Screenwriting Guru Robert McKee Demystifies Character and Structure

How important are screenwriting books, manuals, guides, rules, templates? This is a question that comes up all the time. There are countless books about how to write a screenplay. One of the most important, famous, popular, well-read is Robert McKee's story. And our guest today is that very same, Robert McKee. He has a new book out, Character, the Art of Roll and Cast Design for Page, Stage, and Screen. It is available on Amazon. You can check it out. You can read all of his other books, including, of course, Story, Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting from back in 1997. I've read a lot of Robert McKee's work. I was really excited to speak with him. He corrected some of my conceptions about his work and its role in screenwriting. I've always been a person who's believed the best rules or guidelines are the ones that help you write or help you write stuff you're proud of and happy to be writing. I think for the most part, Robert agrees. We got into some really interesting stuff as far as theory, specifics. He has a wealth of knowledge about the history of storytelling, and that's, to me, a lot of the fun stuff. But you will definitely come out of this, I think, excited to write because we talk about what makes writing exciting. No rhyme meant that was an accident. Please enjoy. [Music] Thanks so much for being here. It's an honor to have you. I've read your books. I studied them. I found myself, I think, with story way back when I was screenwriting more, I found myself thinking, "How am I ever going to remember all of this?" I was taking notes. It was like, "This is all good. How will I remember it?" And I tried to apply all of it. One of the things I love, and I want to talk about the new book, and I want to go back in time and talk about where you started, because I know theater was a huge influence. One of the things I wanted to ask was, just as an overarching principle, do you feel that do you feel that there are truly consistent rules to good storytelling, principles of storytelling? No, because I would never use the word "rule." That's a mistake to begin with, just that word. And so the answer, of course, is no. There are no rules. The difference is- Guidelines, is that how you would say? Well, I use the word "principle." And so every art form has certain principles. Or even better word, it has certain forms. For example, you almost never paint a painting on a square surface or a round surface, because those create symmetry. And in order to create a certain tension, you need a rectangle. And that's a principle. It's not a rule. If you want to paint in a square, go ahead. But you're going to have difficulty creating a balanced intention, because everything will want to be symmetrical, and the energy will dissipate. So there are these principles in all art forms. And then there, because we've been doing this for tens of thousands of years, and certain forms affect the human mind in a certain way. Now, if we had one eye in the middle of our forehead, then maybe a square canvas would work. But we are binocular. We have two eyes. And therefore, rectangular surface just seems to affect the mind more powerful. And so you have- You're- An art form has certain forms, because it's the way in which human beings experience life. It's the way their senses work, the way their mind works, the way their sense of beginning, middle and end of the passage of time. Their sense of conflict and threat to life. It's on all this lives inside of human beings. And as a result, certain art forms establish certain underlying principles. But they're just principles. And so you- As I said, if you want to paint on a circle, go right ahead. Because it's not a rule. It's just principle. And when you do that, if you decide to ignore the principle, then you're going to have certain problems, which you could solve in some kind of creative way. And a square surface or a circle could produce a really wonderful piece of visual art. You know, why not? Right. And so that's a long answer to that short question. But- No, that's a great answer, because that's a very good explanation of the difference between a principle and a rule and what the consequences can be for making a choice, conscious or otherwise to ignore a principle of story. And also sort of talks about where- I mean, you just talked about where- Why principles exist? Because the human brain works in a certain way or the human physiology exists in a certain way. Which brings me to another thought. I think a lot of your- I think you've said before, a lot of what you talk about in terms of story principle comes right from Aristotle. And I'm curious, do you think- Or- If you have explained it in the books, forgive me, and maybe you can recap for our audience a little bit. But do those principles that relate to story, just like the rectangle relates to the human eyes, how do those story principles relate to the human being in terms of like how we're create- Like what we are physically and mentally? Well, and experientially, of course. To be clear, Aristotle is actually very simple and very clear, but I don't think you could use the word profound and describing the poetics. He wasn't trying to be profound. He's very profound in writing about the ethics and writing about human nature and nature itself. But when he's writing about the theater, it's very descriptive. And it's very vivid and very clear, but it's relatively simple. Simply because what he was working with, which is primarily the- The ethics of Homer and the plays in the Athenian stage, were