Action
The Art of Excitement for Screen, Page, and Game
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
From the master of Story, Dialogue, and Character, ACTION offers writers the keys to propulsive storytelling.
ACTION explores the ways that a modern-day writer can successfully tell an action story that not only stands apart, but wins the war on clichés. Teaming up with the former co-host of The Story Toolkit, Bassim El-Wakil, legendary story lecturer Robert McKee guides writers to award-winning originality by deconstructing the action genre, illuminating the challenges, and, more importantly, demonstrating how to master the demands of plot with surprising beats of innovation and ingenuity.
Topics include:
Understanding the Four Core Elements of ActionCreating the Action CastHook, Hold, Pay Off: Design in ActionThe Action MacguffinAction Set PiecesThe Sixteen Action Subgenres
A must-add to the McKee storytelling library, ACTION illustrates the principles of narrative drive with precision and clarity by referencing the most popular action movies of our time including: Die Hard, The Star Wars Saga, Dark Knight, The Matrix, and Avengers: Endgame.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
McKee (Character: The Art of Role and Cast Design for Page, Stage, and Screen) and El-Wakil, former cohost of the podcast The Story Toolkit, lay out the essential elements for writing action in this granular guide. Here, action is defined as involving "a self-sacrificing hero against a self-obsessed villain in a story-long fight to thwart malevolence and rescue a hapless victim" or, more succinctly, as "the master metaphor for humanity's never-ending struggle of life versus death." The authors explain excitement as "the core emotion" of action (caused by the "simultaneity of risk and glee"), and enumerate the genre's components, such as an inciting incident (which "launches a story by shattering that sense of sovereignty") and the MacGuffin ("the thing that both hero and villain want"). They offer plenty of examples from pop culture: in dissecting the "mercy scene," for example, where a protagonist is seemingly at his weakest before turning the tables on his adversary, they invoke protagonist John McClane's use of humor and deception at the climax of Die Hard. While at times the book reads like a padded outline, it's a fine account of what beats writers ought to hit and which clichés to avoid. Newbies to the genre will welcome this straightforward introduction.
