ME AND BOBBY MCKEE: My Awareness of Story Values and their Positive and Negative Charges ...

28 Pages·2012·0.15 MB·English

ME AND BOBBY MCKEE:
My Awareness of Story Values and their Positive and Negative Charges
Joel Phillips
Critical Paper & Program Bibliography
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the MFA (Master of Fine Arts) in
Creative Writing, Pacific University, August 2012
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Me and Bobby McKee: My Awareness of Story Values and their Positive and
Negative Charges
The Find
If there is anything that stands out as the most useful bit of
technique you can learn, this is it. Story Values.
-James Hudnall
Story Values and their positive and negative charges are principles in story craft
that all artists share no matter what creative mediums they are conveyed in. Becoming
aware of Story Value and their charges can be an enlightening moment that, once
understood, can help transform a writers unbalanced and ordinary work from structurally
flat to a balanced and extraordinary piece of art that can provoke powerful emotions
instantaneously.
My accidental introduction to Story Values and how they should charge
positive/negative in order to create true and soulful plot progression did not come from a
writing class, but from a cramped, overly pregnant used book store in Burbank,
California about six years ago.
I was a frequent customer of the store and had noticed a stack of identical books
placed perfectly to catch a customer’s eye when he/she walked in. I ignored the stack for
months until one day the books did not catch my eye but caught my knee, subsequently
knocking the five-foot book tower over. The large menacing owner lowered his reading
glasses, shook his head and stared while I fumbled to rebuild.
Feeling somewhat obligated to buy a book, I finally read the title: Story written
by Robert McKee. The subtitle inside read: Substance, Structure and the Principles of
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Screenwriting. While living in LA at the time and with a Creative Writing undergraduate
degree under my belt, I figured why not brush up on some story?
In fact, what got me into writing in the first place, was a story told by a geology
teacher while I was at a junior college five years earlier. It was a true tale about a man
who spent six solitary days on a rock in Wyoming. I was fascinated by the event and
couldn’t get it out of my mind. The next step was research. I didn’t know what I was
going to do with the research, but I was happily digging deep, finding what little there
was about the man on the rock. In the end, I could only secure three small articles of
information on the story written in obscure books about flight. After engrossing myself
in the material for a few days I stepped back and said, “This should be a movie.”
The next step was buying every book I could on how to write a screenplay. There
was How to Write a Script in 30 Days, Scriptwriting 451, How to Sell Your Script, Cut
the Crap and Write that Damn Screenplay, Save the Cat! The Last Book on
Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need and a host of other overnight screenwriting formulas.
I absorbed all the books and along with the research began saving the cat and
cutting the crap while outlining my Man on a Rock story for the big screen. Three
months later, not 30 days, I had 122 pages of a first draft that I was proud of. Of course,
I was proud until my first writing teacher at the same junior college, who happened to be
a struggling screenwriter himself, said, “Joel, No. Your ending will never work. It’s too
sad.”
I had no idea exactly what he was saying, but my instincts where to keep the
ending sad. It felt like it should be sad. He suggested happy endings, but I was confident
the sad ending was the right choice. All I could base my logic on was a feeling. There
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was nothing tangible, nothing I could wave in my teacher’s face to explain my reason
for the sad ending. None of the Cat and Crap screenwriting books explained why I
demanded the ending to remain sad.
After countless query letters Man on a Rock did land me an agent. I was ecstatic
and very naive at the thought of selling or even optioning the script. Ecstatic because it
was my first story I had written. Naïve because later I found out that Hollywood receives
hundreds and thousands of scripts a year from housewives in Westland, Michigan to
truck drivers in the Sahara desert. Yes, that’s ‘drivers’ plural.
In the end, I was promptly turned down by every studio and production company
in Los Angeles. When I did get notes back they were to the effect of, “Change the
ending and we might think about it.” Change the ending? Were they kidding? Here I
researched and toiled for a whopping three months! I told my agent that I liked the sad
ending and it was staying. Two days later he dropped me from his writers roster and I
felt I was as far away from Hollywood as the Sahara. I still had my sad ending, right?
But I still couldn’t figure out why it was truly sad? Or better yet, why it demanded to be
sad.