relatively simple. They're powerful, very powerful, tragedy, but they're not terribly complicated. There's no subtext. It's all on the nose and yet the events in certain plays, of course, are very powerful because they deal with very profound moral questions. But epic- I mean epic. Aristotle. No ethics. Aristotle never gets involved in the poetics in talking about the subtext or the moral implications or a sense of faith or whatever. So when you say that my writing is based in Aristotle, well, sure, because he was the first. But there has been tremendous writings since Aristotle. It goes far beyond Aristotle. Those writers in the 19th century, 20th century, early 20th century and today certainly went well beyond Aristotle. But what Aristotle said, we're obvious truisms. A story operates in time. Therefore there's a beginning, a middle and a then. There are people who obviously ignorant of Aristotle who claim that Aristotle set the standard of the tri-act structure. In fact, Aristotle never uses the word act. And in fact, the plays that Aristotle is looking at, especially at this rex, basically one acts, they're in a hundred minute or less one acts. And Homer is not a play nor in acts at all. No, no, because it's an epiphan. So if you took the Odyssey or the Iliad and broke it into major turning points, which is the definition of an act, a sequence, scenes and sequences, the climax on a major training point. If you broke the the Odyssey into acts, I'm sure there are 40 of them. And within those many scenes that also turn me similarly. Many scenes. If you if you if I've never done it, but if we sat down because you know there's two storylines, there's not only Odysseus's analysis. And now the sun. There's also the sun plot of the sun telemicals searching for him. If you took the plot and some plots, yeah. And we're going down into major training points. And then you know, these dozens of them. And the Iliad less so. But the Iliad has again 810, well major training points. And so one of the problems that you face in this whole business is definitions. What can you elaborate on that a little bit? Yeah. What is a scene? What is a scene? What is an act? And when you get to long form, when you get to long form television series, what is a movement? What is it? What is it finally a climax? What is a subplot? What is a how do stories, what's the difference between mixing storylines and merging storylines? And on it goes. And so there's all of them, all of these elements of story that you can identify and you've got to give them turns so that you can talk to people about. But also, in your, by your model, also so they can turn appropriately, right? So there's a polarized, like it'll start one, like every beat. I remember this, every beat, every scene, every sequence, every act has to have like a switch, right? It starts one place ends in another. Yeah. Something changes through the course of it. So if you're looking at a screenplay and you have like one of these little mini scenes in terms of what a screenplay calls a scene like half a page and it takes place at one location, it may not represent any kind of turn, correct? So that it's not a scene by your-- Yeah, that's a very important point. Because Final Draft, that I favor, I think it's the best format system. And Final Draft, a couple of three years ago, you gave me, you know, put me in the Hollywood Hall of Fame. Nice. Congratulations. We have a nice relationship, but their definition of a scene is not my definition of a scene. And so every time there's a change in location, they call that a scene. That's only useful for the production manager. Yes. It's not useful for the writer because it's easily-- you know, those examples of the book. It's easy to move a scene through time and place and have one scene take place in five different locations. And skip through time. It doesn't have to be-- I mean, they are consecutive, but they don't have to be one lady to the other. So you get at five locations to move a character from one charger value to another charger value, and it might take all day to get there, but it's only one scene. Sort of like how I feel like your vast experience in the theater background there helps identify a scene in a play or an act or an entire play can be in one physical space, right? But then there's many little scenes within that. But in a movie, it could kind of be the opposite, right? Yeah, but you see that the influence on my thinking is equally the novel. It isn't only the theater. I mean, I was an actor, director, and theater, but I read it. I held up a lot more novels than I ever read plays. So was that-- would the novel be the primary-- for you, the genesis of some of your thinking about how the principles of structure work in stories? No. Where did it start? Where did your first-- where did you first start having these recognizing these patterns and thinking about it all in this way? That is now so popular and well understood. I see, I did my undergraduate, my bachelor's degree is in literature. My master's degree is in theater, and my PhD is in cinema. And when I sat down to do my dissertation, which I never finished because I turned it into my book instead. So that worked out okay? That worked. And so really, the genesis of it was trying to make sense out of story in order to write a PhD dissertation in cinema. But when I started-- when I did the research, starting with Aristotle, I didn't go through Horace and 2,000 years of writing, about writing, they all just merged. Because you know that old joke about that old story about half a dozen blind men examining an elephant? Yeah, I love it. I