 To talk about story design, I'd like to cite a piece of an interview with Robert McKee, as I said before, one of the most famous screenplay advisors worldwide. Obviously, movies are only one way, one medium to tell a story. Nevertheless, especially the classical storytelling of Hollywood feature films has deeply influenced storytelling in many countries worldwide. And not just that, as those movies and theories are influenced by poetic theories leading back to Aristotle, as I said before, understanding the structures of Hollywood classic cinema will also help comprehend structures in drama, literature and many more media. Asked to explain his term story design that he always uses, Robert McKee answered in an interview with Deborah Ekeling. An event comes along in life, we call the inciting incident. Either by choice, accident or both, life is thrown out of balance. That imbalance arouses in the protagonist a desire to put life back on an even keel. To do that, they conceive of something that they need, an object of desire, so to speak, that they feel would restore life's balance. It could be justice, it could be putting the bad guy in jail, or as in the film about Schmidt, it could be a reason for living. Whatever it is, they pursue that desire. The design of the story is built from that inciting incident when life went out of balance to the climax when balance is restored for better or worse. Events must be shaped in a progressive way to hold the emotional and intellectual interest of the audience for two hours without interruption and deliver them a satisfying experience. Exactly how that works, film to film story to story, is infinitely variable. The task of a good design is to hook, hold and pay off the audience's interest. If that works, then the story can be in one act or in ten acts, it can be monoplot or multiplot in any genre. The complete interview is available for free on StoryLink.com. Like with all the quotes we include in the lectures, the collected sources of each unit can be found below the video. Obviously, we can only give you a short peek into what's out there in the world of storytelling in a course with such a vast topic. Therefore, please use the lectures as inspirations and also invitations to dive deeper into what interests you most. The hook, hold and pay off of the recipient's attention and emotional interest mentioned by McKee are topics that will come up from time to time in this course, as it really concerns all kinds of stories, be it movies, TV series, transmedia or games. We will also have a look at how a hook, a hold and a pay off work in our next unit. What I want to do first is to introduce the model of the arc plot. The arc plot refers to the classical design of a story and has been called by many names, by nearly as many different authors and theorists over the last decades, centuries and even millenniums reaching back to Aristotle. This plot structure, which is a three act structure, tells the story of one or more protagonists, main characters, that have or develop a goal or desire early on in the story and go on a journey to reach it against all odds. On this journey, that can also be an inner journey, the protagonist has to fight inner and outer forces, nearly getting defeated at at least one point to finally make it to sad goal or object or person respectively of desire. This arc plot can be found in many, many of today's and past stories, no matter whether in film, literature or gaming. Yet, there are entirely different models, non-linear, fragmented pieces, like the anti-plot and the mini-plot that Robert McKee also describes. Introducing this model of the arc plot to you is meant to give you a chance to analyze and look at stories more closely and maybe discover these story structures here and there and understand how stories work. However, especially when it comes to screenwriting gurus like Sitfield or Robert McKee, and they are sometimes exact template on which screenplay page to end the first act or else, here's what I personally think. Use these structures, absorb what's out there already, and on the other hand, watch, read, experience as many stories as you can, doesn't matter if it's books, TV, whatsoever. But do not feel obliged to follow rules and advice given, even by this course. Many of the most creative works, like the movie Memento that I mentioned before, would not have been created if a writer like Christopher Nolan had only followed the rules. But if you, on the other hand, look at great artists, like for example the painters Picasso or Dali, most of them learned how to master already existing rules and perfect classical works first, before becoming famous for their revolutionary and innovative creations later in life. This is what I mean by discovering and shaping the future of storytelling, by looking at the past and the present. Before you start the next video lecture, please watch the videos Josh Turnbull, sign him up, and the Doc vs Frisbee video first, which are linked and included underneath the upcoming second unit.