~ IWSG: Into the Woods ~

It’s time for another group posting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group! Time to release our fears to the world or offer encouragement to those who are feeling neurotic. If you’d like to join us, click on the tab above and sign up. We post on the first Wednesday of every month. Every month, the organizers announce a question that members can answer in their IWSG Day post. Remember, the question is optional!!! Let’s rock the neurotic writing world! Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG, and the hashtag is #IWSG.

August 4th optional question – What is your favorite craft writing book? And why?
My pick has to be the wonderful Into the Woods, How Stories Work And Why We Tell Them, by John Yorke. This book falls squarely into the category of learning something new every time I read it. ‘Terrifyingly clever’ was one reviewer’s comment which I thought apt. My eldest sister, the bookworm of the family (who still reads a book a week), gave me Into the Woods one year as a Christmas present. Knowing my sister, I figured she had spent a long time in a small independent bookstore somewhere, carefully studying each title until she found just the right book for me and for my penchant in life. Therefore, always respectful of the eldest’s taste, I started reading her gift on Boxing Day.
Gut reaction: big sister got it right, as usual.

Into the Woods is ostensibly a novel about the dramatic structure inherent in plays, films, TV drama, and all works of fiction, and yet it delivers so much more. Born of Yorkes’ intellectual need to understand the tenets of story structure, I admired how he distilled his findings to help us see the bones of stories. Yorke discovered there was a unifying shape to all fiction. He likened it to the fairytale journey into the woods, which works for me as an excellent analogy. The stories I’ve written so far have been literal journeys into the woods, coincidentally, so the analogy worked on all levels. It’s like poetry. However, Yorke can say it better than I can.

“In stories throughout the ages, there is one motif that continually recurs – the journey into the woods to find the dark but life-giving secret within. This book attempts to find what lurks at the heart of the forest. All stories begin here…”

I read this book slowly, going back and re-reading many times to make sure I understood. My copy has post-it flags sticking up from a dozen pages. There are passages I’ve highlighted in fluorescent yellow and pencil notes in the margins. I found there was so much helpful information about story structure, character, and dialogue, that I knew at once it was information I would refer to again. And so it has been. I sometimes refer to it as I write new stories. I’ve presented some of the information in the form of a speech for Toastmasters. And I’ve also included excerpts and quotes from Into the Woods in numerous posts over the last seven years of blogging.

The book has become something of a touchstone.

The material takes multiple re-readings for people of ‘small brain’ like me to take the information on board. Therefore, Into the Woods enjoys pride of place on my desk rather than being relegated to the bookshelf.

John Yorke, a creator of the BBC Writers Academy and managing director of Company Pictures, used to work for the BBC in television and radio, and today is also a visiting professor of English Language and Literature. He writes non-fiction with authority, and it’s the heft of the research he has done on the subject of story structure that lends weight to Into the Woods. In my opinion, it should become a future classic.

‘First, learn to be a craftsman; it won’t keep you from being a genius.’ A Delacroix quote which features in the Introduction. How cool is that?

What about you, which book do you refer to the most?

Keep Writing!
Yvette Carol
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“The best book on the subject I’ve read.” ~ Tony Jordan

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