Into the Woods
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- Author: John Yorke
Highlights
So you have a central character, you empathize with them, and something then happens to them, and that something is the genesis of the story. Jack discovers a beanstalk; Bond learns Blofeld plans to take over the world. The ‘something’ is almost always a problem, sometimes a problem disguised as an opportunity.
The story is the journey they go on to sort out the problem presented. On the way they may learn something new about themselves; they’ll certainly be faced with a series of obstacles they have to overcome; there will likely be a moment near the end where all hope seems lost, and this will almost certainly be followed by a last-minute resurrection of hope, a final battle against the odds, and victory snatched from the jaws of defeat.
It reveals itself most clearly in the framework of the classic crime or hospital drama. A murder is committed or someone gets sick; the detective or doctor must find the killer or make their patient well. Such tales are literature’s heroin – storytelling with all impurities removed;
Is this why doctor and cop shows are so prevalent? Why so many fictions revolve around sm manner kf jnvestigstor?
‘Care’ is often translated as ‘like’, which is why so many writers are given the note (often by non-writing executives) ‘Can you make them nice?’
Hokw much do we need to like the protagonkst? When writing anti-heroes, how do we manage one with values that are opplsed to our own?
‘Sympathy is like crack cocaine to industry execs. I’ve had at least one wonderful screenplay of mine maimed by a sympathy-skank. Yes, of course the audience has to relate to your characters, but they don’t need to approve of them. If characters are going to do something bad, Hollywood wants you to build in an excuse note.’
We don’t like Satan in Paradise Lost – we love him. And we love him because he’s the perfect gleeful embodiment of evil. Niceness tends to kill characters – if there is nothing wrong with them, nothing to offend us, then there’s almost certainly nothing to attract our attention either. Much more interesting are the rough edges, the darkness – and we love these things because though we may not consciously want to admit it, they touch something deep inside us.
The key to empathy, then, does not lie in manners or good behaviour. Nor does it lie, as is often claimed, in the understanding of motive. It’s certainly true that if we know why characters do what they do, we will love them more. However, that’s a symptom of empathy, not its root cause. It lies in its ability to access and bond with our unconscious.
The attraction of wish-fulfilment, benevolent or masochistic, can’t be underestimated – what else can explain the ubiquity of Cinderella or the current global dominance of the Marvel franchise? Isn’t there a Peter Parker in most of us longing to turn into Spider-Man? Our favourite characters are the ones who, at some silent level, embody what we all want for ourselves: the good, the bad and ugly too.
The detective and ‘monster’ templates illustrate this well, but antagonism can manifest itself in many different ways – most interestingly when it lies within the protagonist. Cowardice, drunkenness, lack of self-esteem – all will serve as internal obstacles that prevent a character reaching fulfilment;
note that all forces of antagonism embody the qualities missing in their protagonist’s lives.
To find Nemo, to put out the Towering Inferno, to clear their name, to catch a thief – purpose must be bestowed and actively sought, or a character is dead.
It’s not always enough for a hero to want love or happiness; it’s too nebulous, too intangible. The most popular works embody desire in an object.
Almost all successful plays, films and novels are about primal human desires: success (Legally Blonde), revenge (Falling Down), love (Notting Hill), survival (Alien) or the protection of one’s family or home (Straw Dogs). Why else would we consume a story so ravenously? Love, home, belonging, friendship, survival and self-esteem recur continually because they’re the subjects that matter to us most.
What a character thinks is good for them is often at odds with what actually is. This conflict, as we shall see, appears to be one of the fundamental tenets of structure, because it embodies the battle between external and internal desire.
Flaw or need isn’t the same as their want or desire. Wiesler wants to punish the dissident couple he has been sent to spy on; Thelma and Louise want to escape the police and get to Mexico. Both sets of characters go on a journey to recognize that what they want stands in direct opposition to what they need. Going to Mexico or imprisoning dissidents will not make them complete.
the true, more universal and more powerful archetype occurs when the initial, ego-driven goal is abandoned for something more important, more nourishing, more essential. In Rocky, Cars, Saving Private Ryan, Little Miss Sunshine, Midnight Run and Tootsie, the heroes find a goal they weren’t aware they were looking
what the inciting incident must also do is awaken a desire. We go back to our story shape: a problem occurs; a solution is sought.