love that one. It was in-- we interviewed Frank Oz and-- oh, I'm forgetting his name, but they did the magic show in New York, and that was a big part of it. But yes, I love it. I realize that that's writing about writing is like those blind men, all of them with their hands on an elephant. They are all describing the same thing. Whether it's a play or film or cinema or television, no matter whether it's a brief work, you know, in a little one act or 100 hours of long form TV series, they're all trying to describe the same thing. Because that form underlies everything in every storytelling medium. But they had their own terminologies. Right. And-- So they disagree? Because the four blind men are all describing it, but they're describing a trunk as a different item. Right. You get the point. You say, what's a scene? Well, in a novel, a scene tends to be a sub-chapter. Chapters tend to be sequences. Hearts or books tend to be an act. Ten to be, right? And so what you have to understand in these things is the degree of change. A scene is a relatively minor change. It's significant, but it's relatively minor in terms of the impact on the character's life. And whether or not that change in that scene pushes the character closer to or further from what they want. And so a scene is relatively minor in terms of its impact on the character's desire. A sequence climax, a series of scenes creates a moderate change. A series of sequences brings about an act which is a major change, major turning friend, affecting the character's movement toward what they want. They're closer to what they want or further from what they want. And in long-form television, a series of major turns creates a movement which is a massive change, massive meaning it goes both inward into the characters and outward into society. So the effect is doubled. And so trying to explain to people the nature of change as it measured express rather in a value, positive, negative, in terms of what a character wants. And then that desire can be conscious and also subconscious. And so a scene could push a character toward what they want consciously and further from what they want really subconsciously. And so it's very, very complex. Yes. And because life is very, very complex. But the almost the subatomic particle of it is that charge that you mentioned, that change at the level of a tiny shift on just a beat. And then it kind of grows to each thing. And when you say a movement and you talk about long-form television, I start thinking because I read story for the first time before I'd watch things like madmen, before there were these shows. that we're doing these bigger arcs. Do you see these sort of like a season of television? Is that now, where does that fall into the concept of, it's like bigger than an act, certainly, right? Bigger than a half season. Do you think writers should start laying those kinds of things out on a charge? Yeah, Losses. Yeah, I teach that when I teach long-form television writing. See, something like Breaking Bad, I'm trying to remember the numbers, but I believe there are 26 storylines. There's a central plot, 25 subplots, over five virtually six seasons. And I broke it into four movements, where there's massive change. Right. It has two, when you add up all the acts between the 26 storylines, it's over 250. The central plot alone, the Heisenberg plot, had something like 40 acts. And so, you need it too much to imagine, in a sense. Yes. It's close to the Iliad, right? We're getting closer to Epic. But to help you get a sense of organization, then I came up with the notion of movement, which goes from beyond major to mass. Got it. Massing, right? Because its impact changes not only the character's life, but the whole society. But those four movements in Breaking Bad don't necessarily correspond to seasons. And so you can't be that hat. You can't just see the season is a movement. It may or may not be. So, is it sometimes better, almost if it isn't? I don't know if I should even use the word better, but in some ways, like, leaving, like, allowing a story to be somewhere, as long as all your scenes and acts are turning correctly, then it doesn't necessarily matter where the movement turns, right? Because it's building appropriately. That just has to progress. And so where it actually happens within a season or at the end of the season, it's too organic to make things like that. You just know it has to progress. I mean, how are you going to hold interest for five or six years? Yeah, it's a seemingly impossible task. The change, the change, the progressions have to get deeper and deeper and wider and wider. That's why those kinds of five, six, seven, eight seasons series are very difficult. So what you have instead, now, a lot, is something in between. So you have, like, Fargo is, you know, each one, each season is what, like, eight, maybe episodes. And it has one story line. And it takes eight episodes so that you don't get into that, that business of movements doesn't have to become that massive. So a lot of series now are, but there's still, you know, still a long, true long form. I'm watching the Godfather of Harlem, which I'm enjoying a lot. It's going into the second season and the hook at the end of season one was terrific. And so, I'm in the comedy season, they can keep it going, but if the quality of it stays high like it is, then, you know, it could become another, the wire sopranos. Right. Well, you're recommend is one, I'm definitely going to check it out now. This episode is sponsored by Sinatech. Pre-production can take a lot of time, breaking down scripts, building shot