“Structure and character are interlocked. The event structure of a story is created out of the choices that characters make under pressure and the actions they choose to take, while characters are the creatures who are revealed and changed by how they choose to act under pressure. If you change one, you change the other….
…For this reason, the phrase ‘character-driven story’ is redundant. All stories are ‘character-driven’. Event design and character design mirror each other. Character cannot be expressed in depth except through the design of story. The key is appropriateness.”
Robert McKee, Story, pg 106-107. ©1997 Robert McKee. Harper-Collins Publishers, Inc., 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022 ISBN 978-0-06-039168-3
Some feature film directors and short film directors decry McKee’s modern breakdown of storytelling craft. McKee shares many unambiguous declarations of storytelling principles (not rules, he hammers) like the one above. The lack of uncertainty in the principles is good for beginning storytellers, so until you make it to the Big Leagues….
John Ludwick
