Storytelling That Moves People:A Conversation with ScreenwritingCoach Robert McKee

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June 2003

Copyright 2003 by Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved. 5

ersuasion is the centerpieceof business activity. Customers must be convinced to buy your

companys products or services, em-ployees and colleagues to go along witha new strategic plan or reorganization,investors to buy (or not to sell) yourstock, and partners to sign the next deal.But despite the critical importance ofpersuasion, most executives struggle to communicate, let alone inspire. Toooften, they get lost in the accoutrementsof companyspeak: PowerPoint slides,dry memos, and hyperbolic missivesfrom the corporate communications department. Even the most carefully researched and considered efforts areroutinely greeted with cynicism, lassi-tude, or outright dismissal.

Why is persuasion so difficult, andwhat can you do to set people on fire? Insearch of answers to those questions,HBR senior editor Bronwyn Fryer paid

a visit to Robert McKee, the worlds best-known and most respected screenwrit-ing lecturer, at his home in Los Angeles.An award-winning writer and director,McKee moved to California after study-ing for his Ph.D. in cinema arts at theUniversity of Michigan. He then taughtat the University of Southern Califor-nias School of Cinema and Televisionbefore forming his own company, Two-Arts, to take his lectures on the art ofstorytelling worldwide to an audienceof writers, directors, producers, actors,and entertainment executives.

McKees students have written, di-rected, and produced hundreds of hitfilms, including Forrest Gump,Erin Brock-ovich, The Color Purple, Gandhi, MontyPython and the Holy Grail, Sleepless inSeattle, Toy Story, and Nixon. They havewon 18 Academy Awards, 109 EmmyAwards, 19 Writers Guild Awards, and16 Directors Guild of America Awards.

Forget about PowerPoint

and statistics. To involve

people at the deepest

level, you need stories.

Hollywoods top writing

consultant reveals the

secrets of telling them.

D I F F E R E N T V O I C E

StorytellingThat Moves People

A Conversation with Screenwriting Coach

Robert McKee

P

Emmy Award winner Brian Cox por-trays McKee in the 2002 film Adapta-tion, which follows the life of a screen-writer trying to adapt the book The Orchid Thief. McKee also serves as aproject consultant to film and televisionproduction companies such as Disney,Pixar, and Paramount as well as majorcorporations, including Microsoft,whichregularly send their entire creative staffsto his lectures.

McKee believes that executives canengage listeners on a whole new level ifthey toss their PowerPoint slides andlearn to tell good stories instead. In hisbest-selling book Story: Substance, Struc-ture, Style, and the Principles of Screen-writing, published in 1997 by Harper-Collins, McKee argues that stories fulfilla profound human need to grasp thepatterns of living not merely as an in-tellectual exercise, but within a very per-sonal, emotional experience. What fol-lows is an edited and abridged transcriptof McKees conversation with HBR.

Why should a CEO or a manager pay

attention to a screenwriter?

A big part of a CEOs job is to motivatepeople to reach certain goals. To do that,he or she must engage their emotions,and the key to their hearts is story.There are two ways to persuade people.The first is by using conventional rhet-oric, which is what most executives aretrained in. Its an intellectual process,and in the business world it usually con-sists of a PowerPoint slide presentationin which you say,Here is our companysbiggest challenge, and here is what weneed to do to prosper. And you buildyour case by giving statistics and factsand quotes from authorities. But thereare two problems with rhetoric. First,the people youre talking to have theirown set of authorities, statistics, and ex-periences. While youre trying to per-suade them, they are arguing with youin their heads. Second, if you do succeedin persuading them, youve done so onlyon an intellectual basis. Thats not goodenough, because people are not inspiredto act by reason alone.

The other way to persuade people and ultimately a much more powerful

wayis by uniting an idea with an emo-tion. The best way to do that is by tellinga compelling story. In a story, you notonly weave a lot of information into the telling but you also arouse your lis-teners emotions and energy. Persuad-ing with a story is hard. Any intelligentperson can sit down and make lists. Ittakes rationality but little creativity todesign an argument using conventionalrhetoric. But it demands vivid insightand storytelling skill to present an ideathat packs enough emotional power tobe memorable. If you can harness imag-ination and the principles of a well-toldstory, then you get people rising to theirfeet amid thunderous applause insteadof yawning and ignoring you.

