A review by mcgreig
Into the Woods: A Five Act Journey Into Story by John Yorke

informative medium-paced

3.0

There is a lot of interesting analysis and pearls of wisdom within this book, but it is let down by the author's insistence on trying to prove there is one unifying shape to all narrative forms. This is partly due to his reliance on Campbell's 'Hero of a thousand faces', which has been thoroughly discredited by folklorists (although Yorke appears oblivious to this). Campbell's work selected only those stories from around the world that fitted the 'hero's journey', and many of them only did so because of poor translations. Yorke apparently didn't bother to read any criticism of Campbell or any non-Western myths and legends (or even read many Western ones for himself). Instead he relies on Campbell's 'hero's journey' to claim this is the one and only method all humans use to understand the world around them. But with Campbell  proven wrong, Yorke's argument collapses.  

Yorke also seems inconsistent in his use of terms. While claiming all storytelling uses the same story shape, he says this only applies to archetypal stories. At other times he strongly implies he is only talking about successful stories, i.e. those that have stood the test of time or are well-formed. At one point he says non-fiction TV discovered this story shape around 2000 and so gave rise to reality TV and a new style of documentary that borrowed from fiction. Not only does this admit the existence of other narrative forms, but he then ties himself in knots by claiming that this story shape they discovered was actually already there (because it is universal). So what actually did they discover? I'm not convinced Yorke himself knows.

Ultimately, as I say, Yorke gives some useful insights into narrative structure, it is just a shame he wastes so much space on a poorly argued and unnecessary theory of a unifying narrative structure.