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

The idea of Into the Woods is not to supplant works by Aristotle, Lajos Egri, Robert McKee, David Mamet, William Goldman, or any other writers of guides for screenwriters and playwrights, but to pick up on their cues and take the reader on a historical, philosophical, scientific, and psychological journey to the heart of storytelling's riddles. In this exciting and wholly original book, John Yorke shows that there truly is a unifying shape to narrative—one that echoes the great fairytale journey into the woods, and one, like any great art, that comes from deep within. With examples ranging from The Godfather to Glee , Mad Men to Macbeth , and fairy tales to Frost/Nixon, Yorke illustrates the dynamics of what he identifies as the five act essential structure to storytelling—in all narrative forms, from film and television to theatre and novel-writing—a big step from the usual three-act approach. Into the Woods: A Five Act Journey Into Story is destined to sit alongside David Mamet’s Three Uses of the Knife, William Goldman’s Adventures in the Screen Trade, Syd Field’s Screenplay, and Lajos Egri’s The Art of Dramatic Writing as one of the most original, useful, and inspiring books ever on dramatic writing.

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