 What storytelling is fundamentally is knowledge wrapped up in such a way for maximum viral transmission? Hello, intelligent beings of this marvellous planet. Welcome to the 42 Courses podcast and thanks for listening. John York is the author of Into the Woods, the biggest selling screenwriting book in the UK for the last six years. John is a double BAFTA winner as program maker and multi BAFTA winner as commissioner. In his TV career he's worked as both the head of Channel 4 drama and controller of BBC drama production. And he's been involved in such massive hits as Wolf Hall, Life on Mars, The Street, Shameless, Bodies and EastEnders. Now he works worldwide as a drama producer, consultant and lecturer on all forms of storytelling. So I'm really excited to speak today to John York. Hi, John. Hi, Brands. Pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for your time. Nice. I love talking about this stuff so I'd be delighted. Yeah, so Into the Woods, absolutely massively famous storytelling book. Can you give people who may have not read it a quick overview? Oh, gosh. Yeah, the simple overview is when I started doing it, I started doing it because I thought there was a gap in the market because there were a thousand books on screenwriting. I mean literally ridiculous amounts of screenwriting. And they all told you what you should do, but none of them told you why. And because I had a very good university training that sort of taught me in rigorous thinking, you know, I could hear my tutor in my head going, that's not acceptable. This is not acceptable for you to tell me. There has to be an insight into base 24 without telling me why. And everywhere I read, I couldn't find the answer. You know, it's not in Ron McKee, it's not in Sidfield, it's not in Christopher Vogler. There are some places like Lagos Agri and some David Mamet stuff where they're very helpful. I'm not dismissing the other books out of hand, but it was that that led me on to go, I need to work out why stories have the shape they do. And that was the thing that really drove it. And yeah, we just mentioned just before we started that you're incredibly well read because every sentence in the book is, you know, referring to some classic texts almost. And so how did you learn about narrative structure? Was it you just analysing all of these classics? Well, yeah, so it's slightly self-indulgent really, isn't it? Like, you know, it's a substitute for engaging with real people in the real world. I often think stories. I mean, I was fortunate I came from a very well read family and I was surrounded by books growing up. And then I did English at university, which is all you do is read. And then I worked in television drama and most of that is reading. So there's a big part of that. But this book came about when I was working for BBC. I'd started the BBC, I'd gone to Channel 4 and I'd come back again. And one of my jobs was running continuing drama. I was doing independent drama, but I was doing the old British war horse shows like East Enders and Casualty. And I came back and I looked at them and I was really alarmed at the storytelling. Yeah, it felt like, you know, it wasn't, it didn't really know what it was doing. And then I suddenly realized, well, I don't really know what I'm doing. I better find out. And then I set up a training course and I decided that the best person to teach that would be me especially because then I would learn as well. And I started off by, you know, fairly blatantly plagiarizing the standard texts of the day, like going back to Sid Field and Voga. But I was in a very fortunate position was that I was also making about 500 hours of television a year at that point. So I could test it. And so that was that was the big thing is that as I tested it, I started to realize what worked and what didn't. And very slowly over two or three years, I started to go, oh, I get it. I must be this and that and unfortunately the job allowed me to then interrogate. You know, I found myself, you know, going in all kinds of mad journeys, you know, running way back to, you know, Aristotle and then forward but all the way through the 16th, 17th, 18th century. You know, it was an amazing journey and I just I just loved it. You know, there's my favorite bit in the whole book still. It's an old book now but in the notes at the back is I do the history of the inciting incident. And I love that there was so much research and it was I was like depressed that ended up as a footnote. But but you know, that's the stuff I really geek out on which they probably explains why I got married very late in life. But that raises an interesting point. I mean, working and writing a book at the same time. Like I've interviewed a few authors on this podcast and some of them, everyone does it a different way. But your friend Simon Lancaster, he said he read 250 books. I think you've probably beaten that if you're in the process now for this. Probably but it's a lifetime. You know, it's like they say like with a band's first album is the lifetime that's built up to it. The difficult second album is the six months with someone shouting, where's my next record? You know, so if there is a second book and there is a plan for a second book. You know, that's much harder because I've used up all my knowledge. I mean, a lot of references in the book. Well, you