Wielding his massive experience from film, TV, comics, and more, Brian McDonald lays out a history of storytelling and shows the reader how the best tales tug at our truest biological instinct: the need to survive. Readers will see how different forms of survival - physical, emotional, spiritual - inform the arc of character development in a way that makes them more complex and compelling. And how plot and circumstance must then force the protagonist to meet their worst nightmare. Toby Cypress's electric art guides the reader through the underworld, visualising each narrative masterpiece, and bringing the ideas to life.