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owlectomyAs story structure books go, Into the Woods by John Yorke is quite good. It's at least on par with McKee (who I don't agree with 100%, but who gets hated too much) and certainly less formulaic and prescriptive than Syd Field or Save the Cat (which raises the question, "Why do so many people want to take writing advice from a guy whose best movie is Miss Congeniality," but if we think about that too hard, why would anybody take advice from me?)
But there's one thing that it gets badly, incredibly wrong. It quotes E. M. Forster as saying that "story as such can only have one merit: that of making the audience want to know what happens next."
Yorke parses this very simply: stories should make the audience want to know what happens next.
That's not what Forster meant. I think that if Forster knew he was being misinterpreted like this, he would be turning over in his grave.
I think that it would be more accurate to phrase his argument like this: If we try to isolate the "story" part of a novel, and look at it apart from all the other elements, then the only thing we can find to make one story better than another is whether it makes you want to find out what happens next. But Forster's point is that that's an incredibly reductive way of looking at a novel! If you look at a novel as just a vehicle for finding out what happens next, then you end up overrating The Da Vinci Code and other books that are propulsively plotted but don't have much else to recommend them, and you end up underrating Moby-Dick with its whale chapters and Les Miserables with its sewer chapter. You end up overlooking the philosophical novel, the travelogue-novel, the sociological-commentary-disguised-as-novel, the novel that's heavy on character study, and so on. A novel tells a story, but (in E.M. Forster's view) that's usually not one of the more important or interesting things that it does; in fact, sometimes "what happens next?" is just the shiny thing that's supposed to distract you so you don't notice the sleight-of-hand the writer's doing with their other hand.
Now, if you don't much like the sociological-commentary-disguised-as-novel, the novel where nothing much happens, the chapters that act as a place for the author to monologue about their hyperfixation... I don't necessarily disagree with you. There are some of these books that I love, but what I always really want is a book that's well-plotted AND has a lot more to offer the reader than finding out what happens next. Even with The Da Vinci Code, the people who loved it didn't just love it for the thriller plot; people loved it, in large part, for its church history nonsense. There's something (even if it's something very silly) to stay with you after the excitement of what happens next has faded.
And this, I think, is my problem with books on story structure in general. They rarely recognize that whether a book is well-plotted, badly plotted, or almost unplotted, many of the most interesting things about it are the things happening beside or underneath or orthogonal to the plot.
But there's one thing that it gets badly, incredibly wrong. It quotes E. M. Forster as saying that "story as such can only have one merit: that of making the audience want to know what happens next."
Yorke parses this very simply: stories should make the audience want to know what happens next.
That's not what Forster meant. I think that if Forster knew he was being misinterpreted like this, he would be turning over in his grave.
I think that it would be more accurate to phrase his argument like this: If we try to isolate the "story" part of a novel, and look at it apart from all the other elements, then the only thing we can find to make one story better than another is whether it makes you want to find out what happens next. But Forster's point is that that's an incredibly reductive way of looking at a novel! If you look at a novel as just a vehicle for finding out what happens next, then you end up overrating The Da Vinci Code and other books that are propulsively plotted but don't have much else to recommend them, and you end up underrating Moby-Dick with its whale chapters and Les Miserables with its sewer chapter. You end up overlooking the philosophical novel, the travelogue-novel, the sociological-commentary-disguised-as-novel, the novel that's heavy on character study, and so on. A novel tells a story, but (in E.M. Forster's view) that's usually not one of the more important or interesting things that it does; in fact, sometimes "what happens next?" is just the shiny thing that's supposed to distract you so you don't notice the sleight-of-hand the writer's doing with their other hand.
Now, if you don't much like the sociological-commentary-disguised-as-novel, the novel where nothing much happens, the chapters that act as a place for the author to monologue about their hyperfixation... I don't necessarily disagree with you. There are some of these books that I love, but what I always really want is a book that's well-plotted AND has a lot more to offer the reader than finding out what happens next. Even with The Da Vinci Code, the people who loved it didn't just love it for the thriller plot; people loved it, in large part, for its church history nonsense. There's something (even if it's something very silly) to stay with you after the excitement of what happens next has faded.
And this, I think, is my problem with books on story structure in general. They rarely recognize that whether a book is well-plotted, badly plotted, or almost unplotted, many of the most interesting things about it are the things happening beside or underneath or orthogonal to the plot.
(no subject)
8/12/23 03:42 (UTC)O dear yes, the novel tells a story
8/12/23 09:56 (UTC).
Has Yorke ever read one of EMF's actual novels....?
Re: O dear yes, the novel tells a story
8/12/23 18:33 (UTC)The vibe I got from the book was not that of somebody who read any actual novels, but I could be wrong.
(no subject)
8/12/23 14:56 (UTC)