know, things I came across as a child. You know, the books I read as a child and the knowledge I gained then really. But returning to the process, were you writing before and after work? I mean, how did you fit it all in? Well, because I was teaching. At work, the knowledge I needed to write the book I gained from doing that, you know, you'd stress test every idea. And you'd see you teach students it, you see how the students reacted to it, how they came back to it. So in a sense, the hard work was was doing the knowledge working out, you know, why stories are the shape they are. And the perfect laboratory, you know, so it was all work and and writing at the same time already. And then what I did is I would, I just set the alarm early and I get up at quarter to five. I'd write for a couple of hours and then, you know, I didn't have a child then. So he said that I'd work in the evening till about his clock and then I'd do most weekends. But it was weird because it took six years to write, but four years of that were really hanging around. You know, and it was only when I, you know, like the last couple of years when I started to go, oh, I know what this is. Because it couldn't work out what it was. And once I knew what it was, then it was pretty quick after that. That's interesting about the discovery of what it was. And at what point did you approach a publisher and say, this is what it is? Well, you know, I mean, this story makes people hate me and quite rightly too. It's like, because it's very unfair. But what happened was it was it was ridiculously simple. It is one of my students when I was at the BBC was a former publishing editor at Penguin. And he said to me when I was teaching, he said, you should turn this into a book. He said, no, go on. And so after much persuasion, because I couldn't quite see it, I wrote a first chapter. I mean, it took a long time to first chapter because getting finding your voice, finding what the tone is and also working out that this this can't be a how to book because there's thousands of them. Yeah, you know, I'm working out the tone of voice is you want it to be rigorously intellectual, but you don't want to alienate anyone. You know, those things took ages. But in the end, after three years later, I presented him with a chapter. And I met up with him and he gave me some notes and they were lovely notes and they were very basic. And I said, well, hang on, you know, you don't have to do anything because I've already sent it to Penguin. And because he was who he was, he was Jamie Oliver's old editor. And Penguin literally rang me up two weeks later and said, come in. And I came in and I said, we'd like to buy your book. So it was it was lovely and ridiculously unfair. That's who you know. Thank you. You can get it. Good stuff. Yeah. I mean, so, so, so, you know, I didn't really have to do anything at all. I didn't have to write it obviously. Well, I'm very glad to hear that you were teaching because 42 courses is all about teaching and learning. And on the storytelling course, like into the woods is of course, you know, as a go to it's on the recommended reading list. And there's one, there's one sentence that really shouted at me actually is like, there can be no doubt that storytelling is at some level about learning. Yes, and on that. Yeah. Yeah. And in fact, you know, I'd go even further now it is all about learning. You know, I mean, it's a cliche in screenwriting terms is what does your protagonist learn. But that is the shape of all fundamentally archetypal stories. The character has a flaw they learn to overcome that flaw. And the reason that's the archetypal shape I think because it embodies a lesson you want to pass on. So in a sense that, yeah, what storytelling is fundamentally is knowledge wraps up in such a way for maximum viral transmission. You know, it's like, you know, if you go back to its earliest things, you know, you tell stories to protect the tribe, to give the tribe meaning in a, you know, in a fundamentally unfriendly world. And then, you know, what story the rat the story does the fact that it makes you emotionally identify weaponizes that knowledge. So it so it overcomes all other things and embeds itself within, I mean, within your tribe fundamentally, you know, so I think yeah it's it's if you want to pass on knowledge successfully you do it in the form of story. If we disregard for a moment like the underlying structural traits of the three act or the five act structure, the formula for great story is the lesson to be learned is that the. Yeah, yeah, it's absolutely that but you know again three act structure is the perfect illustration of that you know a character exists, they have a problem. They've thrown down a rabbit hole, you know, and they have to work their way out of the rabbit hole, and they work their way out of the rabbit hole by learning the thing they need to learn to overcome their initial problem which they didn't do in the last act in the archetype. And there was something a few years ago. I think it was the University of Washington and then University of Vermont I saw a BBC article about it, and it was saying that they're, they've done a sentiment analysis of all Western literature using AI and they were saying that there's only six story types. There's the ranks of riches riches to rags Icarus