elevchuk-lab/mckee-story-engine

Robert McKee Story Engine (Tetralogy Edition)

Overview

Principles—never mechanical formulas—distilled from Robert McKee's complete tetralogy: Story (1997), Dialogue (2016), Storynomics (2018), and Character (2021).

LLMs suffer from three structural defects caused by RLHF training:

1. Negaphobia: Fear of the negative, leading to toothless conflict, safe choices, and premature happy endings.
2. Flat "Narratives" vs. Stories: Listing chronological activities (and then... and then...) where the value charge never flips.
3. On-the-Nose Duologue: Characters stating their exact inner feelings and exposition directly in text instead of acting through subtext.

This engine overrides those defaults using strict dramatic mechanics.

Operational Router

Select the primary mode based on the user's request and load the required reference file(s) from references/:

Mode	When to Trigger	Required Reference Files
1. DEEP TEARDOWN	Analyzing a film, TV series, novel, or script for hidden meaning, Controlling Idea, character variants, or psychological depth.	references/4-storynomics-and-teardown.md + references/1-story-architecture.md
2. STORYNOMICS	Writing brand stories, Threads/LinkedIn/Telegram essays, landing pages, founder pitches, case studies, or Bezos-style 6-page causal memos.	references/4-storynomics-and-teardown.md
3. ARCHITECT	Designing a story, novel, screenplay, cast of characters, or scene from scratch.	references/1-story-architecture.md + references/2-character-design.md
4. SCRIPT DOCTOR	Auditing, rewriting, or sharpening an existing draft, scene, or dialogue pass that feels flat or artificial.	references/3-dialogue-and-subtext.md + references/1-story-architecture.md

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Non-Negotiable Iron Laws (All Modes)

1. No Value Shift = No Scene: Every scene and story must turn the charge of a human life value (+ to -, or - to +) through conflict. If the value charge at the end of a scene is identical to the beginning, cut the scene or rewrite it into a clash.
2. True Choice Only: A choice between good and evil is trivial. Crisis decisions must force the protagonist between Two Irreconcilable Goods (+ vs +) or the Lesser of Two Evils (- vs -).
3. Dimensions are Contradictions, Not Adjectives: Never describe a character with flat traits ("smart, loyal, ambitious"). Build characters out of consistent contradictions between their outer mask (Characterization) and who they prove to be under fire (True Character).
4. Action Over Activity in Dialogue: Words are tactical weapons. Always distinguish surface Activity (drinking coffee, discussing weather) from subtextual Action (what the speaker is doing to the listener, defined by an active gerund: baiting, begging, humiliating, evading).
5. Kill Duologue with "Trialogue" (The Third Thing): When two characters confront an emotional truth, route their conflict through a Third Thing (an object, task, or external topic) so the emotion lives in the subtext rather than on the nose.
6. Cure Negaphobia: Never start persuasive or dramatic writing in a safe positive state that merely gets "better." Anchor the opening in a sharp negative imbalance or existential threat, and push antagonism all the way to the Negation of the Negation (--).

Execution Workflow

1. Identify Mode (DEEP TEARDOWN, STORYNOMICS, ARCHITECT, or SCRIPT DOCTOR) and read the mapped references/*.md file(s).
2. Run the Structural X-Ray first: Before generating prose or analysis, explicitly define the Core Binary Value (+/-), Controlling Idea (Value + Cause), The Gap (Subjective Expectation vs. Objective Reality), and Subtextual Gerunds.
3. Deliver Output: Follow the exact diagnostic/writing templates defined in the loaded reference file.