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

The antagonist is thus the thing or person the protagonist must vanquish to achieve their goal.

Sorkin expresses what all great artists know – that they need to have an understanding of craft. Every form of artistic composition, like any language, has a grammar, and that grammar, that structure, is not just a construct – it’s the most beautiful and intricate expression of the workings of the human mind.

characters are taken on a journey to acknowledge and assimilate the traumas in their past. By confronting and coming to terms with the cause of their traumas they can finally move on.

kill off their old selves and be born anew.

‘If we are pushed far enough, pressured beyond our breaking point, our self-preservation system takes over and we are capable of terrible villainy.’

it seems impossible for the hero to ‘get out of that’.

new ‘call to action’.

‘the morals of the

cannot rid ourselves of what we condemn.’