Storytelling: It’s a tale as old as time
A copywriter explores the science of storytelling at Robert McKee’s Story seminar.
“Have you noticed you can’t tell anyone anything these days? Everyone has to ‘share’ everything. So, I’m going to share this whole f*cking lecture with you”. Part observational comedy, part gripe, Robert McKee opened his Story seminar with a bang, followed by a belated trigger warning for us “sensitive millennials” — there will be swearing. “Profanity gives me the fuel,” he claims. And leading four 11-hour days at 78 years old, it looks like it’s working.
For those who don’t know, Robert McKee is an author, lecturer and story consultant. He’s most famous for his Story seminar — and with various other achievements under his belt, including a BAFTA and even an appearance in an episode of The Simpsons, that fame has to be worth something.
McKee’s Story seminar has screenwriting at its heart, with most references coming from film — but ranging as far and wide as Aristotle and Stephen King. His teachings, centred around screen but applicable for page and stage, cover everything from text and subtext to dialogue and genre. Coming highly recommended, I went on the course hoping to look at writing through a different lens and apply what I learned about storytelling to my job as a copywriter in the creative industry.
As the lecture begins, McKee rattles through a list of housekeeping, including a rather stern warning that anyone who uses their phone in the seminar will be asked to come up on stage and fined £20 on the spot. He notes that he still has “no smoking” on his list and recalls the days he would do this same lecture with a Marlboro in hand. This should give you an idea of how long McKee has been running these seminars — and it’s immediately apparent he knows his material inside out. It’s no surprise his former students include over 60 Academy Award Winners, 200 Academy Award Nominees and the likes of David Bowie, Julia Roberts and Russell Brand.
Despite being the proud owner of an English degree (and a not-so-proud owner of the debt that comes with it), my time reading English was focused on formalising my ideas, rather than the nuts and bolts of how we expressed them — we were expected to already know how to do that. One of the most fascinating things about McKee’s lecture was the way he takes a pseudo-scientific approach to writing, giving order to what is often considered instinctual. Not all of it is groundbreaking, and he’s the first to admit it’s definitely not new — but it is illuminating. He brings to the fore the things you do without thinking, and forces you to think about them.
There is no recipe for telling a story
Though McKee’s approach can at times look formulaic, illustrated by charts and diagrams, he is careful to note that while form is at the heart of all art, there is no formula. For example, the form of Western music is 12 notes on a scale through time. When this is present, we have music — not noise. And when form is present in story, it’s a true story. Not a collage. Not a slice of life. But there is no recipe for telling a story.
You need to learn to smell your own sh*t
The goal of writing is to come as close to the abstract ideal of perfection. To do this, you must have taste. And this is where you could be out of luck. McKee is convinced taste is a gene. “Some people have it and others don’t”. And it’s not something that can be acquired by simply taking a couple of art classes. You have to have taste to recognise bad writing in yourself. It’s not hard to recognise it in others, but learning to “smell your own sh*t” can be significantly harder.
While you have whatever talent you’ve been given, McKee rather generously notes that you “can achieve a lot by honing your craft”. Whether this has something to do with the fact that we’re sitting in a seminar claiming to help us do exactly that or not, the fact remains — we’d all rather listen to the trivial told brilliantly than the important told badly.
A lot of people can write, but not everyone can tell a story
The ability to take the common language and raise it up to something more beautiful, more expressive — that’s literary talent. And, according to McKee, a lot of us have it. What’s less common is story talent: the creative conversion of life to a higher, more expressive form. The storyteller takes life itself and lifts it up to be something more meaningful — even to the point of absurdity. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he considers Samuel Beckett to be one of the greatest storytellers of all time.
A cliché is a great idea — discovered a long, long time ago
Don’t accept the first idea that comes off the top of your head. Your mind is filled with clichés from other stories you’ve heard, read or seen. It’s important to constantly experiment and improvise. McKee compared writing without inspiration and just copying other people to simply humming on the steps of the Carnegie Hall. You need an orchestra and a symphony to bring the story to life.
We’re looking for ideas that are true to life and that we’ve never seen before. He railed against copying other people’s ideas: “You know people are talking sh*t when they use the French word. ‘Homage’ is just plagiarism dressed up”. And don’t get him started on the French auteur theory.
Don’t shy away from the bad stuff
The story you tell is only as compelling as the forces of antagonism force it to be. If you want your story to be complex, the secret lies in the negative side of things. That’s where your energy comes from. If we were getting everything we wanted out of life, we’d be no more interesting than a shrub — a plant that doesn’t even bother to flower.
You are your greatest resource
Everything you learn about human nature you learn from yourself. You can only create from what you already know. Creativity is the discovery of the third thing: a hidden connector between two things that already exist — one that nobody has ever seen before.
End of the story
It seems fitting to end the story on McKee’s enduring sentiment — the one countless people queued up to have him scrawl on copies of his books. Write the truth. If you’re going to write anything of quality, you have to be well acquainted with reality. At their source, stories are metaphors for life. So, when we’re telling a story, all we’re really trying to do is make some kind of sense out of the chaos of life.
Emily Gallagher has been trying to make sense of the chaos of life, professionally, for six years.
