Into The Woods: How Stories Work and Why We Tell Them

Set up and call to action Things go well, initial objective achieved Things start to go wrong as forces of antagonism gather strength Things go really badly wrong, precipitating crisis Crisis and climax. Final battle with antagonist. Matters resolve for good or ill.

As one point is proved, we link it to the next, striving for meaning, and in so doing story is born.

Storytelling, then, can be seen as a codification of the method by which we learn – expressed in a three-act shape.

Every act has two turning points within it, the latter of which acts as an explosion that invites the protagonist into an alien world. In the first act, that second turning point is called an inciting incident; if it’s the penultimate act, it’s called a crisis point. Structurally they’re the same thing – a choice that presents itself to the protago

The crisis point of act four is of course the crisis point of the story.

Theatre isn’t worse or inferior to television – its potency simply lies in live

The crisis is also, in self-contained stories, almost always the cliffhanger before the last commercial break and, for reasons we shall see, the ending of every episode of EastEnders, of the 1960s Batman TV series and every American serial film of the 1940s from Superman to Flash Gordon.

three-act form allows us to access the root structure of storytelling,

the midpoint in The Godfather is when Michael shoots the policeman and his life changes for ever;