held sway in the past. (In my head this usually translates into "non-white and/or female" but in practicality it seems to have extended no further most of the time than "white male Brits.")

- Elayne

[MattGrommes]

I am a programmer and a computer geek by nature so when I start something new (like writing), I like to read all I can about it beforehand. In this way, STORY was a great place for me to start. It told me how other people were doing things so I can start from there when doing my own thing. I wouldn't recommend following McKee's methods 100% but if you are just starting out it can be a good way to get a feel for different ways of going forward. Some people might just be able to start and go without any direction but my geek mind sees that as very inefficient.

[ideefixe]

Story is not ment to set restrictions. I think it states in the book that these rules work, and have worked in the past. I dont know why people make such a big deal out of it, its a book written by one man. Take it for what it is. McKee doesnt get to make the rules for everyone, for every script. If he did we would never get something new. Good article by the way!

[TheWriteJerry]

Wow, Stuart, that was an awesome column.

And I -- being a rebel against most things corporate, formulaic, over-processed and so forth -- am filled with joy to hear somebody finally scream "The Emperor Has No Clothes!!"

For too long, in too many arenas, the quick-fix minded marketeers who secretly wish they could do what the creative types do have walked around in their birthday suits pretending they just came from a posh boutique while the sycophants and others who are dependent on this false royalty for survival praise them for how marvelous their style is.

Now you have boldly stepped up -- perhaps not with a tasteful robe in hand with which to cover the shame -- to proclaim the truth: creativity is not taught, it's lived.

There's so much more I want to comment on here, but I have several hours ahead of me in which I must tend to a room full of naked wannabes.

Jerry A. Novick

[TheWriteJerry]

Originally posted by ideefixe
McKee doesnt get to make the rules for everyone, for every script. If he did we would never get something new. Good article by the way!

Ah, but in a sense McKee does make the rules for everyone. At the risk of being late to a tortuous time spent with adherents to mysterious rules of creativity who have never produced a body of creative work, let me point something out.

The Hollywood hierarchy has bought into this crap, the lie that there are rules. And because the business folk live only within the confines of the rules they know, they only produce those pieces that mirror their narrow knowledge.

I contend that the reason so many "graduates" of McKee's course have won Oscars and Emmies is that a preponderence of movies and teleplays produced fit the formula. It's a simple matter of percentages. Plus, seeing as the people who hand out the awards have a vested interest in promoting the "house style" as they've been taught and they are trying to sell, it's no surprise that they vote well within their comfort zone.

Jerry A. Novick

[lesterbangs]

Adaptation is a brilliant film, but as a writer/poet myself slogging through a Kauffman-esque bout of writer's block (why isn't my thesis done? why am I on here instead of writing it right now? am I a fraud?) I am suspicious of writing by number formulas. People have been trying to do this for thousands of years (try using Aristotle's Poetics as a formula for comic writing, it probably would work better than McKee) and for thousands of years the truly great art has ignored those rules. It's one of those things where it is either there or it isn't. No amount of reciting catch phrases like "show don't tell" or "start with conflict" is going to provide the ability to generate great art. I agree with Moore, these should be used as editorial tools. Or maybe I'm just bitter or nostalgic for my old creative writing seminars ("But it's true!" heheheh). Whatever it is, I thought this was a great piece and I look forward to these columns

[djcoffman]

Ok, first off. I think it's a little callous to just say Robert McKee is crap. They're not after all RULES he wrote or whatever. And I think any sensible person would be going "What the f-uck does Stuart Moore know? "A thousand Flowers" what a GAY name for an article.." -- hahah I kid, I kid.

Here's what I know.. I know i heard about this great seminar he did in NY, so I looked into his book. I was reluctant to buy it, I asked old time pal Brian Bendis if I should buy it, would it make any difference from the knowledge I had already, or should I just buy the fucking thing. He told me "Just buy the fucking thing." -- So I did.. not to be a sheep, just to see what the big deal was..

Ok, so now let me break this down for all of you. Whether all of you rebels out there realize it or not, there are rules to all things. Like common sense. I think McKee is pretty much just giving you common sense. If you read many of his descriptions of stories he'd seen submitted that were crap, they sound a heck of alot like many half assed comic books that come and go. The point, whether you want to accept it or not, there are rules under all of it-- it has nothing to do with who wrote them, no one did! I think it's more of a matter of working off how all brains process the information, how it "draws" the reader in.

Whoever said, you have to know the rules to bend or break them, was right. I'm sooo sick of people popping out and saying, "LOOK! I'm a writer! I can write! Look at me, I'm writing this or that!"...Shiit ninjas, my 1st graders can write too! haha the point is, you need to be a StoryTeller, not a writer. You need to meticulously set up your plots and scenes and make things click for the viewer or the reader. Its the people that can make the most mundane actions and events seem like thrill rides that are true storytellers. So I think it would serve some people to hear the other messages in McKees book, the messages about tapping into an experience and how to really make that play, all along while using classic structures, etc...