For a frame of reference, before I fast forward back to the strategically and
precariously placed book tower in Burbank, California, I did finish my two-year
Associates of Arts degree where I took every playwriting and creative writing class I
could. My first play, Dad went as far as the regional American College Theatre Festival
in the exciting cow town of La Grand, Oregon where a majority of the streets there were
still gravel. The year before La Grand the festival was held in big, beautiful Alaska and
the year following my Dad production in a picturesque ski resort in Utah, but hey, I’ve
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got a cool poster with my name on it that my ex fiancée had framed to remind me of the
good times.
Still inspired, I went on to a university where I studied English/Creative Writing.
I enrolled in every poetry, short story and playwriting course the college offered. The
school even unveiled a new screenwriting course for the first time while I was there.
Brimming with confidence because I once had an agent who fired me and a Hollywood
town who kicked me out, I was going to show up this screenwriting class by gracing
them with Man on a Rock. Of course it all went swimmingly well until the sad ending.
Now back to the used bookstore where I was leafing through Story. On page 17
Robert McKee says, “Values, the positive/negative charges of life, are at the soul of our
art.” Number one, the “soul of our art” sounded pretty dang important. Number two, I
didn’t know what he meant by values. Was he referring to personal, cultural, or moral
values? What about family values? And third, what did McKee mean by
positive/negative charges? Like a 9-volt battery? I remembered the first time placing a 9-
volt battery against my wet tongue and feeling that shocking sensation. I better buy this
book, I thought. Besides, by the firm look in the large owners steel eyes, I pretty much
had to buy it.
The first reading of Story was slow. And when a book for me is slow to read it
usually indicates it’s not for me and I trade it back in immediately. The whole idea of
values and positive/negative charging went over my head and I just wanted to know how
to rewrite a movie without the sad ending so I could make obscene amounts of
Hollywood cash. Then one day, a few months after I struggled to read it the first time, I
noticed Story sitting lonely on my personal book shelve and I thought, there’s something
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in there. Obviously I wasn’t in a hurry to trade it back in until I grew a beard and
purchased dark sunglasses.
On my second read I was armed. I had a brand new florescent glowing yellow
Sharpie! I was determined to highlight and find the “soul of our art.” Carefully and
slowly I reread while underlining passages that seemed important to me. For example,
McKee writes, “Story is about thoroughness, not shortcuts” (5). I thought, my quest for
Story Values and their charge would be about thorough reading. Later in the work
McKee says, “The protagonist must react to the Inciting Incident” (191). That was the
first I ever heard of Inciting Incident. He says, “The CONTROLLING IDEA may be
expressed in a single sentence describing how and why life undergoes change from one
condition of existence at the beginning to another at the end” (115).
I had no idea what a CONTROLLING IDEA was. Especially one in all CAPS!
McKee was full of new phrases and terms that I had never heard of. Even I, with two
degrees, as minor as they were, still wasn’t able to absorb McKee quite yet. I remember
thinking, why was this so tough to figure out? Even I, after thousands of dollars in
student loans to create a future writer, was this the first time I’ve heard about Inciting
Incidents, CONTROLLING IDEAS, and Story Values and their charging? This Bobby
McKee writes from a different world. No wonder there was a stack of his books at the
used bookstore in pristine condition. That is, pristine until I tipped them all over.
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Revelation
There are several kinds of possible reactions to the shadow. We can refuse to face it; or
once aware that it is part of us, we can try to eliminate it and set straight immediately;
we can refuse to accept responsibility for it and let it have its way; or we can “suffer” it
in a constructive manner, as part of our personality which can lead us to a salutary
humility and humanness and eventually to new insights and expanded life horizons.
-Edward C. Whitmont
Determined to understand Story Values I decided to go back and review
McKee’s first use of the word Value: A STORY EVENT creates meaningful change in
the life situation of a character that is expressed and experienced in terms of value (33).
Again, was he referring to personal, cultural, or moral values? I felt I had a
decent understanding of those types. Personal would be how I live my life right. Cultural
would be how I lived my life right in the eyes of others, and moral would be how I
completely messed up all the above. No. McKee wasn’t referring to my inane definition.
He said:
To make change meaningful you must express it, and the audience must
react to it, in terms of a value. By values I don’t mean virtues or the
narrow, moralizing “Family values” use of the word. Rather, Story
Values refers to the broadest sense of the idea. Values are the soul of
storytelling. Ultimately ours is the art of expressing to the world a
perception of values. (34)
I remember underling that passage and thinking, Hmmm. I’m going have to think
about that one. McKee does reference the words “soul” and “art” again but I was still
not seeing a clear definition. Maybe the Merriam-Webster dictionary had a definition.
