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Into the Woods: A Five-Act Journey Into Story Spiral-Bound | October 20, 2015

John Yorke

★★★★☆+ from 1,001 to 10,000 ratings

$22.38 - Free Shipping
The Revolutionary guide to dramatic writing, whether you’re writing the next Chinatown, Breaking Bad, or Glengarry Glen Ross.

In the exciting and wholly original Into the Woods: A Five-Act Journey Into Story, John Yorke not only shows that there is truly 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—he explains why, too.
 
“A marvelous analysis of screenwriting and, with any luck, should help a great many people achieve their dreams.” —Julian Fellowes, creator of Downton Abbey
 
With examples ranging from The Godfather to True Detective, Mad Men to Macbeth, and fairy tales to Forbrydelsen (The Killing), John Yorke utilizes Shakespearean five-act structure as a key to analyzing all storytelling in all narrative forms, from film and television to theatre and novel-writing—a big step from the usual three-act approach. Chapters here include:
  • Three-Act Structure
  • Five-Act Structure
  • The Importance of Change
  • How We Tell Stories
  • The Inciting Incident
  • Putting It All Together
  • Character and Characterization
  • Exposition
  • Subtext
  • And much more!
The idea of Into the Woods is not to supplant works by Aristotle, Lajos Egri, Robert McKee, David Mamet, 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 all storytelling.
 
Into the Woods is destined to sit alongside David Mamet’s Three Uses of the Knife, Robert McKee’s Story, 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.
 
“Brilliant on story structure.” —Ken Follett, New York Times bestselling author
Publisher: ABRAMS
Original Binding: Paperback
Pages: 336 pages
ISBN-10: 1468310941
Item Weight: 0.9 lbs
Dimensions: 6.2 x 1.2 x 9.0 inches
Customer Reviews: 4 out of 5 stars 1,001 to 10,000 ratings
“Into the Woods is brilliant. One of the best books on script writing out there...I loved the book. Inspiring.” - Dominic Mitchell, creator of In the Flesh
John Yorke is Managing Director of Angel Station where he works as a drama producer, consultant and lecturer on all forms of storytelling. A former MD of Company Pictures where he Exec Produced Wolf Hall, he's worked as both Head of Channel Four Drama and Controller of BBC Drama Production. As a commissioning Editor/Executive Producer, he championed Life On Mars, The Street, Shameless and Bodies and in 2005 he created the BBC Writers Academy, a year-long in-depth training scheme which has produced a generation of successful television writers. John is Visiting Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and lives and works in London.