After Taking Robert McKee’s "Story" Seminar I Discovered My Own Error
It's about the limits of the term "genre"
Last week I travelled to New York City to take part in Robert McKee’s penultimate “Story” Seminar.
“Out West they call me the Hollywood Script Doctor
…but I don’t like that.
I’m just a writer.”
That’s how Robert McKee introduced himself, from his perch on a wooden swivel chair on a stage, next to a music stand that held the notes he barely glanced at, for all three days, which began at 9am and concluded at 6:30pm.
McKee speaks with a dry tone, slightly gruff: ”I swear because I like to.” And scolding: “You owe me $20 bucks if your phone rings…turn the damn things off.”
But then also tosses in personal stories, juicy bits of Hollywood insider gossip, backed by an encyclopedic knowledge of film, actors, producers, writers and everything in between.
At the end of three full days, more than 24 hours of lecture, he concluded with his final thoughts about the film Casablanca, which we watched over the course of about six hours, to allow for analysis, discussion and re-watching.
Aside from masterful screenwriting, perfect acting, and a musical score for the ages…aside from all that, McKee concludes, Casablanca is a film about the difference between romantic love, and true love.
”If you can learn the difference between romance and true love…
you can have both…
I wish that for all of you.
And if you get it, do something good with it.”
These were the concluding words of his seminar, delivered standing, from center stage. The entire audience jumped to their feet, many of us moping our eyes.
Mckee says this will be his last tour, after some 400 sessions delivered, all over the world, over the last few decades. He delivered the first of the last sessions in LA earlier this October. As he coughed every six words, he explained that he caught Covid while he was in LA, but kept going. My eyes bulged: At 81 years old, he’s teaching through Covid. Wow, just wow.
New York was last week, London is in early November, and then these seminars will live on the Internet. Maybe he has decided to slow down a beat? Having witnessed his irascible energy, it seems unlikely he’s heading for a quiet retirement.
McKee opened the seminar with some expectations:
“I’m not here to teach you how to write.
I’m here to teach you what a story is,
so that you can successfully re-write.”
Like others that I met, people who flew in from Europe, Australia and Canada, my goal was not there to discover the “secret formula” of how to write a successful screenplay.
I was there for a more general purpose: To hone my understanding, and deepen my understanding of these crucial, central, and life-long questions:
What’s a good story?
How can you tell… if it’s good, or just ok?
When do you know it’s working?
How to tell if it’s broken?
Sure, many of us can answer these questions by rote…it’s the work of all the gerunds we variously undertake: writing, producing, editing and creating.
But what’s really, really good?
How do you make it go from good, to better…to best?
What are the traps that produce cliché?
How do you (maybe just maybe) fix even just one problem?
When I sat down to make my first narrative podcast
About an emotional odyssey to the end of the world, I was frozen. Fully crippled under the weight of 100 hours of tape, fabulously confused about where to begin, deeply unsure about how to shape it all, and completely unsure which of the six meaningful endings to choose from.
It was my own Evolution Plot, a sort of coming-of-age story, as much as it was the story of those I was embedded with. I was too deep inside this story and I knew I needed to pull it apart; I just couldn’t figure out how.
In a moment when I felt deeply confused about how to, or where to, or when to begin, I met someone who gave me a prescient suggestion:
Why didn’t I study screenwriting?
What a great way to procrastinate, I thought at first, but still feel productive.
For two entire months, I read books, studied diagrams, listened to how-to seminars and books…and then I sat with a giant stack of coloured sticky notes and began to map out scenes and beats to fit the structure.
Eventually, I realized that this was much more than procrastination. Employing a screenwriting structure was an incredible tool. Slowly, I began to sketch out a system, sort of like a Lego diagram, of what my story arc would be.
McKee reminds:
There are no formulas to screenwriting.
There is no magic solution.
But there are Universal Forms,
and you can use them for a good story,
that’s well told.
Genre is how we classify, categorize and term a millennium of stories so that we can parse one from the other, at a glance.
Halfway through the first day, McKee began to explain his theory that there are 16 Principle Genres, divided into two categories:
10 Plots of Fortune
Action
Horror
Crime
Love
Domestic Genre
War
Social Genre
Political Genre
Modern Epic
Enterprise Genre
6 Plots of Character
Redemption/Morality Plot
Degeneration Plot
Education Plot
Disillusionment Plot (optimism to fatalism)
Evolution Plot, aka coming-of-age story
Devolution Plot (positive to negative)
Each of these genres has an entire value system that goes along with it
Each genre has multiple variations, but the conventions are more or less fixed. They each have a core value, a core event, a core emotion and a core cast (ie which characters must be in a story to function inside that particular genre).
As he explains this from the stage, his voice bordering on shouting to convey the veracity of his belief, my heart began to sink.