But whatever. If people want to write semi mediocre comics and columns on the internet forever...so be it. And people can respond in forums and spout off how great of a writer they are. LOOK, they wrote a loooooong board reply, they must be a writer!!! I think some old timer would probably tell all of us right now that the TRUE storytellers are off doing what they do best, telling stories.... no time to be just a writer. Peace!

[Ed Brubaker]

I've said similar things about STORY for the last few years, ever since I read it. Almost everything in it, much like Understanding Comics, was obvious to me. But to the outside observer, they might not be. So they do have a lot of value. Understanding Comics, especially, was helpful in showing my relatives why comics is an artform.

The thing about writing is it can't really be taught. Structure and formula on the other hand, those can be taught. For books on writing that actually inspire, I've found Lawrence Block's books, Telling Lies for Fun and Profit, and Spider Spin Me a Web, do the trick a lot better.

Good show, Stuart, as always.

[Act of Thought]

One thing I think that may be missed in this discussion is the consideration of audience. I have read the Story book and what I thought one of the major points was that you can write a one act story, or a three act story, or a ten act story; you can write a archplot, a minimalist plot, or an antiplot. You can write any of these but most audiences want to see an archplot three act story and if you give them something else they will avoid it.

Most likely the Hollywood non-writers who read this go, "Okay we want a three act archplot because that appeals to the most viewers." They are right, look at all the top box office movies and you will see many three act archplots. That's what makes people comfortable that's what sells Pepsi. But McKee doesn't say that you should write that way or anyway. That is just the result of the Hollywood people using the information in his book.

I'll give one quick example. McKee identifies Monty Python and the Holy Grail as either anti-plot or mini-plot, I can't remember which. The point is as a movie with a limited broad appeal. Holy Grail being one of my favorite movies at first I was shocked. But then I thought about the time I had some new friends over and had just bought the DVD. They had never heard of Monty Python and sat through the movie in silence while I was cracking up (even though it was probably my 50th viewing of the film). When I asked them what they thought they just had these confused look on their faces and said that it went on forever (WENT ON FOREVER! I wish!). McKee is write that it has a limited audience. But he didn't say it wasn't a good movie and I would say that it is high art.

Ben

"Not rules Charles, principles. A rule says, 'you must do it this way,' a principle says 'this way works, and has worked since the begining of time.'"

That's an important quote from Adaptation, and one that should be mentioned in this thread, so caught up as we all are with "THE RULES." Frankly, I felt that Adaptation was not as down on McKee as Moore seems to think it was. And why should it be? The man's got a good system. It may not always be the appropriate approach... but that's a long way from saying he's "full of shit."

I think it would be an interesting expirement to evaluate the self-image of those who would decry any kind of codified version of a process as being only for "people who have no creativity," or "people who don't know the first thing about writing" or "posers walking around like a naked emperor." It seems to me that implicit in all of these critiques is the notion that the person casting them knows quite a bit himself about writing, is intimatley familiar with the creative process, and is one of the few genuine articles when it comes to dressing in the rainments of an artist. I wonder now who seems more arrogant; the man who is trying to help people further their craft, or the man who stomps up and down and insists that "REAL art can't be taught, it has to be inborn like it is in me, obviously."

What I'm trying to say is that nobody here is any more qualified to speak out about writing techniques than McKee is. In fact, most posters are probably less qualified, seeing as how McKee has spent the past fifteen years writing and lecturing about it, rather than pulling a self-agrandizing pet-theory out of his ass for a post on a Tuesday afternoon.

Hey man, if "rules" or "techniques" don't work for you, nobody is forcing you to use them (except possibly Bill Jemas) so don't sit on your modest summit of obscurity and unpublished manuscripts and try and convince the world that you've got what it takes by pig-piling onto those who are successful, or by trying to undercut those who choose to look for success down alternate routes than your own.

[Stuart Moore]

I don't really have a lot to add except that I think this is probably the best discussion the column has gotten yet. Thanks, everybody!

--Stuart

[OM]

Originally posted by Rich Johnston
But those rules aren't essential to good storytelling.

...THey are for idiots getting started in the business who need an assist in how to get from an idea to a finished product. However, instead of these being training wheels, the Rules are more along the lines of a slot car track. When you figure out how to change the layout, and/or graduate to R/C cars and abandon the slot track altogether, you've grown above needing the Rules.

IMHO, what Stuart's bitching about is rooted in the cold hard fact that he's grown ABOVE the Rules, and simply doesn't need them anymore :-)

[L'Zoril]

Originally posted by Stuart Moore
I don't really have a lot to add except that I think this is probably the best discussion the column has gotten yet. Thanks, everybody!

--Stuart

that's true. In fact, this is the best discussion I've read in newsarama.