lists, creating storyboards and planning your schedule. Sinatech speeds all of that up. You upload your script and it automatically generates a breakdown, create storyboard panels, build your shot lists and helps organize your schedule. You can even export a rough animatic to preview your film before production. It's a faster way to get from script to a production ready plan. You can try it for free at sinatech.ai/nofilmschool. I was going to ask because we're starting to talk about, you talked about something that I've always been really fascinated by, so I want to ask more about it. Character, when a movement, things like the wants of the character start to go and the impact starts go outside of themselves, outside of the circle and into the society. And so you've written a book about character, the art of role and cast design for page stage and screen. And I'm really curious about how, how should I put this? These are such tough questions to think about and try to put succinctly, but reading like Patty Chaefsky-Teloplays, sometimes he would have a really powerful story. It's just about a family unit. And it doesn't go beyond that necessarily in terms of impact. But when you're talking about characters and writing great characters and say what happens to Heisenberg, is it necessary to build a character that has an interaction with the society? Or can you contain it and be just as powerful? Is that a function of how long your story is that you need to start expanding out the impact needs to be bigger? Or I guess tell me a little bit about the idea behind the character book and how it relates to story arc. Well, in terms of a story arc, there's one chapter in the book that deals with character need. And so if you're going to have a long form that we were talking about, you have to start with a character who has a tremendous potential as a human being that they have never realized. I call that need, and everybody who's in terms of everything. But in my definition, character need is a vacancy and emptiness in the character that needs to be filled. And so this character has potential for great experience. But they've got the brains, they've got the passion, they've got the willpower. They have qualities within them that have great promise. But life has never asked them to be more than they are at this moment. And so you're going to design a story that causes them to use themselves to the limit of human experience. And often, not always, but often, the limit of human experience is tragic. And so the, I think it's chapter 11 in the book is called the completed character. And so it's a principle that you give that in not in every story by any means. There's a, but in many stories, the good, great stories. You have a character who's incomplete. They have potential as a human being at the beginning, but they have, life has never asked them to become anything special. But then something's going to happen to them that will put them into an experience that will cause them to use themselves and experience themselves to the absolute limit of their humanity. So somebody like Walter White breaking bad is a completely, what I, what I call exhausted character. Everything noble in Walter White has been expressed. Everything potential within him has been fulfilled. He has completely emptied out. He has experienced himself to the utter limits and others left. But he started with all that unfulfilled, he started exactly the way you describe. He's like a picture of that unfulfilled. Yeah, he was, he was full of potential. And Heisenberg was always in him, but never used. The two principles that in terms of the relationship between character and story, the two principles you're operating always with are revelation and change. And there's a fetish in writing that all characters must change. You must change. They somehow have to get a character arc. And that's nonsense. That's real nonsense. The vast majority of central characters of protagonists in the vast majority of novels, plays and films do not change. This is one of, I'm so glad we got to this. I was stumbling trying to get there. This is one of my favorite things that I remember from your books was this idea. I try to tell people this, but I never do it articulately. Please go on. What people don't understand is what they are is revealed. You don't know who they are. You don't know what their potential is. You don't know them at the beginning of a story. They just step on to the screen, or the screen, or the page, and things happen. They're doing a sighting incident, puts their life out of balance, and they begin to pursue a desire. And when they make choices and take actions, we discover who they are. And what changes is our understanding of the character. - Mmm. We didn't know who they were. We didn't know who the person was at the beginning. And at the end, we now understand who they are. - They were pushed to the place where they revealed something about who they were. - Yeah, absolutely. - That's where they sure are, right? And what I think goes on is that people who talk who write about writing mistake, revelation for change. So the characters revealed we know who they are, our understanding has changed, but the character is essentially exactly who they were at the beginning of the story. - Mmm, that's it. - But we didn't know them. So this is what the vast majority of stories, what changes is not only our understanding, but the outer circumstances of the character's life. - Yes. - What we call plots of fortune. Plots of fortune are stories that change the outer circumstances of a character's life. So they go from being lonely