Into the Woods

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• Balgair · Jul 5, 2020 · Recommends

  If you've not read Into the Woods by John Yorke, I'd suggest it highly for this type of enterprise. https://www.amazon.com/Into-Woods-Five-Act-Journey-Story/dp/... It's more for screenwriters, but his theses on plot, pacing, characters,…

  on “Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?” ↗
• Balgair · Jan 20, 2021 · Recommends

  …https://www.lessonsfromthescreenplay.com/reading-list The list is geared towards film media, but is a great guide on writing in general. I've read and annotated my way through all of them with gusto. I can very much recommend Into the Woods and Anatomy of Story as superb guides that really dig in deep into why we humans fall for the same stories time and time again. They are brass-tacks books and pretty philosophical at the same time, a…

  on “NovelWriter 1.0 – A markdown-like editor for writing novels” ↗
• pavlov · Nov 10, 2024 · Recommends

  The best book I’ve read on this topic is “Into the Woods: How Stories Work and Why We Tell Them” by John Yorke. The author is British, so it doesn’t suffer so much from the “Hollywood has all the answers” syndrome of American screenwriting guides. It’s definitely…

  on “Story Structure 101: Super Basic Shit” ↗
• Balgair · May 12, 2026 · Recommends

  …11 beat framework that fits nicely with 3, 4, or 5 act structure (she has a lot to say about that). I would highly recommend her work for deep dives into narrative and story structure. John Yorke's Into the Woods is also a great read: https://www.amazon.com/Into-Woods-Five-Act-Journey-Story/dp/... He dives more into the 'why' when it comes to the reason we tell stories at all. Both he and Weiland (among others)…

  on “Music has scales / raagas. What about storytelling in movies and prestige shows?” ↗