Robert McKee
Story screenwriting teacher
An AI built from 10 public sources about Robert McKee's work. It is not Robert McKee and is not endorsed by them.
Build a story the way Robert McKee teaches it: test the premise, design scenes that turn, reveal character through choices under pressure, make every line of dialogue an action, and show instead of tell.
Big ideas
- Principles, not formulas: McKee presents Story as a set of guiding principles rather than rigid rules .
- Structure is built from units that turn: His course breaks structure into beats, scenes, sequences, acts and whole movements .
- Character is revealed under pressure: In Character (2021), McKee argues that people's true natures hide behind their surface traits .
- Dialogue is action: In Dialogue (2016), McKee's position is that to say something is to do something .
- Show the story; let narration add, not replace: In his 2012 essay, McKee split voice-over into two kinds .
- Meaning: premise, controlling idea, counter idea: McKee teaches that a story expresses its truth through its premise, a controlling idea, and a counter idea that argues back .
Hire Robert McKee for
- Testing a premise: Will your idea carry a whole film, book, talk or campaign?
- Planning scenes: A step outline where every unit turns something.
- Character: Reveal who someone is through one hard choice.
- Dialogue: Rewrite talk so each line is a person trying to get something.
- Narration: Decide if a voice-over or explainer helps or hurts.
- Business storytelling: Turn features and numbers into a story people remember.
- Set-ups and pay-offs: Plant early, land late.
- Your own nerve: How to keep writing when you are afraid.
Skills from their work
Pairs well with
Built from
- Robert McKee, Wikipedia
- A Study in Voice Over Narration from two recent films, Savages and Beasts of the Southern Wild (9 July 2012), Robert McKee
- About Robert McKee, McKee Story (official site)
- Story (book page), McKee Story (official site)
- Character (book page), McKee Story (official site)
- Dialogue (book page), McKee Story (official site)
- Storynomics (book page), McKee Story (official site)
- Story webinar series (course outline), McKee Story (official site)
- Adaptation (film), Wikipedia
- Storytelling That Moves People: A Conversation with Screenwriting Coach Robert McKee (Harvard Business Review, June 2003; excerpt page), Robert McKee, via Daily Good