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I graduated from the University of Virginia with a Bachelor of Arts degree (with Honors)
in Religious Studies and Yale University, where I received a Masters of Divinity degree
cum laude. I’ve variously enjoyed stints as a musician and stand-up comedian.
In my spare time, I took up teaching in 2002 in the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program,
receiving its Outstanding Instructor Award in 2005. For eight years, I was a visiting
lecturer in the Writing for Screen and Stage program at the University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill. In 2010, I co-founded Screenwriting Master Class with my longtime
friend and professional colleague Tom Benedek whose movie credits include Cocoon.
In 2008, I launched Go Into The Story which for the last five years has been the Official
Screenwriting Blog of the Black List. Some numbers: The site has had over 10 million
unique visits, 20 million page views, and I have posted 20,000+ items for over 3,000
consecutive days. The Go Into The Story Twitter feed has over 43,000 followers.
In November 2015, I went public with the Zero Draft Thirty Challenge – write an entire
script draft in 30 days – and over 1,000 writers joined in. Out of that, the Zero Draft
Thirty Facebook group emerged and as of January 2017 has over 1,400 members.
In 2016, I was excited to be offered and accept the position of Assistant Professor at the
DePaul University School of Cinematic Arts in Chicago where I teach screenwriting to
both undergraduate and graduate students.
© Scott Myers
About the Go Into The Story PDF Series
The Go Into The Story PDF Series
Two motivators I had in launching Go Into The Story in May 2008 were:
1. to create an extensive online resource for writers and
2. to provide that information for free.
The world needs more diverse voices in the filmmaking community and making educational
content available to anyone and everyone is my humble way to facilitate that vision.
There are currently over 20,000 posts on my blog and while an impressive number, it can be
overwhelming for readers. So, based on suggestions from several people, I decided to launch
a new initiative:
Make a new Go Into The Story PDF available each month to the public.
I reached out to the GITS community for volunteers to help with this effort and I’d like to
express my deep gratitude to Trish Curtin and George “Clay” Mitchell. They stepped up to
handle the process of taking blog posts and creating the ebooks in this series. A special blast
of creative juju to you both!
You can download the previous editions by clicking on their titles below.
This is the fourth book in the series, entitled “A Screenwriter’s Guide to Aristotle’s Poetics”
© Scott Myers
Preface
Over all the years that I’ve been interviewing screenwriters, I typically ask what some of
their influences are. One book title comes up over and over again: Aristotle’s Poetics.
Up until 2013, I confess I’d never read the entire thing, only bits and pieces. So I thought:
“Why not do a weekly series of blog posts to provide a structure to compel me to go through
it?” That way we’d all benefit from the process.
This book is a compilation of that 44-week blog series that became a lively and engaged
discourse, with enthusiastic contributions from a traveling feast of Aristotelian scholars.
For background on Aristotle, you can click here to see an extensive article on him in the
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
To download “Poetics” for yourself, you can click here. While the original GITS blog series
was published week-by-week over thirty-three weeks, you'll notice at that link, that the text
has been fittingly split into three larger sections. For this book, it felt appropriate to do the
same. One. Two. Three. Very Aristotelian.
Poetics by Aristotle is considered by many to be the single most important text related to
writing in history. While I’m often quoted as saying in relation to screenwriting that there are
no rules - when it comes to story - I confess that there is some wisdom I do consider,
figuratively of course, to be etched in stone. That in no way precludes the opportunity to
engage with it, to question, consider and use it as a foundation from which to create - quite
the opposite - it is an invitation to do so.
Simply, if you want insights into how to tell a story - Aristotle’s your guy.
Aristotle may be long dead - but his ideas are very much alive, and as illuminating and
relevant today as they have been in every era in which humans have sought to understand
and express their reality through the arts. It’s a long tradition, that has included some of the
greatest minds in human history.
For a relatively short document, (it’s a long pamphlet, rather than a tome) it provides
storytellers with a depth and clarity of understanding that has still not been surpassed.
Impressive. So, along with so many, living and dead - I unashamedly and enthusiastically lay
claim to discipleship - I am an Aristotelian. Peripatetic, if you will.
I’m so glad you decided to walk this path with me.
© Scott Myers
Aristotle's Poetics: Contents
Cover
About the Author
About the Go Into The Story Free PDF Series
Preface
Introduction: The Nature and Purpose of the Arts
Section One………..Contents
Section Two………..Contents
Section Three………Contents
If you love movies, trust me, you will want to read this entire piece because it appears that
‘Poetics’ is directly relevant to the current state of cinema and storytelling.
