Creative writing handbooks are almost an industry in themselves: the fledgling author, dramatist or screenwriter can choose from hundreds of titles, all offering to unlock the secrets of storytelling. These books are of limited utility for literary fiction, where plot is secondary, but if you’re writing for the screen or stage, or working on genre fiction, they can be helpful. Commercial, plot-driven storytelling is, this is an inherently formulaic business, and a working knowledge of narrative structure is a crucial foundation for an aspiring writer.
In his bestselling 2014 treatise on the mechanics of narrative, Into the Woods, John Yorke demonstrated the uncanny prevalence of five-act structure (exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, denouement) in many popular movies, plays and television dramas. He reprises this theme in his new book, which starts with a lengthy disquisition on plot architecture. The five-act framework, Yorke explains, is elegantly conducive to an emotionally compelling journey, with the protagonist typically undergoing a transformative revelation at the story’s mid-point. He illustrates this with reference to hit TV programmes such as I May Destroy You, and films including Star Wars and Terminator 2.
Yorke then proceeds to meditate on the broader social significance of story structure, touching on politics, philosophy and spirituality. He observes that the rhetoric of revanchist populism is built on a specious promise of renewal: Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan is “a masterclass in condensed narrative”. The success of Netflix’s Squid Game showed that “if you can tap into the reader or viewer’s subconscious damage or grievance … and from there show a path to healing, then you are mining the most powerful narrative seam of all”. Themes of healing and reinvention also feature prominently in the rhetoric of organisations like the Church of Scientology and Alcoholics Anonymous, which promise redemption through surrender to a higher force. Indeed, Yorke believes stories fill “a god-shaped hole” in all of us, a yearning for meaning and transcendence.
A good story requires conflict, broadly defined. “Conflict isn’t just waving a spear around – it’s dissonance, of any size, of any shape, or any form.” Since life is all about solving problems, Yorke – a former producer on EastEnders, and sometime head of drama at Channel 4 – suggests story structure is a microcosm of all human existence: “Equilibrium, disruption, recognition of the disruption, repair of the disruption, new equilibrium.” Or, more simply: “We exist, we observe, we change.”
These are thought-provoking lessons for the novice screenwriter, who is occasionally addressed in a pedagogic second-person. But the book is let down by verbal incontinence, which rather contradicts its emphasis on the importance of keeping your audience engaged. When holding forth on politics, Yorke’s authorial voice lapses from avuncular mentor into pontificating pub bore, taking potshots at “social justice warriors” and anti-racism activists alongside far-right conspiracy theorists.
Yorke makes a conspicuous number of disparaging references to to Jeremy Corbyn. In one startling snipe, he likens the internal politics of “Corybnite Labour” to China’s Cultural Revolution, the Russian pogroms and the McCarthyite purges of the 1950s. Elsewhere, a journalist who wrote a flattering book about Mao Zedong in the 1930s is credited with helping bring about the deaths of 80 million people under communism. The combination of triteness and hyperbole in these passages makes it hard to take Yorke seriously as a thinker. To hammer home his point about the dangers of ideological purity, he bastardises Yeats: “The rigid binary is God-like: a rough beast slouching towards democratic consensus, with violence on its mind.”
Despite moments of insight, Trip to the Moon – which takes its title from an early French sci-fi film – feels distinctly undercooked. Yorke’s exposition becomes wearingly repetitious as the book progresses, and the prose is sloppily casual in places, with an over-reliance on intensifiers masking diminishing intellectual returns. (At one point, the word “incredibly” appears five times in the space of six short paragraphs.) “I never intended to write a second book,” Yorke concedes in the acknowledgements. Alas, it shows.
• Trip to the Moon: Understanding the True Power of Story by John Yorke is published by Particular (£25). To support the Guardian order your copy from guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
