OK, it must be that almost every blog of recent days would have included something on the tragic events in the US with the death of MJ. No doubt he will be added to the US’s collection of iconic artists dying well before their time MM, EP, JD etc all of whom added colour to a world that is too often bathed in gloom. Long may all artists be praised for bringing us the light that they carry.Now does the week end on Saturday or Sunday? For the purposes of this blog the week ends today with yet another review, this time a book - Story by Robert McKee. Robert McKee is regarded as a scriptwriter’s guru and I’ve been reading Story as part of my Creative Writing refresher course (which by the way is now finished). Yesterday I finally got through the 419 pages. So what did I make of it? Well, from my point of view some 250 pages are devoted to showing writers how smart and academic Robert McKee is, perhaps there are 150 pages of useful insights and the remaining 19 pages are real gems. The main problem I had, with this so-called standard work on the subject, is the dogmatic approach he has adopted. In every sense his very methodologist approach is “do as I say, or your work will be sh*t!” rather than “this method works for many great writers”. This is particularly so with chapter 19 “A Writer’s Method” where writers are instructed to adopt a particular working strategy. If his formulae were really so foolproof then one is left wondering why there are no great movies (check IMDb here) carrying his scriptwriting credit? Having said all this I would still recommend reading Story for the insights and gems. Remember as you read that some chefs can produce a brilliant meal without using either weighing scales or a recipe book, others are very methodical, whilst others still are adaptive; measuring when needed trusting to personal judgement elsewhere. So read lots of instruction works, lots of scripts, attend courses but determine and select what works for you. There is no magic bullet (in my view of course, but you may know better?!) to becoming a success as a writer, particularly given the degree of pure chance involved, but continually putting off or delaying the writing of that first feature length script is the best way to ensure failure (in my book at least!).
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