So, what is a story?

Essentially, a story expresses how andwhy life changes. It begins with a situ-ation in which life is relatively in bal-ance: You come to work day after day,week after week, and everythings fine.You expect it will go on that way. Butthen theres an eventin screenwriting,we call it the inciting incident thatthrows life out of balance. You get a newjob, or the boss dies of a heart attack, ora big customer threatens to leave. Thestory goes on to describe how, in an ef-fort to restore balance, the protagonistssubjective expectations crash into an uncooperative objective reality. A goodstoryteller describes what its like to dealwith these opposing forces, calling onthe protagonist to dig deeper, work withscarce resources, make difficult deci-sions, take action despite risks, and ul-timately discover the truth. All great storytellers since the dawn of time from the ancient Greeks through Shake-speare and up to the present dayhavedealt with this fundamental conflict be-tween subjective expectation and cruelreality.

How would an executive learn to

tell stories?

Stories have been implanted in youthousands of times since your mothertook you on her knee. Youve read goodbooks, seen movies, attended plays.Whats more, human beings naturally

want to work through stories. Cognitivepsychologists describe how the humanmind, in its attempt to understand andremember, assembles the bits and piecesof experience into a story, beginningwith a personal desire, a life objective,and then portraying the struggle againstthe forces that block that desire. Storiesare how we remember; we tend to for-get lists and bullet points.

Businesspeople not only have to un-derstand their companiespast, but thenthey must project the future. And howdo you imagine the future? As a story.You create scenarios in your head ofpossible future events to try to antici-pate the life of your company or yourown personal life. So, if a businesspersonunderstands that his or her own mindnaturally wants to frame experience ina story, the key to moving an audienceis not to resist this impulse but to em-brace it by telling a good story.

What makes a good story?

You emphatically do not want to tell abeginning-to-end tale describing howresults meet expectations. This is bor-ing and banal. Instead, you want to dis-play the struggle between expectationand reality in all its nastiness.

For example, lets imagine the story ofa biotech start-up well call Chemcorp,whose CEO has to persuade some WallStreet bankers to invest in the company.He could tell them that Chemcorp hasdiscovered a chemical compound thatprevents heart attacks and offer up a lotof slides showing them the size of themarket, the business plan, the organiza-tional chart, and so on. The bankerswould nod politely and stifle yawnswhile thinking of all the other compa-nies better positioned in Chemcorpsmarket.

Alternatively, the CEO could turn hispitch into a story, beginning with some-one close to him say, his father whodied of a heart attack. So nature itself is the first antagonist that the CEO-as-protagonist must overcome. The storymight unfold like this: In his grief, he realizes that if there had been somechemical indication of heart disease, hisfathers death could have been pre-

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D I F F E R E N T V O I C E Storytel l ing That Moves People

vented. His company discovers a pro-tein thats present in the blood just be-fore heart attacks and develops an easy-to-administer, low-cost test.

But now it faces a new antagonist: theFDA. The approval process is fraughtwith risks and dangers. The FDA turnsdown the first application, but new re-search reveals that the test performseven better than anyone had expected,so the agency approves a second appli-cation. Meanwhile, Chemcorp is run-ning out of money, and a key partnerdrops out and goes off to start his owncompany. Now Chemcorp is in a fight-to-the-finish patent race.

This accumulation of antagonists cre-ates great suspense. The protagonist hasraised the idea in the bankers headsthat the story might not have a happyending. By now, he has them on theedges of their seats, and he says, Wewon the race, we got the patent, were

poised to go public and save a quarter-million lives a year. And the bankersjust throw money at him.

Arent you really talking about

exaggeration and manipulation?

No. Although businesspeople are oftensuspicious of stories for the reasons yousuggest, the fact is that statistics are usedto tell lies and damn lies, while account-ing reports are often BS in a ball gownwitness Enron and WorldCom.