Plato argues that Rationality is the path most closely aligned with the Ideal and the Arts
can only offer pale imitations of the Ideal, even worse, “encourage emotional response”
which presumably steers one away from the realm of the Ideal.
Aristotle disagrees.
The Arts in creating imitations, whether ‘good’ or ‘bad’, are “morally instructive”.
Moreover we learn through imitation and that experience is itself pleasurable. And with that
simple assertion, Aristotle opens the door to the wonderful world of metaphor, which is key
to all storytelling.
But it is the last paragraph of this introductory excerpt that has shocking relevance.
For our purposes, let’s consider the decade of the 70s to be the greatest era of American
cinema. That represents the apex of narrative storytelling in movies at least in terms of
domestic releases, those filmmakers our symbolic equivalent of “great-great-grandparents”
— Scorcese, Coppola, Forman, Polanski, Lucas, De Palma, Spielberg, Cassavetes, Pakula,
Ashby, Friedkin, and of course all the screenwriters, actors, producers, and crew with whom
they worked. Look at the current state of American cinema and compare now to then.
Consider whether you think the following would be a fair assessment:
Moreover what if these “routes” of which Aristotle speaks represent narrative dynamics that
are universal in nature, transcending time and culture? Wouldn’t we want to know and
understand them regardless of what we thought of 70s movies versus contemporary fare,
no matter what type of genre we write, whatever our audience is?
I bet he’d give McKee a run for his money.
When I first posted this introduction on my blog, I put out the call:
Well, the GITS community certainly did let me know - and as we went along, some
fun, learned and insightful people weighed in on the discussion. You can read
their replies in the Go Into The Story comments archive here. Now I’m putting out
that same call to YOU. Are you with me? Have you read Poetics, or are you going
to dive in for the first time now? Please, keep the conversation alive - join in the
discussion in the comments section of the blog at this link.
No matter the type of poem — epic, tragedy, comedy — or even song, there is a universality at
work in terms of narrative structure. So right here, we can see the foundation of structural
analysis.
Indeed were it not for Aristotle, Joseph Campbell may never have wound his way toward the
Hero’s Journey, a sense that all stories tell one story. We see echoes of this in relation to
screenwriting. William Goldman famously said:
As we go through Poetics, it will be interesting to see how much flexibility Aristotle allows in
terms of the variability of narrative structure. A basic question to consider:
The GITS community had plenty to say when this post first hit the blog in 2013. Visit the
Comment Archive to hear what our venerable Aristotelian scholars had to say!
Join in the discussion and add your take on this part in the comments section of the blog here.
There is a lot going on here. Looking at these observations from the perspective of a
screenwriter, let me take a whack at parsing some of the key concepts:
Moral Character:
What this appears to acknowledge is what screenwriters know as Good Guys and Bad Guys,
and there are massive implications as a result, most notably an interface of “goodness” and
“badness” as represented by characters that results in conflict.
Types:
Another key assertion because this opens the door to character types.
Goodness as represented by Mentors and Attractors.
Badness as represented by Nemeses.
As they are represented by Protagonists starting a journey which pulls at them to go one
way or the other.
Finally I take this construct as a major validation of working with character archetypes. It’s
great that Joseph Campbell used them, inspired in large part by his studies of Carl Jung
who emphatically embraced them. But some 2,000 years previous, Aristotle was already
laying the groundwork of writers working with types as a way of understanding and crafting
stories.
Do yourself a favor and check out what the GITS community had to say when this post first hit
the blog in 2013. You can read in the Comment Archive the developing conversation with
TeamAristotle and others. It should feed your inspiration enough to join the discussion HERE.
These, then, as we said at the beginning, are the three differences which distinguish artistic
imitation: the medium, the objects, and the manner.
So as screenwriters, we not only have to be aware of our medium [screenplay] and our
object [characters], we also have to be cognizant of our manner of imitation, the
specific voice we use to narrate the story. More questions to consider:
All of this would seem to fall under the category of “manner of imitation.”
When this post first hit the blog in 2013, it sparked some insights and observations from readers.
You can read in the Comment Archive the developing conversation and insights from the GITS
community. You know, that community can include you, too - we’d love to have you. Keep the
conversation alive - go on, give us your take on this part… join the discussion HERE.
