Into The Woods: How Stories Work and Why We Tell Them

Yorke's book examines the standard structure of stories not just to show writers how to write but why humans, psychologically, require stories that are so structured. The current thinking is that all stories have three 'acts' (put simply: 'beginning', 'middle', 'end') although writers of old, for instance Shakespeare, used five. He examines the 'mirror' structure where events at the end faithfully reflect events that occurred in the reflexive position at the beginning. He then goes on demonstrate this tripartite structure is 'factal' being found in each act, sequence and even scene.First the god things: Yorke obviously understands his topic and is able to discuss it at length and in depth. His experience in TV scriptwriting shines through and his real life exmaples are ilutsrative and incitedful.On the minus side: He is verbose and feels quite opinionated. He will make a point; then again, and aagain, and again, almost as if constant repetition reinforces his poin. If this repetition were removed the book would be substantially shorter. At times the writing is obscure and obtuse and, althugh it was understandable it made the reading tougher. For a professional writer, I would have expected him to make his work clearer and more accessible. It was almost as if he wrote in a more 'erudite' style to give the work a gravitas it did not achieve.

It is marketed as being an alternative to other story template books, but while it might go into slightly more depth than most, it still makes key assumptions, and boils down to an oversimplified recipe for a story rather than anything deeper. Generalisations like 'every story is essentially about a protagonist who is thrust into strange world and made to adapt' (paraphrasing here but that's the gist) rub me up the wrong way as much as any generalisation in any other magic screenplay formula book.

This book is a deep dive into how stories are constructed. The author is a screenwriter who created memorable BBC series like “Life on Mars” and “Shameless”. He is also extremely knowledgeable regarding all kinds of stories spanning classic authors like Shakespeare and Dickens and modern TV drama from Easter Enders to The West Wing. The book is a dissection of story structure that takes the reader on a journey that begins with the well-known structure of Ancient Greek drama until the reader eventually realises that the same structures elements are also found in a fractal form in individual sciences in East Enders. The author convincingly argues that there is a universal form of narrative that underlies all good drama and that just naturally arises even when the writer is not consciously aware of it. The book concludes with a discussion of why this structure arises and what it may tell us about the nature of our thinking. The book is immensely insightful and made my view everything I read or watch with different eyes. Being more conscious about narrative structure also enriched my own writing. The detailed discussion of narrative structure is sometimes a bit technical. I read this book into several spurts and sometimes put it down because it was too much for bedtime reading after a long workday. I would highly recommend it though to anyone interested in getting a broader view of film, TV, literature, or human psychology.

I've had the fortunate chance to have John Yorke as a lecturer for one of my postgraduate modules. His teachings unlocked my novel and gave me all the tools I needed to push my story forward.I'm proud to say that John's lecture was the missing link I craved for, the switch I needed to flick in order to truly understand my personal approach to writing. This book completes that, and does much more.Though it can get repetitive at times, reiterating the same concepts over and over, Into The Woods never gets boring and it always delivers some interesting, new point of view on either 'seriality', story structure, screenwriting and creative writing in general. John's style is as simple and straightforward as it can get, and it breathes passion for writing from every line.Many snub structure, believing it drains the passion and love out of creative writing. John's book clearly testifies and demonstrates it doesn't. Matter of fact, structure can make you a stronger writer, inasmuch as you simply become more conscious of what you're actually doing.Into The Woods isn't a model and shouldn't be interpreted as such. But with all its minor flaws, it is a book worth picking up, if anything to read an enriching analysis of some of the best works of drama of the past 30-40 years.To an extent, this book can be great even to those readers who may be particularly curious about the way stories work. But I definitely recommend it to **any** writer on this planet.

Good read for anyone interested in story construction. I felt the first 2/3rds of the book were stronger content wise than the last third. Towards the end it felt lacking in content, as if the book was rehashing what had already been discussed unnecessarily. The book gives some good, clear, and concise summaries of story construction. How and why we apply order to stories. It also touches on television from Eastenders to Breaking Bad. I found this particularly useful as I work in the tv industry and it gave some interesting thoughts on how the same story telling methods vary between the likes of soaps to Hollywood blockbusters. Having read a couple of these story and script construction books I found this aspect unique to this book, even if a lot of the core ideas it discussed were similar to other books.

Some really stimulating ideas here that have helped me clarify the purpose of some characters and scenes in what I write. So, a useful read alongside writing. The last chaper/segment that deals with 'why' structures recur is a bit rambling, repetitious and lost (inconclusive?) but overall this is one of the most perceptive and precise books about structuring narrative that I've come across (with accessible egs albeit mostly male-centred). The outlining of archetypes, patterns and the woods metaphor are really thought provoking.