Level 9.2: McKee

McKee

I’m not sure if Robert McKee ever actually wrote a screenplay that was made into a movie. Mostly, he teaches screenwriting. If you’ve ever come out of a movie saying “wow, that was a really great story,” the screenplay was probably written by one of McKee’s students. (I would love to be considered the “McKee of games” some day. Note to my former students: go out there and make me look good!)

Story is essentially a re-telling of Poetics, but made specific to screenwriting for movies. I found Story to also be a lot more accessible to read; it is written in a conversational style (not to mention that it is written in contemporary English and not ancient Greek). To paraphrase a few of the many lessons from McKee’s book:

Story is not about formulas, it is about forms. You do not create a story by following a template. However, by understanding the common links between different stories, you can make one that is unique. (I would add that the same is true for everything in this course.)

All stories have this form:

• The protagonist has a goal, which is created by an inciting incident.
• The protagonist tries to reach the goal, but a gap (that is, some kind of obstacle, not necessarily a literal gap) opens up and prevents the immediate achievement of the goal.
• The protagonist attempts to cross the gap. Either the gap widens and they are unable to cross, or they do cross the gap but a new gap appears.
• This cycle of gap-crossing continues until the protagonist either finally completes the goal, or is prevented from completing the goal in an irreversible manner.
• In a typical three-Act structure, there are two reversals (new gaps) that happen between the Acts.

Stories are, at their heart, about change. Every scene should change something, or have something unexpected happen. If a scene has the characters in the same state at the end as it was in the beginning, that’s a sign that you should remove that scene. Think of it this way – if you were to convert your life into a two-hour movie, would you waste any screen time on your day-to-day maintenance tasks? Or would you only show the times when something big changes in your life, and allow the audience to assume that things are carrying on normally in between?

Notice how nicely this dovetails with games. Games are about decision-making, which causes a change to the game state. Games rely on having an uncertain outcome, and it is only at the very end that a goal is attained or lost in an irreversible manner. It is not surprising, then, that some games have very strong emergent stories that arise from a particular play experience.

Another interesting thing McKee talks about is the difference between what he calls character and characterization. The things we normally think of when we define a “character” are superficial data: favorite food, blood type, hair color, and so on. McKee calls thesecharacterization. Character is what defines the person – used in the sense of “this activity builds character” or “she has a strong moral character.” What McKee says is that character can only be revealed by putting a person in opposition. For example, we may say that someone is “selfless”… but until they’re in a burning building and have to make the choice between trying to save a total stranger or saving themselves, it’s all just talk.

What is the implication of character and characterization in games? First, that linear stories have the best opportunity to show character through cut scenes, not gameplay. Having the player make moral choices for the main character is hard, because the choices often don’t involve real consequences. Because this is play (“only a game,” the “Magic Circle”), the player is safe, and therefore has nothing in their own real world to lose. The player is therefore not making choices that reflect their own character, because their character is not being tested by extreme opposition. Taking a bullet for a friend in the real world is not quite the same as deciding in a menu whether or not to gain Light Side Points. It is certainly not impossible to embed moral dilemmas in a game, but it is a lot harder to make the emotional consequences of those choices felt by the player, because the player is making those decisions and not the protagonist. It is therefore much easier to show strong character when the player is not in control of the story.

But of course, that also makes it less interactive and thus less like a game. And this is one reason why storytelling in games is hard.