Technically, ‘Once upon a time, in such and such a place, something happened …’ is a premise, ‘and because of that I’m going to do this …’ is a story.
The crisis occurs when the hero’s final dilemma is crystallized, the moment they are faced with the most important question of the story – just what kind of person are they? Finding themselves in a seemingly inescapable hole, the protagonist is presented with a choice. In Star Wars Luke, reeling from the death of Obi-Wan Kenobi, must choose between the computer and the force.
Hence the stench of death – every crisis is the protagonists’ opportunity to kill off their old selves and live anew. Their choice is to deny change and return to their former selves, or confront their innermost fears, overcome them and be rewarded.
the crisis is always the moment before the final battle in the war against impossible odds – the dark night before the climax.
So the inciting incident provokes the question ‘What will happen’ and the climax (or obligatory act) declares – ‘this’.
Christopher Booker has observed, a number of significant changes took place as a result of the Industrial Revolution in the way we tell stories – endings are just as likely now to consist of an ‘open ending’, partly to add an air of uncertainty and partly because in a godless universe death doesn’t mean what it once did. As Shakespearean scholar Jan Kott noted before him, ‘Ancient Tragedy is loss of life, modern Tragedy is loss of purpose’.
Tragedies follow exactly the same principles as Jaws or E.T. but in reverse order. In Jaws, Chief Brody learns to be a hero; in Macbeth the protagonist’s heroism is corroded. In dark inversions, a character’s flaw is what conventional society might term ‘normal’ or ‘good’ – a goodness that characters overturn to become evil in their own way.
there’s a clearly chartable pathway the characters follow as, in pursuit of their goal, their moral centre collapses. The initial goals can be good (The Godfather or Line of Duty), seemingly innocuous (Carmen, Dr Faustus), but the end-result is the same: the characters are consumed by overwhelming egotistical desire. The dark hero’s journey is not one from selfish to selfless like Casablanca’s Rick, but in the opposite direction. It’s a trajectory that’s largely been avoided by television, certainly in drama series; nevertheless it’s rich and fertile ground.
An archrtypebof story telling is the hero whp is corroded by his own ideals, the decent into extrimism.
It seems impossible to understand how, with only eight notes in an octave, we don’t simply run out of music, but just as tones give rise to semi-tones and time-signatures, tempo and style alter content, so we start to see that a very simple pattern contains within it the possibility of endless permutations. Feed in a different kind of flaw; reward or punish the characters in a variety of ways; and you create a different kind of story.
The patterns of storytellibg remain constant, just as in music the eight notes are constabt. Indeed even with mhusic we hear a lot of repeated patterns, but excellent mhusic is oft about mixing new tempos, a sudden volta.
King Lear, Richard II and Romeo and Juliet tell stories of emotional growth – archetypically the characters should be rewarded, but instead, by punishing them, the sense of tragedy is brutally enforced. In Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy, the dark protagonists are rewarded, twisting the archetype to make a darkly ironic comment on a sick society.
smacked my little boy. My anger was powerful. Like justice. Then I discovered no feeling in the hand. I said, ‘Listen, I want to explain the complexities to you.’ I spoke with seriousness and care, particularly of fathers. He asked, when I finished, if I wanted him to forgive me. I said yes. He said no. Like trumps. ‘The Hand’ is a chapter in a short story, ‘Eating Out,’ by the American miniaturist Leonard Michaels; it’s also in effect a complete story in itself. If all stories contain the same structural elements, then it should be relatively easy to identify within ‘The Hand’ the building blocks with which we should now be familiar. Protagonist – the narrator Antagonist – his son Inciting incident – awareness of no feeling in hand Desire – to explain his action Crisis – ‘He asked … if I wanted him to forgive me’ Climax – ‘I said yes. He said no’ Resolution – ‘Like trumps’.