to in love and married. They go from a world of injustice. They solve a crime, the world out. They change the world back to justice. So the outer, the fortunes, the outer circumstances of a character's life change. And for better or worse, they're alive or they're dead at the end. (laughing) And we know who they are. - Right. I've mistakenly referred to it simply as being, sometimes the character changes, sometimes the world around them changes. It doesn't need to be both. - Well, in most stories, the outer circumstances of the character's life, the world, so to speak. - Change. - Right. - For better or worse. But there are six genres of character change in which the character is not only revealed, but they change over the course of the story. And so this, the book I've written takes a look and of course, those six genres in which characters actually do art. They are not the same human being at the end of the story they were at the beginning. And you aren't saying that that is necessarily a better kind of story. It's just a different, right? - No. - No. - And I wanna ask you something that specific to, I think a lot of the conversations that happen in and around Hollywood these days. And I'll use some popular, some of the more popular subjects. You'll often hear that Superman is a bad character, right? Have you heard this sort of like, he's not an interesting character because you're like, I guess, badly written. - Right, or that there's nothing interesting to do with him. You'll hear that too. - Right. - But Spider-Man is because he has like, internal strife or self-doubt, Superman is too perfect. But I always sort of push back on that because I think, but so many stories that are great that go way back in time aren't about characters who have internal issues or need to change. They're just about characters who change the world around them because the world is less, you said going from unjust to just. Can you explain for everyone why, like, I mean, you've already have, but why is it that are people to, my thesis is, I think people are too concerned with the idea of a character needing to change and not enough with the idea that there can be things revealed or that the world around them can change. What is it people are upset about when it comes to Superman, for example? Or a Christ like, like that? Superheroes are simple characters, given what we've been through for the last few centuries. Most people understand that, you know, Europeans, for example, cannot create Superman or characters of that ilk. They love American films and they love, they enjoy superheroes and supervillains when the Americans make them, but they themselves cannot make those stories never have because it's in their culture. They just don't believe that anyone or anything can be that simple. But when the Americans do it, it's fun, it's fun. But they themselves can't. And so, and that's true in our country as well, that people naturally feel that these archetypes, these symbols of heroism and villainy are not obviously fantasy and unrealistic, but somehow a violation of what we understand to be human nature. Right. And so they, you know, there are people who shun these things. But then, you know, looking at all the gazillion of people spending gazillion of hours playing video games. And there's no great character psychology video games. It's fun, it's fun. The spectacle of superheroes is far more important than the psychology of super heroes. So, right. So, you know, I understand, but, you know, I've got a book, I'm bringing out some, maybe by the end of this year we'll see, on writing action. It's got the action, the art of excitement. It's exciting, it's fun. And then, you know, a hero is an altruistic psychology, a person who is willing to sacrifice their life for other human beings. And the villain is a narcissistic personality who will sacrifice other human beings for himself. And, you know, those anthropologists and the fun is figuring out, watching how they go about doing. - I want to bring up a character who's a very different character than Superman who you wrote about a lot, who I love is Rick Blaine. But he is altruistic ultimately, right? Can you tell me about how he works in the context of characters, in the annals of characters in arcs? 'Cause you wrote about him in story and I'm curious, does he fit into one of the six genres? Does he change in your life? - He does, he does. He undergoes a redemption plot. I mean, when you look at character, if you want to create complex characters who undergo change, you have to ask, what can you change in a human being? And in my analysis, there's only three things. You can change characters' morality, you can change their mentality or you can change their humanity. If you change a character's morality, they start as a good person and they degenerate it to a bad person or the other way around. They start morally negative and they change to morally positive. If you change somebody's mentality, they come into the world with a certain way of thinking, certain attitude toward life, optimistic, pessimistic, whatever. But it's their mentality is how they see life in themselves in it and you can start them at the negative, their pessimistic turn into the positive, optimistic, or the other way around. And then you can change your character's humanity. They come into the story with a certain development in their humanity. They're at a certain stage in their life where they're either less than the human being they could be or as complete a human being as they ever will be. And you can reduce their humanity. And we all have this sad story. - And we have