When people ask me to help themturn their presentations into stories, Ibegin by asking questions. I kind of psy-choanalyze their companies, and amaz-ing dramas pour out. But most compa-nies and executives sweep the dirtylaundry, the difficulties, the antagonists,and the struggle under the carpet. Theyprefer to present a rosy and boring picture to the world. But as a storyteller,you want to position the problems inthe foreground and then show howyouve overcome them. When you tell

the story of your struggles against realantagonists, your audience sees you as an exciting, dynamic person. And I know that the storytelling methodworks, because after I consulted with a dozen corporations whose principalstold exciting stories to Wall Street, theyall got their money.

Whats wrong with painting a positive

picture?

It doesnt ring true. You can send out a press release talking about increasedsales and a bright future, but your audi-ence knows its never that easy. Theyknow youre not spotless; they knowyour competitor doesnt wear a blackhat. They know youve slanted yourstatement to make your company lookgood. Positive, hypothetical picturesand boilerplate press releases actuallywork against you because they fomentdistrust among the people youre trying

to convince. I suspect that most CEOs do not believe their own spin doctors and if they dont believe the hype, whyshould the public?

The great irony of existence is thatwhat makes life worth living does notcome from the rosy side. We would allrather be lotus-eaters, but life will notallow it. The energy to live comes fromthe dark side. It comes from everythingthat makes us suffer. As we struggleagainst these negative powers, wereforced to live more deeply, more fully.

So acknowledging this dark side makes

you more convincing?

Of course. Because youre more truthful.One of the principles of good story-telling is the understanding that we alllive in dread. Fear is when you dontknow whats going to happen. Dread iswhen you know whats going to happenand theres nothing you can do to stopit. Death is the great dread; we all live inan ever shrinking shadow of time, and

between now and then all kinds of badthings could happen.

Most of us repress this dread. We getrid of it by inflicting it on other peoplethrough sarcasm, cheating, abuse, indif-ference cruelties great and small. Weall commit those little evils that relievethe pressure and make us feel better.Then we rationalize our bad behaviorand convince ourselves were good peo-ple. Institutions do the same thing: Theydeny the existence of the negative whileinflicting their dread on other institu-tions or their employees.

If youre a realist, you know that thisis human nature; in fact, you realize thatthis behavior is the foundation of all nature. The imperative in nature is tofollow the golden rule of survival: Dounto others what they do unto you. Innature, if you offer cooperation and getcooperation back, you get along. But ifyou offer cooperation and get antago-nism back, then you give antagonism inreturn in spades.

Ever since human beings sat aroundthe fire in caves, weve told stories tohelp us deal with the dread of life andthe struggle to survive. All great storiesilluminate the dark side. Im not talkingabout so-called pure evil, becausethere is no such thing. We are all eviland good, and these sides do continualbattle. Kenneth Lay says wiping out peo-ples jobs and life savings was uninten-tional. Hannibal Lecter is witty, charm-ing, and brilliant, and he eats peopleslivers. Audiences appreciate the truth-fulness of a storyteller who acknowl-edges the dark side of human beingsand deals honestly with antagonisticevents. The story engenders a positivebut realistic energy in the people whohear it.

Does this mean you have to be

a pessimist?

Its not a question of whether youre optimistic or pessimistic. It seems to methat the civilized human being is a skep-tic someone who believes nothing atface value. Skepticism is another princi-ple of the storyteller. The skeptic un-derstands the difference between textand subtext and always seeks whats

june 2003 7

Storytel l ing That Moves People D I F F E R E N T V O I C E

If you can harness imagination and the principles of a

well-told story, then you get people rising to their feet amid

thunderous applause instead of yawning and ignoring you.

immigrant whod suffered a terriblehead injury on a carmakers assemblyline. Hed been the fastest window as-sembler on the line and took great pridein his work. When I spoke to him, he waswaiting to have a titanium plate in-serted into his head.

The man had been grievously injured,but the company thought he was afraud. In spite of that, he remained in-credibly dedicated. All he wanted was toget back to work. He knew the value ofwork, no matter how repetitive. He tookpride in it and even in the company thathad falsely accused him. How wonder-ful it would have been for the CEO ofthat car company to tell the tale of howhis managers recognized the falseness of their accusation and then rewardedthe employee for his dedication. Thecompany, in turn, would have been re-warded with redoubled effort from allthe employees who heard that story.

How do storytellers discover and

unearth the stories that want to be told?

