Memo: Secrets of Creating Structure and Characters in a Script + Pocket, 2019

This book is the result of many years of work by Christopher Vogler and David McKenna. As professional experts, they have analyzed a total of more than 40,000 scripts of various genres. Vogler and McKenna view their joint work not only as a useful storytelling toolkit, but also as a “lifesaver” for both beginners and active writers. The book owes its title to the Memo manual, once written by Vogler for work in the script department and which has become a legendary guide for many generations of screenwriters. But this is only one of the many methods of analysis and work on the structure of the narrative and characters described in the book - from the characters of Theophrastus and the morphology of the fairy tale of the Russian philologist Vladimir Propp to the authorial methods of Vogler and McKenna themselves. The authors not only generously share their secrets and show how they are used using examples of successful films, but also provide practical advice and specific assignments for independent work for future screenwriters and writers after each chapter.