and do you agree with that, or is it all about it's really interesting because because I mean yeah there is there is a trope isn't it I mean I think when I started yeah it was there there are only seven stories, and then I was trying to And a student asked me this this was long before I did the book or the teaching, and I was trying to work out what they were I could never quite articulate it. And even then there was Christopher Booker's massive magnum opus on storytelling, whose name I forget for a second it'll come back to me. This is the seven basic plots, of course it is the seven basic plots. And I mean it's an amazing book it's mad because you know Christopher Booker was clearly mad. And, you know, like, if you think I've read a lot his learning was just mind bogglingly off the scale. And, you know, he comes to he has this extraordinary knowledge and he comes to ridiculous conclusions this is a storytelling is all based on young but he doesn't, there's no proof. It just the patterns fit you, but that's not proof. And he articulates the seven basic plots and rags to riches is one of them. I can't remember the others off hand. There's a Cinderella as well which is yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I'll look it up if you want. But then he says he one of the plots is comedy. And now you know, you know, any of us can answer that's not a plot. You know, that's a genre. And so it sort of breaks down. Now I think there probably are, you know, a small tapestry of stories but even there, they all overlap. You know, because Cinderella is a rags to riches story it is a tripe over adversity story you know it is a story where a character learns it's you know it's all of those. They all overlap with Cinderella and it's dark inversion. You know, I mean Cinderella is Harry Potter and is Star Wars. I mean they're all the same story, Silas, Marna, whatever. So I think I think probably I would argue there's there's really two stories. There's one story and then the second story is that story turned on its head. But I just made that up. That's the second book right. It's coming. Yeah, I'll send that to Penguin after and see how they react to that. That's a really great, fantastic sentence. A story is like a magnet dragged through randomness. You think I think that's actually probably touch pretentious. But yeah, yeah, I mean, I was trying to come up with an image that that was striking enough to say, you know, the world is random and chaotic and and terrifying because of that and what stories make the world safe. So you take all these things and you pull them into an order that makes the world go, ah, I get it now. That's OK. And some of that order is based on rational observation. But you know, it's just as equal to say, you know, I mean, religion is the perfect story. You know, it's like it's a story that defines you as a person. It's not particularly rational. But it is a magnet dragged through the iron filings of randomness, you know, pulling them into a straight line. Your stories make the world safe. Even if they're scaring you, they sort of make the world safe. They make the world coherent because otherwise it's just terrifying super randomness. Understanding through learning. Yeah. Yeah, you know, funny enough that I did get in Sue's corner in private eye, if that means anything to your listeners with the book because because I said there's a bit about the crisis points in the book where I talk about where I refer to the Muppet movie. And literally at the crisis point in the Muppet movie, the remake Muppet movie, you know, they say to the central character like, are you a man or a Muppet? And he has to choose. In some way, we are all that central character faced with exactly the same dialogue. And I quite rightly ended up in Sue's corner for that one. Now storytelling is, I did a few years in corporate and it's everyone's talking about storytelling and marketing and everything. So everything is storytelling in these days. There's the type of structures that you analyze in the book. Do you think they can be mapped on to like the most boring business presentation. They should be. Because I think all presentations, you know, if you've got to try to get points because you tell us you should be telling a story and the best presentations are just narrative in PowerPoint or oral form. But it is, it's, so yeah, if you want to, if you want to communicate your knowledge to another person effectively, you have to tell it as a story because because then it works emotionally. The stories work. They don't work rationally. They work emotionally. But I mean, I've sat through all those business presentations. I mean, you know, over years of going to various conferences, and it's quite weird because a lot of people don't. I mean, some people are brilliant at it and very good, but a lot of people don't. You know, I remember talking to some people saying, like, you're giving the answer where at the beginning that you've got to save the answer till the end. And they go, oh, no, no, we're always told to give the answer at the beginning so otherwise people will get bored. And you know, like, and I, you know, I mean, my to which my answer is like, but you tease the answer, you tell them you have the answer. And you build up why that answer is so important and how it will change your life if you know