a drug addiction. - Right. - Quality of obsessions of all kinds, field of persons humanity away. Or you can take them from immaturity to maturity. You can, or whatever, there's very, you know, whatever quality of humanity and you can move it from the negative to the positive. - And so with all three of those, I want to highlight for everyone listening, what I love, when you first mentioned the three, I thought I really wonder how these three break down. And as you break them down, I love that once again, it comes back to a positive or negative charge within the context of each of those three things. All it is, it's not like mentality, not like what they think about life. It's a negative approach or positive approach. They go from one to the other. Keeping it that simple, I think as complex as these things become, that landmark helps us to understand and wrap our minds around why the story would work. - That's absolutely true, Drew. Because people can, you know, the thinking in a human being, for example, changing their mentality, the thinking in a human being can become extremely complex. Of course, but then the writer looks at it. says, "Is this person, how do they see the world and themselves in the world, is it overall positive or overall negative?" And arriving at a sense is one or the other. Then you know where the story could arc, where the change could take place. They could go from being less to more or more to less. So Rick Blaine, for example, at the beginning of Casablanca, is living an immoral life. He has runs a corrupt casino where he cheats people out of money. It's relentless fixed. Right. Now he's a Robinhood in the sense that he's supporting a lot of refugees who work for him. But he's basically more. He's a thief. Does that Robinhood aspect, does that apply to the idea of there's a potential there that's not yet revealed sort of a potential? If he was a total thief, he wouldn't give any of his employees any more than necessary, but he's not. And politically, he's given up on the world. He doesn't care about the war, he doesn't care about politics or peace versus warfare and so forth. He doesn't care. He's lost all caring about other people and he's running a corrupt establish. And he arcs then from a character who's turned his back on society to a character who used to be. He redeems himself for what the man he used to be and he goes back to being a fighter for peace and justice in the world. And he fashes. And he goes from being immoral to moral. And so he's at every dimension plot for him. And he goes, he's cynical at the beginning. So he is one of the six, he's an example of one of the six genres. Yeah, he's a he's a redemption plot. He's a morality moves from negative to positive. Right. And morality moving from a positive to negative could be, I'm trying to think maybe like a mafia, maybe like Michael Corleone is he an example of that? Or Michael's a perfect example? By the end of Godfather 2, he's absolutely totally lost. Well, actually, I would take it further than that. I would think that Godfather is a Godfather 1, his morality moves from positive to negative. Right. But Godfather 2, his humanity has been lost. So it takes a new thing to polar to shift. Yeah, to second gear. Right. Because he's destroyed. He's obsessed with mafia values and he's destroyed everyone around. Do you think a writer starting out with a story? If you were going to their script, if you were going to advise them, because I've heard so many things as we've talked that made me think, oh, that sounds like a good idea. That sounds fun. And that's exactly what you want. Right. But what would you advise them? Where would you advise them to start thinking? Should they start with the character? Should they start with thinking about these things? What's a good starting point? Whatever the first idea comes from mine. I mean, it really doesn't matter. You might start with an idea for a character. And then you'd have to ask the question, you know, given this character, what's the worst thing that could happen to them? Or what's the best thing that could happen to them? And how would either of those bring about raising within them a desire to restore the balance of life? Or you could start out with an event. Those, you know, X were to happen, and you have an event in mind. Then you look at that event and say, you know, what kind of person would be really changed or affected, or thrown out of balance by this event? I'm doing a series of webinars right now on the thriller. And there's a wonderful, excellent new thriller came out just recently that begins with a scene of road rage. Two drivers almost hit each other. He looks at her and gives her a dirty look or says, you know, what are you going? And she gives him the fingers. Now, you don't know anything about those characters, okay? It just right. And suddenly, what she doesn't realize is that giving that guy the finger, he's going to stalk her and kill her if he can. Okay? And so we look at that and you say, what would happen if one driver gave another driver the finger not knowing that the person he gave the finger to is a psychopath? It's just a question. Right. You start with a psychopath. Right. He's right on the edge of being put in an asylum or suicide or whatever. And then you could look at that person and say, you know, what would happen? What could happen to that raging personality that would set him into a horrible, terrible, course of action. And you think, I know what? Somebody gives him the finger. Right. Okay? And that turns him into the, have you seen this film? It's called Unhinged. Yeah, it was the Russell