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So I looked up the term “value” and it turned out Merriam-Webster had about seven
classifications for the word:
1: a fair return or equivalent in goods, services, or money for something exchanged
2: the monetary worth of something : market price
3: relative worth, utility, or importance
4: a numerical quantity that is assigned or is determined by calculation or measurement
5: the relative duration of a musical note
6: relative lightness or darkness of a color : luminosity b : the relation of one part in a
picture to another with respect to lightness and darkness
7: something (as a principle or quality) intrinsically valuable or desirable.
Number one on Webster’s list of Value definitions didn’t fit and I knew creative
writing had nothing to do with money, so number two and three were scratched off also.
Number four seemed warm because it did mention positive values, but I was sure
McKee wasn’t talking math. He even says, “Our subject is life, not arithmetic” (320) His
statement was music to my ears because I was terrible at math. The only reason I passed
the one math class required in junior college was because my professor came to see my
play Dad and asked in an astonished gesture, “You wrote this?” I nodded yes and two
days later I miraculously went from an “F+” to a “C-.”
Speaking of music, number five, concerning a musical note I dismissed
immediately because I couldn’t hold a tune. Number six about light and dark seemed
warmer because they were on opposite ends of the spectrum like positive and negative. I
really liked number seven because of the “principle or quality” phrase but then it
switched over to material values instead of human values.
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Again, I was left wondering what McKee meant by values. While scratching and
shaking my head for the longest time, all I had to do was read a little further down the
page. Remember, I said I was thoroughly and SLOWLY rereading. McKee says,
“STORY VALUES are the universal qualities of human experience that may shift from
positive to negative, or negative to positive, from one moment to the next” (34).
Okay. Now I was pretty sure I knew what story values were: “universal qualities
of human experience.” Short and to the point. I mean I have human experiences all the
time that can be universal. I got stuck in a traffic jam and was late for an important
meeting. Other humans have experienced that. It’s a very universal understanding. I was
once pulled over by a cop after having a few drinks and when he asked if I had been
drinking I said, “Nope.” Lying is human especially under stress. When it came to my
Man on a Rock; here was a guy who jumped out of an airplane in 1941 and parachuted
on top of Devils Tower National Monument. Unfortunately for him helicopters weren’t
available that year. Okay, not all of us have had the urge to jump from a plane at
150mph, but who hasn’t spent a little time on a rock thinking about their future?
McKee goes on later to say:
Life teaches that the measure of the value of any human desire is in direct
proportion to the risk involved in its pursuit. The higher the value, the
higher the risk. We give the ultimate values to those things that demand
the ultimate risk--our freedom, our lives, our souls. This imperative of
risk, however, is far more than an aesthetic principle, it’s rooted in the
deepest source of our art. (149)
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On the surface, in the examples I used above, there’s not much risk in my
missing a meeting or getting a DUI. Unless I was to add that the meeting was with the
President and I had to tell him in person the secret code to deactivate the nuclear
missiles that were accidentally aimed at Iowa. Or the cop who gave the DUI was drunk
himself and was going to use me as the one who ran over the police chief five minutes
before he pulled me over. Whatever the wild scenario a writer can create, I think McKee
has a valid point when it comes to the higher value equaling a higher risk. Before, I
would’ve been satisfied with not pushing the human element of higher risk. I was okay
with being late or somewhat fine with a DUI. But would those scenes truly touch the
universal human experience in story? Maybe. But surely not as much when you can
push high value/high risk to their fullest.
Recently I logged onto James Hudnall’s personal website where he posted a
small article entitled “Story Values.” James has been a professional writer of comics
since 1986. In his article he defines Story Values in the following way:
Story values are how you demonstrate character arcs. It’s how you
demonstrate change. It’s how you make a story seem like it squeezed the
last drop of passion out of the conflict. Story values are the levels a
conflict can pass through. They are the limits of human experience. You
need to take the Hero through all the levels of human experience to craft
a completely satisfying tale. Once you understand these levels, you can
then set the goals you need to meet by the story’s end. Values are the
points on a curve any given status or emotional state of being can take.
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