“For what is story? The idea of story is like the idea of music. We’ve heard tunes all our lives. We can dance and sing along. We think we understand music until we try to compose it and what comes out of the piano scares the cat.”
- Robert McKee. Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principals of Screenwriting. ReganBooks: New York, 1997. pg 19
What a great quote. It made me laugh.
Not everyone who likes music can play or compose it. And here McKee seems to say that not everyone can write a story either. Perhaps he is correct. But I believe that we are all in a large story and can, in effect, help steers its course. Our stories are tangled together and form one huge narrative, kind of like the story lines within the film Pulp Fiction.
But I think McKee is definitely correct when he says that we only think we understand story. There is so much more to it that we don’t know. That is why I am exploring this topic in such detail. I want to get at the truth of Story and help to prove that the universe and everything in it is composed of Story.
Photo by: Nikki Allenberg, Sarver, Pennsylvania
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