Robin Kelly at his blog Writing for Performance has this post with an interview that the folks at Creative Screenwriting conducted this week with screenwriting guru Robert McKee. Here are some highlights:

Q: Does a story always need to be believable? What makes it believable?

Robert McKee: Yes. The audience/reader must believe in the world of your story. Or, more precisely, in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s famous phrase, the audience/reader must willingly suspend its disbelief. This act allows the audience/reader to temporarily believe in your story world as if it were real. The magic of as if transports the reader/audience from their private world to your fictional world. Indeed, all the beautiful and satisfying effects of story – suspense and empathy, tears and laughter, meaning and emotion – are rooted in the great as if. But when audiences or readers cannot believe as if, when they argue with the authenticity of your tale, they break out of the telling. In one case people sit in a theatre, sullen with anger, soaked in boredom; in the other, they simply toss your novel in the trash. In both cases, audiences and readers bad mouth you and your writing, inflicting the obvious damage on your career.

Bear in mind, however, that believability does not mean actuality. The genres of non-realism, such as Fantasy, Sci-fi, Animation and the Musical, invent story worlds that could never actually exist. Instead, works such as THE PRINCESS BRIDE, THE MATRIX, FINDING NEMO and SOUTH PACIFIC create their own special versions of reality. No matter how bizarre some of these story worlds may be, they are internally true to themselves. Each story establishes its own one-of-a-kind rules for how things happen, its principles of time and space, of physical action and personal behaviour. This is true even for works of avant-garde, postmodern ambition that deliberately call attention to the artificiality of their art. No matter what your story’s unique fictional laws may be, once you establish them, the audience/reader will freely follow your telling as if it were real – so long as your laws of action and behaviour are never broken.

Therefore, the key to believability is unified internal consistency. Whatever the genre, no matter your story’s specific brand of realism or non-realism, your setting must be self-validating. You must give your story’s setting in time, place and society enough detail to satisfy the audience/reader’s natural curiosity about how things work in your world, and then your telling of the tale must stay true to its own rules of cause and effect. Once you have seduced the audience/reader into believing in the credibility of your story’s setting as if it were actuality, you must not violate your own rules. Never give the audience/reader a reason to question the truth of your events, nor to doubt the motivations of your characters.

Here McKee is talking about verisimilitude: Creating a story universe that feels authentic to the reader. It’s absolutely critical that the writer know all the ins-and-outs of the story world they create. Your words, your pages are a conduit to creating a sense of trust with the reader, that they believe in your knowledge and understanding of the world into which you’re drawing them. Any false step or note can not only disrupt the read, but also cause them to doubt your standing as the expert about your story world. So a great point by McKee. But the money quote is this one:

Q: What are the critical questions that a writer should be asking prior to crafting a story?

Robert McKee: Beyond imagination and insight, the most important component of talent is perseverance-the will to write and rewrite in pursuit of perfection. Therefore, when inspiration sparks the desire to write, the artist immediately asks: Is this idea so fascinating, so rich in possibility, that I want to spend months, perhaps years, of my life in pursuit of its fulfilment? Is this concept so exciting that I will get up each morning with the hunger to write? Will this inspiration compel me to sacrifice all of life’s other pleasures in my quest to perfect its telling? If the answer is no, find another idea. Talent and time are a writer’s only assets. Why give your life to an idea that’s not worth your life?

Why give your life to an idea that’s not worth your life? This statement may run the risk of coming off as hyperbole, but look at it this way. If you succeed breaking in as a screenwriter, the chances are pretty good that you will be offered many projects about which you are not passionate. And like most working screenwriters, you will take those assignments because you need the money. So right now — before you find yourself sucking on Hwood’s teat — is in some ways the best time of your writing life. Why?

Because you are free to write whatever the hell you want!

That being the case, now consider McKee’s comment. Why not choose to write something about which you feel intense passion? Or to bring in Joseph Campbell, as a writer, why not “follow your bliss?” Don’t you think it’s more likely you’ll draw deeply from your creative well-springs doing that rather than trying to write yet another variation of a body switch movie?

I generally don’t pimp screenwriting gurus, but I found McKee’s comments in the interview well worth reading. And after the main course of the interview, here’s a tasty dessert: A video excerpt from one of McKee’s famous seminars.

And here’s McKee as portrayed in Charlie Kaufman’s movie Adaptation.