The storyteller discovers a story by ask-ing certain key questions. First, whatdoes my protagonist want in order to restore balance in his or her life? Desireis the blood of a story. Desire is not ashopping list but a core need that, if sat-isfied, would stop the story in its tracks.Next, what is keeping my protagonistfrom achieving his or her desire? Forceswithin? Doubt? Fear? Confusion? Per-sonal conflicts with friends, family, lov-ers? Social conflicts arising in the var-ious institutions in society? Physicalconflicts? The forces of Mother Nature?Lethal diseases in the air? Not enoughtime to get things done? The damnedautomobile that wont start? Antago-nists come from people, society, time,space, and every object in it, or any com-bination of these forces at once. Then,how would my protagonist decide to actin order to achieve his or her desire inthe face of these antagonistic forces? Itsin the answer to that question that story-tellers discover the truth of their char-acters, because the heart of a humanbeing is revealed in the choices he orshe makes under pressure. Finally, the

storyteller leans back from the design ofevents he or she has created and asks,Do I believe this? Is it neither an exag-geration nor a soft-soaping of the strug-gle? Is this an honest telling, thoughheaven may fall?

Does being a good storyteller make

you a good leader?

Not necessarily, but if you understandthe principles of storytelling, you prob-ably have a good understanding of your-self and of human nature, and that tiltsthe odds in your favor. I can teach theformal principles of stories, but not to a person who hasnt really lived. The artof storytelling takes intelligence, but italso demands a life experience that Ivenoted in gifted film directors: the pain ofchildhood. Childhood trauma forcesyou into a kind of mild schizophreniathat makes you see life simultaneouslyin two ways: First, its direct, real-timeexperience, but at the same moment,your brain records it as materialmate-rial out of which you will create busi-ness ideas, science, or art. Like a double-edged knife, the creative mind cuts tothe truth of self and the humanity ofothers.

Self-knowledge is the root of all greatstorytelling. A storyteller creates allcharacters from the self by asking thequestion, If I were this character inthese circumstances, what would I do?The more you understand your ownhumanity, the more you can appreci-ate the humanity of others in all theirgood-versus-evil struggles. I would arguethat the great leaders Jim Collins de-scribes are people with enormous self-knowledge. They have self-insight andself-respect balanced by skepticism.Great storytellers and, I suspect, greatleaders are skeptics who understandtheir own masks as well as the masks oflife, and this understanding makes themhumble. They see the humanity in oth-ers and deal with them in a compas-sionate yet realistic way. That dualitymakes for a wonderful leader.

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really going on. The skeptic hunts forthe truth beneath the surface of life,knowing that the real thoughts and feel-ings of institutions or individuals are unconscious and unexpressed. The skep-tic is always looking behind the mask.Street kids, for example, with their tat-toos, piercings, chains, and leather, wearamazing masks, but the skeptic knowsthe mask is only a persona. Inside any-one working that hard to look fierce is a marshmallow. Genuinely hard peoplemake no effort.

So, a story that embraces darkness

produces a positive energy in listeners?

Absolutely. We follow people in whomwe believe. The best leaders Ive dealtwith producers and directors havecome to terms with dark reality. Insteadof communicating via spin doctors, theylead their actors and crews through theantagonism of a world in which the oddsof getting the film made, distributed,and sold to millions of moviegoers are a thousand to one. They appreciate thatthe people who work for them love thework and live for the small triumphs thatcontribute to the final triumph.

CEOs, likewise, have to sit at the headof the table or in front of the micro-phone and navigate their companiesthrough the storms of bad economiesand tough competition. If you look youraudience in the eye, lay out your reallyscary challenges, and say,Well be luckyas hell if we get through this, but hereswhat I think we should do,they will lis-ten to you.

To get people behind you, you can tella truthful story. The story of GeneralElectric is wonderful and has nothingto do with Jack Welchs cult of celebrity.If you have a grand view of life, you cansee it on all its complex levels and cele-brate it in a story. A great CEO is some-one who has come to terms with his orher own mortality and, as a result, hascompassion for others. This compassionis expressed in stories.

Take the love of work, for example.Years ago,when I was in graduate school,I worked as an insurance fraud investi-gator. The claimant in one case was an

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D I F F E R E N T V O I C E Storytel l ing That Moves People