Into the Woods, John York. Select highlights

Chapter one - What is a Story?

What an archetypal story does is introduce you to a central character - the protagonist - and invite you to identify with them; effectively they become your avatar in the drama.

That's why detective fiction is so popular; the unifying factors that appear at some level in all stores are at the most accessible here.

When, five episodes into its first season, Tony Soprano cold bloodedly killed a man while taking his daughter to college the world shifted on its axis.

What the Sopranos' showrunner David Chase understood instinctively was 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.

David Edgar justified his play about the Nazi architect Albert Speer by saying: 'The awful truth - and it is awful, in both senses of the word - is that the response most great drama asks of us is neither "yes please" nor "no thank you" but "you too?"Or, in the cold light of dawn, "there but for the grace of God go I."

The attraction of wish-fulfillment, benevolent or masochistic, can't be underestimated - what else can explain the ubiquity of Cinderella or the current global dominance of the Marvel franchise?

The moment the audience is caught in the conspiracy of story is the most magical in all of drama; you'll know it well from live theater - it's the point at which the protagonist has burrowed inside and taken over the spectator, the moment the coughing stops.

Indeed, all archetypal stores are defined by this one essential tenet: the central character has an active goal.

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.

'The more successful the villain, the more successful the picture.' ~ Hitchcock

Somebody's got to want something, something's got to be standing in their way of getting it. You do that and you'll have a scene. ~ Sorkin

It's not always enough for a hero to want love or happiness; it's too nebulous, too intangible. The most popular works embody desirre in an object. Protagonists want 'Juliet'; they want 'Godot'; they want 'the lost Ark'.

Hitchcock says it best: '[We] have a name in the studio, and we call it the "MacGuffin". It is the mechanical element that usually crops up in any story. In crook stories it is almost always the necklace and in the spy stores it is most always the papers.'

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.

When 'something happens' to a hero at the beginning of a drama, that something, at some level, is a disruption to their perceived security. Duly alarmed, they seek to rectify their situation; their 'want' is to find that security once again.

Three-dimensional characters, however, do change; their purchase is deeper. They have both a want and a need, and they are not necessarily the same thing.

... it is this concept of 'flaw' - or of something lacking - that is absolutely critical in three-dimensional storytelling.

The Russian Formalist Vladimir Propp coined the rather beautiful term 'lack' for what a protagonist is missing in the initial stages of any story, and it's this lack that three-dimensional store exploit.

While it's possible for characters to get what they want and what they need (certainly that's what happens in Aliens or Star Wars), 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. [e.g. Casablanca] ...the heroes find a goal they weren't aware they were looking for.

Characters then should not always get what they want, but should - if they deserve it- get what they need. That need, or flaw, is almost always present at the beginning of of the film. The want, however, cannot become clear until after the inciting incident.

The inciting incident

All stories have a premise - 'What if...?' This 'What if' is almost always the inciting incident and inciting incidents are always the 'something' that happens in every story. Once upon a time, in shuch and such a place, something happened...

An inciting incident is always the catalyst for the protagonist's desire.

A. W. Schlegel in 1808, called them 'first determination'. It might be useful to see them as the subject of a film's trailer; it's the moment the journey begins.

The journey

The characters get what they need. Expecting one thing on their quest, they find themselves confronted with another; traditional worldviews aren't reinforced, prejudices aren't reaffirmed; instead the protagonists' worldview - and this ours too - are realigned. Both literally and figuratively we are moved.

The crisis

The crisis is a kind of death: someone close to the hero dies (The Godfather), the heroes themselves appear to die (E.T.), but more commonly all hope passes away.

...it's the point of maximum jeopardy in the script, the moment the viewer should be shouton 'Oh no!' at the screen, the moment where it seems impossible for the hero to 'get out of that'.

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.

This choice then is the final test of character precisely because it's the moment where the hero is forced to face up to their dramatic need or flaw. 

...the external antagonists are the embodiments of what each protagonist fears most. To overcome that which lies without, they must overcome the chasm within. Hence the stench of death - every crisis is the protagonists' opportunity to kill off their old selves and live anew.

The climax

The climax is the stage at which the protagonist finds release from their seemingly inescapable predicament. It's the final showdown with their antagonist, the battle in which the hero engages with their dramatic need and overcomes their flaw.

So the inciting incident provokes the question 'What will happen' and the climax (or obligatory act) declares - 'this'.

Inciting incidents therefore create the question that will be answered in the climax. They arouse the antagonist, or massed ranks of antagonism, and, like a snowball at the top of a mountain, these forces continue to grow in size, thundering down the mountain until they finally, directly, confront the protagonist. 

It's often set in a unique location, and almost always on territory alien to the hero of the tale.

The resolution

The denouement of any story is where all is brought to light, feelings are finally expressed and 'rewards' for behaviour bestowed. 'Denouement' is a derivation of dénouer, meaning 'to unite', and that's what it is - the knots of plot are undone and complication unravelled. But it is also a tying up of loose ends - in a classically structure work there must be a pay-off for every set-up, no strand left unattended or forgotten.

Ancient Tragedy is loss of life, modern Tragedy is loss of purpose. ~ Jan Kott

Putting it all together

If you put them all together, that skeleton structure looks something like this:

Once upon a time a young friendless boy called Elliot discovered an alien in his backyard. Realizing that unless he helped the creature home it would die, he took it on himself to outwit the authorities, win over sceptics and in a race against time, in a true act of courage, set his friend free. 

Dark Inversions

 In dark inversions, a character's flaw is what conventional society might term 'normal' or 'good' - a goodness that characters over turn to become evil in their own way.

Historically, critics have focused on the Aristotelian definition of a fatal malignant flaw to describe tragic heroes (Macbeth's is ambition; Othello's' jealousy), but it is just as instructive, I would argue, to chart how their goodness rots.

The initial goals can be good (The Godfather), seemingly innocuous (Carmen, Dr Faustus), the end-result is the same: the character are consumed by overwhelming egotistical desire.