A Trip to the Moon by John Yorke – A Storytelling Guide in Desperate Need of Editing | books

CCreative writing manuals are almost an industry unto themselves: a budding author, playwright, or screenwriter can choose from hundreds of titles, all offering to uncover the secrets of storytelling. These books are of limited use for literary fiction, where plot is secondary, but if you are writing for screen or stage, or working with a fantasy genre, they can be useful. Plot-driven commercial storytelling is an inherently stereotyped business, and a working knowledge of narrative structure is a crucial foundation for the aspiring writer.

In his best-selling 2014 treatise on the mechanics of narrative, Into the Woods, John Yorke demonstrated the strange prevalence of the five-act structure (exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, denouement) in many popular films, plays, and television dramas. He reiterates this theme in his new book, which begins with a lengthy essay on plot architecture. Yorke explains that the five-act framework elegantly lends itself to an emotionally compelling journey, with the protagonist typically experiencing a transformative revelation midway through the story. He explains this by pointing to hit TV shows like I May Destroy You, and films including Star Wars and Terminator 2.

Yorke then proceeds to reflect on the broader social significance of the story’s structure, touching on politics, philosophy and spirituality. He notes that the rhetoric of revanchist populism is built on a deceptive promise of renewal: Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan is “a masterclass in condensed narrative.” The success of Netflix Squid Game showed that “if you can tap into the hurt or grievance of a reader or viewer… and from there show a path to healing, you have extracted the most powerful narrative line of all.” Themes of healing and reinvention also feature prominently in the rhetoric of organizations such as the Church of Scientology and Alcoholics Anonymous, which promise salvation through surrender to a higher power. In fact, Yorke believes that stories fill a “god-shaped hole” in all of us, a longing for meaning and transcendence.

A good story requires conflict, broadly defined. “Conflict is not just spear-waving – it is disharmony, of any size, in any shape, or in any form.” And since life is about solving problems, Yorke – a former EastEnders producer and sometime head of drama at Channel 4 – points out that the story structure is a microcosm of all human existence: “balance, disrupt, acknowledge disruption, fix disruption, new balance.” Or simply: “We exist, we observe, we change.”

These are thought-provoking lessons for the novice screenwriter, who is sometimes addressed in the pedagogical third person. But the book is let down by its sloppy pronunciation, which belies its emphasis on the importance of keeping your audience engaged. When sticking to politics, Yorke’s authorial voice shifts from loving guide to bar-hopping preaching, railing against “social justice warriors” and anti-racist activists alongside far-right conspiracy theorists.

Yorke makes a number of obvious disparaging references to Jeremy Corbyn. In one startling shot, he likened the KWP’s internal politics to the Cultural Revolution in China, the Russian pogroms, and the McCarthyite purges of the 1950s. Elsewhere, a journalist who wrote an entertaining book about Mao Zedong in the 1930s is credited with helping to kill 80 million people under communism. The combination of vulgarity and exaggeration in these passages makes it difficult to take Yorke seriously as an intellectual. To illustrate his point about the dangers of ideological purity, Yeats attacked: “Strict dualism is like God: a cruel monster bending toward democratic consensus, with violence on its mind.”

Despite its prescient moments, A Trip to the Moon — which takes its title from an early French sci-fi film — feels distinctly undercooked. Yorke’s exposition becomes tiresomely repetitive as the book progresses, and the prose becomes informal in places, with an over-reliance on condensation that belies diminishing intellectual returns. (At one point, the word “incredible” appears five times in six short paragraphs.) “I never intended to write a second book,” Yorke admitted in his acknowledgment. Unfortunately, it shows.