Even just placing all the pieces of a story together, however short, can create story. How is this structure generated? Why must it be this way?
Acts are a unit of action bound by a character’s desire. They have their own beginning, middle and end, the latter of which spins the narrative off in a new and unexpected direction; this of course being ‘the surprise’ Ramsay prescribed. It’s something the Greeks called peripeteia, a word most commonly translated as ‘reversal’.
An act is a self contained cosmos of the story at large, both with their own thrrr part structure: beginnin, middle, end. In an act he end is a “reversal”, a shrprise that itself spawns the following act.
note : 3 acts are not necessary. Raiders of the Lost ark has seven
Three-act structure is the cornerstone of drama primarily because it embodies not just the simplest units of Aristotelian3 (and indeed all) structure; it follows the irrefutable laws of physics. Everything must have a beginning, middle and end.
The beginning middle and end framework i derivative from.physics. Yet shohld we use physical.analovy to describe storytelling? It would certainly appear so, given how well the structure works.
Syd Field first articulated the three-act paradigm, breaking act structure down to these constituent parts: set-up, confrontation and resolution, with a turning point towards the end of the first (the inciting incident) and second (the crisis) acts.
How does the 7 part heros journey fit here?
The endless recurrence of the same underlying pattern suggests psychological, if not biological and physical reasons for the way we tell stories. If we don’t choose to tell them that way, perhaps we are compelled to.
As much as we may refute the structure, evidence suggests that we are compelled to use 3 act narrstive
In simplistic terms, human beings order the world dialectically. Incapable of perceiving randomness, we insist on imposing order on any observed phenomena, any new information that comes our way. We exist; we observe new stimuli; and both are altered in the process. It’s thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Students encounter something of which they’re unaware, explore and assimilate it, and by merging it with their pre-existing knowledge, grow. Every act of perception is an attempt to impose order, to make sense of a chaotic universe. Storytelling, at one level, is a manifestation of this process.
Humans seek order in the world; we do this diallecticalt by observation, with a thesis, anthithesis, and synthesis. The three act narrative is inherent in how we understand the world.
is this part lf th appeal of Marx and his ilk? And explanation, an impositiom of order in an otherwise random existence ?
If you strip the three-act structure down you can see this inevitable and inescapable shape at work: Act One: Thesis Act Two: Antithesis Act Three: Synthesis. The ‘Hollywood’ archetype, then, is dialectics in its most simplified form.6 Take a flawed character, and at the end of the first act plunge them into an alien world, let them assimilate the rules of that world, and finally, in the third act, test them to see what they have learned. Or, in simple terms: Act One: Establish a flawed character Act Two: Confront them with their opposite Act Three: Synthesize the two to achieve balance.
The thesis, antithesis, synthesis paradigm is the flundation kf dramstic structute. Can this narrative system be used for nkte taking and informatiom acquisition?
That’s what inciting incidents are too – they are ‘explosions of opposition’, structural tools freighted with all the characteristics the characters lack; embodiments, indeed, of everything they need.
An incitin incident is nkt just something that occurs. It mist be slmething that embodies the needs of the protgonist.
In the first act of any story a character is presented with a particular flaw or need. An inciting incident occurs towards, or at, the end of that first act, and the protagonist ‘falls down a rabbit hole’. In the second act, the character attempts to return to the world from which they came, whilst slowly learning that another equally important world awaits them where valuable lessons may be learned. At the end of this section, at their lowest ebb, the protagonist must choose whether to confront the enemies ranged against them by calling on lessons they have learned, or to return, sheepishly, to their old self. It’s at this crisis point that they almost always choose to engage in the biggest battle (or climax) of their life, to test and then assimilate their new skills, before being finally rewarded (the resolution) for their travails.
Stories alqays begin with flawed or need characters. An inciting incident causes them to depart the safety f wht is known, thrown into a world is that is radically different from their own.
the second act is alwys an attemlt to return, a jkurney oh.hlmcoming that inevitably leads to a climax wherein the character must decide whether to return to the oroinal.world or fight for a new one.
this decision is lreciselh what Larson is criicized for in Tick Tick Boom.