Crowe, right? Yeah. Right? Yes. And so you could start with a Russell Crowe and say, what would happen to somebody gives him the finger? Or you could start with road rage. And then the driver gives the other driver the finger and off we go. So it doesn't, you don't see it. It's a two sided point. If you start with character, you have to figure out what would happen to this person that would cause them to live life and express themselves to some, you know, limit or, you know, the other way around. And so you start with an event and then create a character. You start with a character and then figure out an exciting incident is, is not important. You have to do by, obviously, and what order in which those two occur is not important. So what matters is that you approach it by creating that dynamic, not what the piece that first comes is. The dynamic, having the dynamic in mind or the ideas of the necessity, the necessary pieces that will make a story dynamic. And I'm what, what I'm just describing is the inciting incident in relationship to the protagonist. But it could be that first thing that comes into your mind could be, you know, somebody's in a job in an office and they're called into the boss's office and suddenly given a promotion that they never expected. And it looks positive, but suddenly, you know, fear. And you, and you go, but that, that is like a turning point somewhere in the middle. So now you're going to go back saying, why would somebody getting a promotion raise all that fear in them? Who is this person? How did their life begin? What caught, you know, and you go back and you, and you, I don't know what, you know, you put them in, you put them in a university setting and they're just graduating and gladie down. They got certain them, you know, parents, certain relationships and so forth. Yes. And, I like that. And so that's what I, what I, what I meant when I said, it doesn't matter. You can start in the middle, you can start in the beginning, you can start with a great climax, you can start with something that's actually going to end up in the backstory. You can start with a character. It doesn't matter. What matters is that your mind has a full vision of story, characters and events and that your story teller that you're capable of thinking on all of those levels in terms of characters and their dimensionality and complexities, life and family, employment and war, you know, or like, you know, no madland. No madland was wonderful. It was kind of a Taoism illustrated. You know, you would be trying to come into harmony with the character. nature. And so you could start with a theme, you know, like several. Right. Then you've that right is start to start to live. The problem in life is that we have cut ourselves off from the natural flow of things. And that is Taoism. That's ancient Chinese Taoism. I don't think it's an accident that director that films Chinese. But that is a neither a character. Right. Or an inciting incident. It's a theme. Yeah. It's an idea. People are not living in harmony with the natural world. And so out of that idea, you create a character who did who is who is out of harmony, living in a company town, husband dies, and she starts wandering. And she's offered to go back into society with by a guy who's a good guy by sister who take care of her. And she keeps rejecting them because there's something in her that says, I'm out of sync with reality. And she's trying to find that. And yeah, Jeans up staring out of the Pacific Ocean, whatever. Okay. So yeah, yeah, it isn't it. You just start with an idea. There's over the characters, start with the events, you start with just a setting. But if you're truly a writer, you have a massive understanding of setting, character, invent, psychology, sociology, you have a vision of the world. And you understand all of those parts, ultimately, have to fit and harmonize to make meaning and move emotions. And so all this talk about where do you start is really amateur because the actual execution, the knowledge of the big picture and the canvas of yeah, brain artists, the professional artists, doesn't worry about things like that. Right. Or mind their mind is full of images and ideas and people and politics and nature and every other and their thoughts are churning all the time. They know what ultimately they have to create and where they start and how they proceed. I've written enough scripts to know that every single screenplay ever wrote started in a different place. Sometimes characters, sometimes setting, sometimes any bent, sometimes a genre, I mean, they all started in a different place. It didn't matter. Ultimately, they had to get rid right. They were something something came to you that then became a story from some other point. Yeah. Well, I can't thank you enough. This has been really, really great. I really appreciate it. Thanks so much to Robert McKee for coming on the No Film School podcast. Be sure to check out book character, the art of role and cast design for page stage screen check out his other books go to no film school.com. Hey, we have our own how to write a screenplay ebook. All you have to do is sign up for our newsletter, which will get you all kinds of cool stuff and notify you about everything we're doing on no film school.com. Please also be sure to check out our gear guides and our entertainment news. If that's something interesting to you, it's on the sidebar of the homepage, no film school.com. Great, like and subscribe to the podcast. Follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, check us out on Instagram. And as always, thanks so much for listening.