it, but you don't tell it till the last 10 pages. Otherwise, they've got no reason to keep watching or listening. And it's exactly the same with every presentation. You know, what's the big reveal. Well, yeah, you asked all stories are question and answer. You know, so really, you know, you start at the beginning you pose a question and then you drum into people why the answer to this question is so important and so life changing. And then you tease it and tease it and tease it until the very end and you give it away. Yeah, actually, if you go back to 2007 Steve Jobs doing that iPhone presentation, that's that's got a narrative right there, isn't it? Yeah, he was brilliant. Yeah, I mean, oh my God, yeah, I mean he was a massive native and he was the perfect protagonist. Oh, yeah. Actually, talking protagonist. What, as a writer, do you think is more enjoyable to create? Is it the protagonist or the antagonist? Oh, well, that's a good question. The antagonist, I imagine, I mean, I mean, the antagonist is the most important element, I think I'm coming to this conclusion. Actually, it's all about the enemy. Yeah, and I think what led me to that conclusion was actually watching Joe Biden's campaign. Which was really fascinating because effectively he didn't do anything, really. He just sort of sat in a bunker for a year and didn't scare anyone. And he was like, I am safe, I am sound, I drive a car, I'm just like you, and I appeal to blue collar and white collar. But nothing really controversial. But the Trump was so powerful as an enemy by that, particularly when COVID came along, but that was enough to give him the narrative to defeat Trump. So I think that to me is like, you know, every great story is defined by its antagonist, always forces of antagonism. And if you get that right, then the story shape emerges naturally around it. You know, we need to hate the enemy, or understand why it's so important to beat the enemy. And that works in story, that works in Jaws and Beowulf, obviously. But it also works, you know, if you look at the Elizabeth Holmes story, the Theranos story, the enemy is people dying too young. And of course you want to defeat that. Of course you want to defeat it. You want to defeat it more than anything in the world. And that's what made, I mean, that coupled with her extraordinary personality, you know, made her the youngest billionaire in Silicon Valley. It was obviously based on nothing in the end. But you know, that's a really good example of that thing. Anyone you're talking about the antagonist? So I wanted to talk to you about some recent massive hits like, you know, Breaking Bad, Downton Abbey, Stranger Things. And then I suddenly thought of Friends. Yeah. Is there an antagonist in Friends? Well, friends, whether you like it or not, you can't not but acknowledge it is the singular most successful now to products that has been produced in the last 50 years. It is mind-bogglingly successful and mind-bogglingly brilliant. I think there's an enemy in every week. There's a problem every week that threatens the coherence of the gang. So there isn't one big, because it's fundamentally serious shape to a story of the week, the one where. So, so you're in every episode, there's a problem, you're desperate for our protagonist to overcome that week. The bigger design, which I think is was it's kind of brilliant was was was all in that simple logline they sold it with, which is your friends or your family now. And, you know, what's so clear is that looking back at it now is, you know, one level the antagonists are the parents, the family. It's everyone around them are the threat to their family. All their parents are so utterly useless and dysfunctional and crazy. You know, in some level they are the antagonist that binds the gang together. The gang have had to make a new family out of their friends because the families existed in the Waltons. And before that the Andy Griffith show, you know, it doesn't exist anymore. But I think it's that that combination. I mean, not everything's a monster film, as I'm trying to say, but as long as you care enough to wish the antagonist dead, you know, metaphorically, then the story will work. And what happens when you don't follow the rules of narrative structure? Do we not do we not have examples because they're not successful enough? And we don't know these. No, I mean, there's plenty that I mean, you know, I mean, I spend a lot of time watching obscure art house movies partly to ask that question, but also because I really like that. You know, in fact, I grew up on them far. You know, I mean, mainstream narrative came to me very late. I was much more interested in, you know, the films of Jean-Luc Goddard when I was young, largely because my father made me watch them. And the answer is, yeah, there's loads of films that don't follow archetypal narrative. And here's everything from Michael Hanecker to last year in Marion Band 2. Yeah, Tarkovsky. I mean, the list is endless, really. And, you know, what I think is fascinating about those, those, those all those stories is they, it's not that they don't have the archetype within them because they do. But what they do is it's like, it's like jazz or it's like, you know, modern music is, you know, you expect music to resolve. And that's what happens in a Disney film or a Marvel film. It