I remembered my first newsletter, the Introduction to Bingeworthy, when I described my core value of commitment to narrative podcasts, because, as I said,
“I want the same thing for narrative podcasts that indie films, installation art, and pickle ball all have…
I want them to became a *thing.*
I’m sure I wrote five completely different versions of the introduction post. Finding the right language, that was descriptive and catchy, but also accurate, was tough.
When I ran out of brain space to try and define narrative podcasts as something, as a term, something that everyone recognizes without needing to define it with a 500-word article, I dropped the IQ of the word down three stops, and used the word “thing.”
It was a tight spot: How do you explain what narrative podcasts are, and why they’re different from other (equally great) podcast productions?
As I sat there listening to his lecture, I grew more nervous….had I used the term “genre” incorrectly? Had I thrown around this weighted age-old term with a youthful exuberance?
During the break, I frantically booted up my phone to go back to the original post to double-check myself.
It started out on a good foot. I described the playlist that I had created, a grouping of narrative podcasts, that I feel are where it all began:
Put them together and they are what I consider to be the Foundational Building Blocks for what I see as the newest publication genre to emerge: narrative storytelling podcasts.
But then as the post goes on, as I try to build my case for taking this endeavour seriously, I did do it.
I committed the WORST sin possible when it comes to explaining “genre.” It was like I had the ball in my hands on a breakaway to score the winning goal.
When you ask yourself: How did the world begin to learn about pickleball? You realize it’s because when people started talking about, sharing it, organizing tournaments about it, printing team t-shirts…and having fun with it.
I want the same thing for narrative podcasts.
For the world to begin to appreciate them, and understand them, for what they are:
A genre within and unto itself.
I would now like to take this time to redact what I previously said.
I don’t need to take it all away…there are parts in there to keep. Narrative podcasts are not a genre….but they are not not a genre, specifically speaking. They aren’t just a technology, or only a means of distribution. The whole purpose of this newsletter is to help create emphasis on this distinct corner of the podcast universe. Removing all signposts that connect “genre” to narrative podcasting is perhaps the wrong direction.
But I would like to make something EXTRA clear…after studying with Robert McKee…I am reminded that clarity of terms is, actually, very important.
Narrative Podcasts are NOT a genre, within, or unto itself.
They are not going up on the leaderboard, next to Comedy, Love Story, Devolution Plot, etc. Not now. Not ever.
Narrative podcasts are, however, a form. They are a method, a platform, a conduit, from which a story genre can be told. And I would assert that they are in the process of making their way into the world as their own…thing…there’s that word again.
But it’s here that I want to draw the distinction between podcasting as a platform where all sorts of story forms are published (from interviews, to news, to true crime reveals) AND narrative podcasting, which is a method of audio storytelling, not unlike a soap opera, a documentary, a mockumentary, an indie film…and actually quite similar to the old time radio “serials” were told at the turn of the last century.
What I DID call them, initially… is a new “Publication Genre.” This is similar to the term that Robert McKee uses, a “Presentation Genre,” and that works even if it’s imperfect. But it also requires further explanation.
But when you look at the podcasts that I share here, they are actually more than *just* a publication genre, or a presentation of a story (told to you through a speaker, likely connected to your smartphone, as opposed to a television, or a radio).
What I’m trying to say is that narrative podcasts are different, in form, and in content, from other podcasts. Smartless is nothing like Serial. WTF with Marc Maron shares few connections with Shameless Acquisition Target…I love The Daily, but it’s entirely different from Mother Country Radicals.
Narrative podcasts are not just a method of delivery…they are also delivering the story in a different way. In the parlance of my late grandmother, narrative podcasts are Ever Different.
It was lazy of me to use the term genre alone
It’s always tempting to drop the word adjacent to the term that you’re really speaking about. Genre is known and interesting…adding descriptive terms next to a twenty-dollar word like “genre” is…less interesting.
Why did I drop it? It’s convenient. It sounds better. It markets better. It gets better SEO.
So let’s round this multi-sided figure to come full circle with my learning from last week, and my look into the future:
Narrative podcasts can be told using ANY genre…comedy, education, action, devolution…and I want to drive attention and curiosity with Bingeworthy so that they are doing this in unique and interesting ways….all towards creating a new Presentational Genre….narrative podcasts.
And if we pay some attention to it, if we call it out and talk about it (maybe even get team shirts?) these facts just might become more true.
As this newsletter grows, I aspire to find examples of each of the different genres as this newsletter gets going…so please, drop your suggestions in the comments below (serialized stories only please).
NEXT WEEK … as we get ready for Bingeworthy #3, I’m excited to share the next narrative podcast that we’ll dive into Vaccine: The Human Story
It’s the story of people, struggling, and hoping,
and against all the odds, triumphing.
Meticulously researched by Dr Annie Kelly, a social scientist who researches antifeminism and conspiracy theories, she begins with the sociological question:
What the roots are of the current anti-vaccine movement?
The answer, of course, is much more complex than you would first think, and it will take you back thousands of years.
Find it on Apple:
And on Spotify: