Robert McKee

Robert McKee
Robert McKee at the Story Seminar given at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque, October 2005
Born	1941
Alma mater	University of Michigan
Occupation	Writer, professor

Robert McKee (born 1941) is a creative writing instructor who is widely known for his popular "Story Seminar", which he developed when he was a professor at the University of Southern California. McKee is the author of a "screenwriters' bible" called Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting. Online, McKee has a blog and a writers' resource website called "Storylogue".

McKee's "Story Seminar" runs twice yearly in New York City, Los Angeles, and London, and about once yearly in other major cities worldwide including Amsterdam, Beijing, Mumbai, Paris, and Rio de Janeiro. The seminar covers how story fits the human mind, from the philosophical to the structural. McKee's one-day "Genre Seminars", often held 5 days in a row, delve into the conventions of the Thriller, the Comedy, the Love Story, the Action Story, and Television.

Rather than simply handling "mechanical" aspects of fiction technique such as plot or dialogue taken individually, McKee examines the narrative structure of a work and what makes a story compelling or not. This could work equally as well as an analysis of any other genre or form of narrative, whether in screenplay or any other form, and could also encompass nonfiction works as long as they attempt to "tell a story".

After consulting on story-in-business for various multinational companies including Microsoft, Nike, Hewlett-Packard, Time Warner, and Siemens, in the fall of 2013 McKee launched a seminar for the business community in Los Angeles, New York, Beijing, and Malta. The "True Talk: Story-in-Business Seminar" instructs leaders and managers on how to use story in strategic management, brand management, and business communications.