resolves as you would expect it to. But in a Michael Hanecker film, you know, there's a murder. You expect the murder to be caught, but they're not. And that's really odd. And it's disconcerting. You're playing against the melody. You know, you're going to a seventh or a sixth or a minor, you're coming back with a minor key that's a tonal. And that, of course, that works. It works brilliantly because it feels uncomfortable and it gives you the feeling the filmmaker wants you to have. It will never, ever be as commercially successful as something that resolves into the major key. Again, just won't because more people want stories to make them happy all the time. But it's still there. And, you know, there's more and more extreme versions of it. But even in Andre Rueble, if you have the Tarkovsky film, where there's the protagonist isn't in it for two thirds of the film. You know, you can you realize that actually the protagonist is is the theme, which is the creation of destruction and then recreation of art. Once again. So you find its shape in there in all kinds of interesting ways, but chopped up by mad people to create, you know, interesting narrative dissonance, which is really exciting. Do you think that dissonance is there in what's it called three billboards outside Evan Missouri, Francis McDormand and Sam Rockwell. Because they don't this doesn't really achieve achieve their aim and get the resolution that they're searching for. We get a different resolution, don't they? A new relationship. You should have asked me to watch it before we did the core because I haven't seen it since it came out. I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed it. Yeah, there's there's a journey that they all go on. You know, and it may not be the class. I mean, you know, it's more of an art house film than a mainstream film. I'd have to watch it again. I think, you know, from from from memory, Francis McDormand's character learns empathy and and learns that, you know, Woody House and isn't the enemy. But I need to watch that again. There's that learning again, though. That's it. That's the story. If they change, then it kind of proves the archetype, I think. What has impressed you narrative structure wise in TV film theater novels in the last year or so? Oh, well, yeah, great question. I watched the first time I watched a film called Satan's tango to Hungarian film, which is seven hours. Wow, seven hours in black and white, all in the rain. It literally rains out the whole thing pretty much. And the opening shot is lovely. It's a real test of your will. The opening shot is an eight minute shot tracking shot of cows walking through a deserted farm. What the hell? But it's kind of British hypnotically brilliant. I love that. Yeah. And again, you can see, you step back, you can see the shape. But the thing that the show at the moment that I think is the most sophisticated piece of writing on television is actually this is us, the NBC, you know, American show about the family cutting between past and present. Okay. Which I was surprised myself by saying, because it's very mainstream and it's not really spoken of in the way, you know, the fashionable Netflix show would be. In terms of the way it manipulates time and structure and in terms of just brilliant technique and the use of theme. It's, it's the first three seasons indeed are absolutely careless. I think they're just mind bogglingly brilliant. And of course I would add to that, you know, you know, and everyone said this before me I may destroy you. You know, the Michaela Cole show I think is breathtakingly brilliant as well. You don't know either of these. I'll have to find them. You don't know God. What they've been the show notes for. Yeah. Well, I mean, they're very accessible and you know, they're both on Amazon and Netflix or whatever. So absolutely worth, worth, worth watching. You know, I try and watch everything but but you know, sometimes it's hard. It's too much. Were you as flabbergasted as everyone else seems to be by Fleabag? Oh, yeah. No, yeah, Fleabag. Yeah. I mean, it's very, it's a beautiful show. Yeah. And season two as well was fabulous too. Yeah. She she's fantastic, you know, but it's a it's a lovely. I mean, she's got such a lovely voice, you know, in terms of narratively. It's so brilliant. It's that acidic vulnerability. Yeah. It's just brilliant. And yeah, she's she's really special. It was so like IRL it's like so in real life for so many people. I think that like hidden voice of her. Yeah. Making the fourth wall. Yeah. Yeah. Brilliant. And also, you know, like she, yeah, she, you know, she's very smart because, you know, a she took it from a stage monologue and adapted it and opened it out. Brilliant. But ended it exactly at the right time. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. And yeah, I made destroy is very similar in all kinds of ways. If you haven't seen it, watch it. It's brilliant. Okay. Now, earlier you skipped over your career, the BBC in channel four. I think you're ahead of everything. Right. So you're on the side. Yeah. But I just wanted, I wanted to ask as a producer or executive producer, is there a particular plot line that you managed to insert in anything that you're most proud of? Well, no, I mean, when I was, when I was, yeah, I started off on EastEnders, you know, the BBC soap. And, and what I, you know, I started, my big break was, was getting the job of storyline. And I storylineed probably in 1994, I store and a whole year of EastEnders by myself. Wow. So I literally sat in my bedroom for a year. Chain smoking in the days when I smoked. And I mean, it was really bad for your health. And I put everything, my whole life I put in, I just, because I was just, you just grabbing story. Yeah, my flatmate would come back and tell me what he'd done that night. And I just put it into the show. And, and so there's a, there's a lot of, you know, and also like, you know, there were, there were two characters I storyline. One was this extraordinary, brilliant, incredible, incredible, incredibly successful, successful with women. And there was one character who was the complete opposite, the spotty Oink who, you know, couldn't get arrested. And, and I realized years later that of course the, the Latharia was the person I wanted to be. And, and, and the terrible failure was the person I was. And I, that told me a lot about storytelling, how your unconscious works its way into character. So it's more on an unconscious level. You play out your own neuroses through characters. That's amazing to have that responsibility on your own though. Is that, is that unusual or in America that wouldn't happen in the writer's room? Well, in those days, I mean TV was so different then. And it was an accident. I mean, yeah, I didn't mean to do it, but somebody left and then the producer said to me, can you do the next month than, that I did it. And he said, can you do the next month? And he just sort of carried on from there. And in a way, it was, it was, it was, I mean, it was brilliant. I love doing it. And it was at that point where those days, the show was being watched by 16 million people. So it was so exciting, you know, knowing that literally you'd get on a bus and you'd hear people talking about what you've done the day before. And everyone was talking about it in those days. So that was lovely and very exciting. So no, it was, you know, was it a responsibility? Well, there were a load of writers around me to tell me I was rubbish and make it better. So there was a safety net, you know, but I think in some bizarre way, it was the job I'd always been born to do. And in some ways it was the most important job I've ever done. Okay. Well, just give us a little treat. What was one of the bigger plot moments of that, that year that you were doing that? Oh, God. Which there were loads of affairs, obviously loads of love triangles. The big story, there were two, two big stories. One was, I mean, again, you'd never get away with it. I don't think nowadays is like David and Carol. The two characters who came back to this square around the same time entirely separately. And, and David fell in love with Carol's daughter Bianca. And then of course, just as they're starting to get together, Carol comes along and says, she's your daughter. And, and you play out the aftermath of that, which was quite uncomfortable story times, but it was actually fascinating and the actors were brilliant. And so that actually works, worked really well. The one I'll probably go to my grave doing is, and I don't know how much it means to all people listening was, was, was not that dissimilar. With the characters Kat and Zoe and you're not my mother. Yes, I am. Which is when, when the daughter, the sister discovers that the person, she thinks her sister is actually her mother. So it was a riff on that. But if you live in the UK at that time, you'll know it. It's very famous in the UK. I mean, that's, but that's straight from Greek tragedy, surely. Yeah. I mean, that is it. They're all completely from great tragedy and you know, endless variations of it. And also, you know, I mean, the Star Wars thrown in there as well, obviously. Yeah. But, you know, it's really, the best soap stories are great tragedy. Although, you know, a lot of great tragedies were far more violent and disturbing. But I love, you know, there's that simplicity about great tragedy. Yeah. One of the first story I really read as a teenager and fell in love with was the, it was Antigone. And there's such a beautiful story and that moral dilemma of the hearts of it. And yeah, those are the stories I love. The Antigone story is just brilliant. And the argument about should you bury the corpse is brilliant. Now, just to finish, just a last question. The, what you're talking about and what you're talking about in the book is it's so ingrained in our DNA. Right. And, but it's not taught anymore. And I'm just wondering if there's a future or how do you, how would you see the future of the teaching of storytelling? Because surely there must be a change in education coming up because it's, it's so like, you know, in the Victorian era, almost the, the schooling that we have and storytelling, personal finance, household budgeting, it must change at some point. How would you like to see storytelling being taught? Would it be going from Greek and moving through to current examples or what would you see it as? It's a very good question. I mean, I think in schools, you know, I mean, they do touch on it. Yeah, there's the story mountain, I think is a favorite one that they teach in primary schools. So that's, I mean, in a way, because storytelling is really an