Story Structure

Another insightful book I read in bits and pieces (mostly because it takes several passes before the information sinks in) is Robert McKee's Story. It's awesome. These are the things I've learned thus far about structure (taken straight from his book):

Book structure is a selection of events from the character's life, composed in strategic sequence to arouse emotion and express point of view.

A story event creates meaningful change in the life situation of the character and it is expressed in terms of a value.

Story values are the universal qualities of human experience that shift from positive to negative from one moment to the next. Such as life/death, love/hate, truth/lie, courage/cowardice, strength/wisdom, loyalty/betrayal, etc.

A story event creates meaningful change in the life of the characters through conflict. An event is measured by values and conflict forces the character to make a change.

You can have 40-60 or more story events in the book. These are the scenes.

In each scene, the writer has to decide what value is at stake in the character’s life? How is the value charged at the top of the scene? Positive or negative? If the value-charged condition of the character’s life stays the same from one end of the scene to the other, the scene is a nonevent and shouldn’t be there.

Mckee says: NO scene that doesn’t turn! Meaning: kill it, my darling.

A beat is an exchange of behavior couched in action/reaction. Beat by beat these changing behaviors shape the turning of a scene.

A sequence is a series of scenes – generally two to five – that culminate with a greater impact than any previous scene. The sequence has a greater value that overrides the values from the scenes.

Sequences turn in a more moderate, impactful way. A series of sequences builds the next larger structure, the act.

An act turns on a major reversal in the value charged condition of the character’s life. The difference between a scene, a scene that climaxes a sequence, and a scene that climaxes an act is the degree of change.

And finally, the story is simply one huge master event. The value charged condition of the character has changed at the end of the book, reversing the value charge from the beginning. The change is absolute and irreversible.

The story climax consists of a series of acts that build to the last act climax bringing about the irreversible change.