Some writers worship at the altar of script structure, toiling over their inciting incidents and midpoints, while others go out of their way to shun that kind of thing. The latter bunch often worry that overly prescriptive structural tenets will limit their creativity and reduce their work to formulaic pap.
John Yorke has written a book which makes a great case for the whole Structure Vs No Structure debate being based on a false dichotomy. We all, John argues, end up adhering to fundamental, ingrained story principles, whether we consciously do so or not. The man's an expert on this stuff, being the Managing Director of Company Pictures and the former Head of Channel 4 Drama and Controller of BBC Drama Production. He also founded the BBC Writers' Academy in 2005, where he gained something of a reputation for being a story structure evangelist.
Into The Woods: A Five Act Journey Into Story, the new Penguin book, suggests that John's reputation is far from the whole story. While he is clearly fascinated - okay, obsessed - by what makes stories work and the underlying patterns which unite them, he doesn't insist that you have to do X on Page Y. He's certainly not one of
those gurus. He does argue, as I said, that certain story shapes are inevitable, but as his introduction states, "It's important to assert that writers don't need to understand structure. Many of the best have an uncanny ability to access story shape unconsciously, for it lies as much within their minds as it does in a nine-year-old's. This isn't a book advocating its conscious use. Its aim is to explore and examine narrative shape, ask how and why it exists..."
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| John Yorke, yesterday |
What follows is fascinating and might well blow your mind. John's thoughts about the writer's instinct are very much in tune with my own: the more story we absorb and the more story we create, the wiser and more informed our judgement calls become. The good news is that storytelling instincts are arguably innate: John cites the example of a nine-year-old boy improvising a very short story which nevertheless followed classical storytelling structure. For writers, what matters even more than the original idea is the way in which they choose to
execute that idea. There may be infinite ways to do it, but experience and instinct will help us pick the one which feels right. That's why, when veterans like Russell T Davies or Tony Jordan are up against a deadline and have their basic story idea, they'll know almost immediately how to frame it, how to break it down and how best to serve it.
Into The Woods is highly recommended even for those who have read every Syd Field, Robert McKee and Christopher Vogler book in the universe, not just because of its authority and insight, but because it strives to uncover
why classical storytelling structure exists, its surprisingly long history and its relationship to the ways in which human beings decode the world. John's writing style is nicely conversational and it's great to see more recent examples from TV and film - Line Of Duty and Attack The Block, to name but two - cited alongside the usual suspects like Macbeth and The Godfather.
John is launching a brand new online Storytelling For Television course as a companion piece to Into The Woods. Running for 16 weeks from September, it can be undertaken by anyone anywhere in the world and aims to offer "practical ways of applying the theories of the book to create compelling stories".
As it's been a while since an important new book on writing emerged, I'm in a celebratory mood. Competition time! One lucky reader of this blog will win a two-and-a-half-day course with John Yorke
in person. You'll be part of a nicely compact group of writers receiving tuition from John at a London venue to be decided, over dates in June also to be decided. Furthermore, three runners-up will win a copy of Into The Woods, courtesy of Penguin Books.
HOW TO ENTER THE COMPETITION
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| John Yorke, lecturing at the BBC Writers' Festival |
Getting into the spirit of John's book, simply write a Comment below, summarising your favourite Inciting Incident* in a film or TV drama.
The Comments on this blog are moderated, so if you post an entry which doesn't describe an Inciting Incident, I'll spare your blushes by DESTROYING it. Try again later!
Your chosen Inciting Incident is solely needed to earn you entry into the competition. The winners will be randomly selected from entrants. In two weeks, at 8pm on May 1 2013, I'll randomly draw one course winner and three runners-up from the entries in Comments below.
Some small-print-type stuff: if you win the day course, you'll need to make your own way to and from the London location, at your own expense. Only one entry per person, please, no anonymous comments and only one person can win the course place. You must be 18 or over to enter. I considered excluding writers I know personally from entering... then realised that I know so many that it'd be hard to know where to draw the line! So I hope you'll trust in the strictly randomised nature of the draw, which I'll probably accomplish with Twitter's aid. I thank you. If it turns out you're unable to attend the course when contacted by Penguin Books in May, we'll draw another winner. Right, I think that's it.
Good luck!
Into The Woods: A Five Act Journey Into Story is out now via Penguin Books, available in paperback and Kindle editions. You can read full details about John's Professional Writing Academy course here.
* What's an Inciting Incident, you say? It's the Act One event which kickstarts the story, throwing the protagonist out of their normal world and comfort zone. It's not to be confused with later turning points: in the technical scriptwriting sense of the term, each story has only one Inciting Incident. Neither should it be confused with loglines - I'm just looking for the ONE incident, not a summary of the whole story (so there's no need for spoilers of what comes later.) "It might be useful to see [an Inciting Incident] as the subject of a film's trailer," writes John in Into The Woods. "It's the moment the journey begins... If all stories are a quest, then the inciting incidents are like this - an invitation to begin the journey. They say to the protagonist, 'This is your goal'."
Here are a few examples of Inciting Incidents. Please describe your own favourite in this fashion and format when entering the competition.
- A young boy is found dead on the beach of a small Cornish town (Broadchurch, ITV1)
- A former CIA operative's daughter is kidnapped by human traffickers (the film Taken)
- A group of supermarket/hospital workers win the Lottery (The Syndicate, BBC One)
- A hacker becomes obsessed with the meaning of cryptic references to "The Matrix" on his computer (the film The Matrix, strangely enough)
Get to it!
UPDATE at 8pm, May 1, 2013: THE WINNERS!
It's been a fun competition, albeit one which underlined how some folk are prone to confusing loglines, turning points or just plain scenes, with inciting incidents! I admittedly let a few 'fuzzy' entries slip through the net, because I'm a soft touch.
The ever-so-handy website
random.org was used to select the following winners:
DAVID SCULLION is the lucky winner of the John Yorke course! Well done, David.
Three splendid runners-up prizes of the book
Into The Woods... go to
EMMA HILL,
NATALIE LANCASTER and
COLIN FRANGICETTO!
Congratulations, winners! Please
write to me here, giving me your full name, postal address, phone number and email address. Rest assured, these details will only be used for the purpose of a lovely person from Penguin Books getting in touch to tell you when the course is (Rick) or sending you John's book (Emma, Natalie, Leila).
Commiserations to all who entered but came away empty-handed. Thanks for some excellently varied inciting incidents.
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