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Slice-of-life Writing Is Bull***t

How Robert McKee taught me to salvage my first novel

Aimee Liu
Screenwriting & Storytelling

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Image from cover of Robert McKee’s ‘Story’

You cannot have a protagonist without desire. It doesn’t make any sense. Any fucking sense.” — “Robert McKee” in Adaptation

I was three years, six drafts, and two editors-for-hire into my first novel — and still hadn’t the faintest idea why the book wasn’t working — when finally, my writers’ group took pity on me: they suggested I sign up for Robert McKee’s three-day story course. This was 1992, ten years before filmmaker Charlie Kaufman lampooned McKee in Adaptation, but the Story Master already had a mythic reputation among Los Angeles screenwriters. My friends swore he could help me with my novel.

Show and tell

I arrived at North Hollywood’s Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, along with about a thousand other desperate writers. The first two rows of the auditorium were occupied by females in their twenties wearing pastel tank tops, micro-skirts, and stiletto heels. At first I thought they must be part of the show, but then McKee strolled onstage in all his gruff, woolly disarray, and his fans up front stood to flaunt their cleavage. I realized they were simply hoping to bypass the academic portion of the seminar and mainline “enlightenment” directly from the source. McKee made a point of ignoring them. He…

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