instinctive phenomenon. I'm not sure how much that level you need to teach it. You just need to get loads of practice telling stories and the more stories you tell, the better you'll be. Yeah, but it is a big bugbearer mind that, you know, I mean, it's getting better now. It's a lot better than it used to be, but the antipathy towards studying narrative structure in any shape or form in the industry for so many years was really striking and deeply disturbing and deeply stupid. And even now, you know, although it is better because a lot of film schools do do do it, there's still antipathy of, you know, but there's also nonsense. There's lots of nonsense written about storytelling and scriptwriting. I mean, I subscribe to every storytelling block and most of them I'm banging my head against it like it's just garbage. Now, even if you read Christopher Vogler, which is fascinating in all kinds of ways, Christopher is examples in the back where he tries to apply the writer's journey and they're completely insane. They don't make any sense. They're just wrong. They're just all mad. Yet that book took over the world. So what worried me and would in fact spur me on in a way was, you know, it really worried me that we were working in a profession that was earning billions of dollars every year and cost things. And should we not be studying it more closely to understand how it works? And I think, you know, the thing missing is a coherent language. Everyone talks a different language when they talk about a story like, you know, a crisis point to me is not a crisis point to anybody else. A midpoint to me means something completely different. So there's no coherence. I mean, it's slightly better in America and in America there's a much greater acceptance of three abstracts. Whereas in, you know, I grew up in the BBC where Robert McKee was the enemy. You know, like he was Satan. And, you know, Alan Plater, the great British driver says Alan Plater, proudest moments of his entire career was punching Sid Field in the face. You know, they were like, they just, I mean, but they wrote perfect structure. You know, it was so surreal. I remember talking to Alan Plater about it once. I mean, he had long dead now, but he was one of the seminal writers in the early days of British television. And in his later years, he was writing Midsummer Murders, which was a big deal. He was in his 80s then, I think, and he was still brilliant. And I said to him, because he loathed structure, he said, there's all rubbish, just write. And, you know, I said, so how'd you write Midsummer Murders then? He said, oh, he said, it's really interesting. He said, because, you know, the murder is always just before the first advertising break. Yeah. And then just before the last advertising break, you know, all hope is lost. And I go, that's fucking structure. That's my language. That's structure, right? It's, you know, and so, and because we all do it, it's in everything, you know, it's like, you know, more you look, and then you have to be wary of confirmation bias. But, you know, if you're any doubt, structure is this Reed Shakespeare, because it's just there. Yeah. What was the question? Actually, it was about schooling, I just, what about, you said something really interesting before we started about you are learning right now, because you are reading books to your very young son and you're learning from the children. Oh, yeah. It's such a brilliant instruction because, you know, obviously I can't sit there and read Antigone while he's around. You know, it's not going to work. Yeah. So he forced me to watch Octonauts and, you know, Sean the sheep, you know, both of which are fantastic. I mean, Sean the sheep is genius, I think every screenwriter should work on Sean the sheep. I think that visual storytelling skill. But, you know, what becomes so clear is that the level of identification with the protagonist and the level of desire to defeat the antagonist and the emotional hit that comes from achieving that. But literally my son spends all day pretending to be the central character in the drama he's watched that morning. And we all do that. We just suppress it as we get older. It's still there. But of course, that's what you're looking for in the story is emotion. You are the protagonist. It's just so transparent in children. It's joyous to watch. You know, I mean, I remember it from when I, you know, I saw you only live twice when I was 13 years old in Swiss Cottage Odeon. And literally for the whole week I was swaggering down the road. It's like in the most obnoxious way possible. I suspect because I was in my head Sean Connery. It's the same thing. But as you get older, you go, oh, yeah, that was fun. So you kind of repress it as you get older. But it's still there. If you think of the last show you watched, you know, at some level you want to be that central character. Of course you do. I'm not sure. I'm not sure I agree with you about how many British men suppress the desire to be James Bond. I think it's quite prevalent in the adult. Probably. Yeah. In my circles it's frowned upon. Anyway, it's all about learning. I'm glad you're still learning. Everyone should be still learning. So thank you, John, for your time. Absolutely incredibly interesting speaking to you. Thank you so much. Let's do an absolute pleasure. Thank you, Brent.