Robert McKee’s enormous, exacting account of how stories work.

Drawn from his influential seminars, Story treats screenwriting as a craft governed by principles rather than formulas, repeatedly distinguishing genuine structure from the dead machinery of convention. It's a masterclass in how character, conflict, setting, genre, pacing and moral pressure combine to create narrative movement.

McKee explores how story must occupy a particular world because, setting is not background scenery but a field of influences that determine what can happen and what those events mean. His examples range widely across cinema, theatre and fiction—from Dr. Strangelove and Chinatown to Shakespeare, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky—making for a long argument about form, consequence and the architecture of change.

It is occasionally thunderous and doctrinaire—McKee did not build an international seminar empire through bashfulness—but it remains one of the foundational modern books on narrative craft. Best for screenwriters, novelists and anyone who wants to understand the hidden engineering beneath apparently effortless storytelling.

Methuen, 1998. Later printing of the first UK hardcover edition, with dust jacket. Light shelf wear; clean and sound overall.