Rob Parnell's Writing Academy Blog

I've been reading Robert McKee's book on 'Story', where he outlines what he perceives to be ideal story structure - not just for movies but for novels and short stories too. He's based his theories on a lifetime of examining story form and structure - and from being employed to read story proposals for Hollywood studios. His conclusions are interesting and educational - not least because they're so specific! McKee is able to identify stories that work and why - but also how to structure them for maximum effect. Below I've tried to summarize his theories. Defining Story Terms First we need to understand the terms of reference Robert McKee uses, in order to fully grasp what he's saying. An Emotional Exchange is the smallest fragment of drama within a story. It is a point at which a character openly deals with either his external world or his internal demons. It is commonly called a Beat. Ideally, a Beat in a story should be non-coincidental, which means it...

I must be the last person in the world to have started reading The Secret. We bought the book last week and have the video on order. Can't wait. I'm really enjoying the book - not least because it's outlining what I've always believed. It struck me as amusing that its primary author, Rhonda Byrne, is a fellow Australian. She explains in the intro to the The Secret that when the idea came to her, she had to travel to the US to find validation and willing exponents of her cause. I wondered if this meant she couldn't find any positive people in Australia! Having lived here for nearly a decade now (I'm a Brit if you didn't know) I think I can relate to her dilemma. There's a weird attitude that permeates the society over here - and is endorsed and promoted by no less than the government - that success happens to other people, usually in other countries. Australia likes to think of itself as a classless country - where no 'Bruce' is better...

It's an old debate - one that never ceases to divide writers. Should you make a plan before you write - or should you just start and see what happens? An esteemed subscriber recently raised the issue again in the context of 'types' of writers. It seemed to her that genre fiction writers probably needed a plan in order to deal with the complexities of plotting - and cut down on editing in the subsequent drafts. However, she maintained, it was the more 'literary' writers that insisted that planning somehow stifled creativity. And that a good literary writer didn't mind editing for sense and structure after the first draft was down. She asked me which I thought was the best approach. Do Plans Work? It's hard to imagine a business succeeding without a plan - but clearly some do. Even very large businesses - which surely don't intend to go billions into debt, though it seems to happen all too often nowadays. Some would say that many marriages survive without ...