Quotes from Robert McKee

When talented people write well, it is generally for this reason: They're moved by a desire to touch the audience.

The writer works at his skills until knowledge shifts from the left side of the brain to the right

All fine stories take place within a limited, knowable world.

O público quer saber como é estar vivo na ponta da faca do agora. O que significa ser um ser humano hoje?

Posicionar o público não é algo novo. Shakespeare não chamou sua peça de Hamlet, chamou-a de A Tragédia de Hamlet, Príncipe da Dinamarca. Ele deu a comédias títulos como Muito Barulho Por Nada e A Comédia dos Erros, de modo que, a cada tarde no Teatro Globe, o público elisabetano estava psicologicamente preparado para chorar ou rir.

The archetypal story unearths a universally human experience, then wraps itself inside a unique, culture-specific expression. A stereotypical story reverses this pattern:

live in a fictional reality that illuminates our daily reality.

Porque los artistas no deben tener sólo ideas que expresar, sino ideas que demostrar. Expresar una idea, en el sentido de presentarla, nunca es suficiente. El público no debe únicamente entender; debe creer.

Given the choice between trivial material brilliantly told versus profound material badly told, an audience will always choose the trivial told brilliantly. Master storytellers know how to squeeze life out of the least of things, while poor storytellers reduce the profound to the banal.

When society repeatedly experiences glossy, hollowed-out, pseudo-stories, it degenerates. We need true satires and tragedies, dramas and comedies that shine a cean light into the dingy corners of the human psyche and society. If not, as Yeats warned, "...the centre can not hold.

All fine films, novels, and plays, through all shades of the comic and the tragic, entertain when they give the audience a fresh model of life empowered with an affective meaning.

Every host in Hollywood has made that mistake: "Let's invite some comedy writers to the party! That'll brighten things up." Sure… till the paramedics arrive.

La vida es conflicto. Ésa es su naturaleza. El escritor debe decidir dónde y cómo orquestar su lucha.

Mastery of craft frees the subconscious.

La escena no trata de lo que parece tratar en la escena. Trata de otra cosa.

Buscamos lo trágico en lo cómico, lo político en lo personal, lo personal que guía lo político, lo extraordinario detrás de lo usual, lo trivial en lo exaltado.

Sí yo fuera este personaje y en estas circunstancias nuevas, ¿qué haría?". Tras encontrar el camino hasta esa reacción y esa acción, volvemos a salir de ese punto de vista y preguntamos, "¿qué sería lo contrario?

La ignorancia es una estupidez temporal debida a una falta de información, mientras que la estupidez es decidida, independientemente de cuánta información se transmita.

Love relationships are political. An old Gypsy expression goes: "He who confesses first loses." The first person to say "I love you" has lost because the other, upon hearing it, immediately smiles a knowing smile, realizing that he's the one loved, so he now controls the relationship.

Story is metaphor for life.

in truth there's only one story. In essence we have told one another the same tale, one way or another, since the dawn of humanity, and that story could be usefully called the Quest. All stories take the form of a Quest.

Si se reduce el número de espectadores, también se debe reducir el presupuesto. Ésa es la ley.

They think life is A, B, C, D, E. That's just when life likes to turn you around, kick you in the butt, and grin: "Not today, my friend. Today it's E, D, C, B, A. Sorry." PRINCIPLE

an audience will always choose the trivial told brilliantly