As I’ve noted previously, the lens through which I am reading “Poetics” is screenwriting, so
while leaving some of the more esoteric history and ideas in this chapter to those steeped in
Aristolelianism, let me make these two observations:
First, we have already explored the idea that Aristotle’s notion of imitation is applicable to
screenwriting as a reference to narrative voice, the unique perspective a writer takes toward
telling a story reflected in this nifty little formula:
Per Aristotle, imitation is just one “cause” from which poetry sprung.
Rhythm:
Anybody who has immersed themself in the world of cinema and in particular read a lot of
scripts should resonate with the idea of rhythm. As we absorb all these scripts, stories,
structures and styles, we turn around in our own writing and “improvise,” testing out what
we’ve picked up until we can make it our own. In terms of screenwriting, I would take
rhythm to be that Gestalt understanding we derive from our reading and analysis, feeding
an intuitive sense of how a story should go.
In that sense, rhythm is hugely important as a corrective to formulaic writing, perhaps the
single most common critique of screenplays submitted by outsiders into the Hollywood
system.
It is one thing to grab a screenwriting guru’s book on screenplay structure and adopt that
approach to writing a script.
It is quite another thing to take that knowledge, along with a lot of other content, pull all
that left-brain knowledge into our right-brain, and in combination find the rhythm of each
story, to be in harmony with its beating heart and throbbing soul, and create a vibrant living
screenplay.
I was reminded of the history of movies. How it all started with this, then this, then to short
films like this, then actual short films with plots like this. Then one-reel films. And multiple
reel films. Editorial techniques such as cross-cuts and dissolves. Intertitles to convey
‘dialogue’. Thus when Aristotle reviews the development of the theatrical form of tragedy —
one actor, second actor, third actor, dialogue, scene-painting, short plot to stories with
“greater compass” — I see a parallel to the evolution of storytelling in cinema.
Here is a takeaway: Screenplays are not a static narrative form, rather an unfolding one,
continually pushed and pressed by writers in conjunction with technological advances and
audience tastes.
And always there is the individual writer’s unique creativity. Yes, there are patterns and
structures and conventional wisdom and all that, and it is critical we know as much as we
can about them.
You can read in the Comment Archive the developing conversation and insights from the GITS
community from the original 2013 post. You know, that community - which includes you - is a
part of the ongoing evolution of the craft of screenwriting - go on… join the discussion HERE.
Comedy has had no history, because it was not at first treated seriously.
Perhaps now we know why the Academy Awards have not given a Best Picture Oscar to a
comedy since Annie Hall in 1977: Because modern folks treat comedy much the same way —
apparently — that people in ancient Greece did, considering it to be a lesser narrative form.
I would hope someone steeped in Aristotle could go into more depth about why comedy was
considered in this light, but for now I guess all of us who write comedy can take comfort in
the observation made by actor Edmund Gwenn whose dying words reportedly were:
Moving onto Aristotle’s second subject in this section, I find this intriguing:
Setting aside the contemporary idea of free verse, historically poetry has had certain
narrative forms and patterns. And this is another reason why I think there is a significant
point of comparison between poetry and screenwriting.
Although I resist the use of the term “blueprint” to describe a screenplay - because it
somehow feels like it diminishes the creativity of what we do as screenwriters - the fact is a
script is the basis upon which the people who actually make a movie make the movie. Thus
by default, a script has certain conventions, seemingly similar to how Aristotle thought
about Epic Poetry and Tragedy.
The trick for screenwriters is to know and understand those conventions, working with and
around them so that the creative expression of our story can shine through, not reduced to
formulaic writing, but instead come alive within the context of a screenplay’s structure.
I will be curious what, if anything, Aristotle has to say about that very subject in the rest of
Poetics.
How about you? What do you take from this part of Aristotle’s Poetics?
When this post first hit the blog in 2013, it sparked a conversation, which you can read in the
GITS Comment Archive Here. It should feed your inspiration enough to join the discussion HERE.
As I read that second paragraph, there seems to be six parts to Aristotle’s articulation of
tragedy:
With Part 6, we slam headlong into some really weighty content, so I have broken up this
chapter into sections, so the list below is a mini ‘Table of Contents’ for this section.
Coming at this from the perspective of screenwriting, I’ll go through Parts 2, 3, 4 and 6
first, then, in the next section, come back and in the next section, look at the relationship
between 1 and 5 because to me, the pairing of those two seems like pure gold.
This reads like Aristotle is saying tragedy must by definition have a certain heft to it and
that heft is achieved through its degree of seriousness, thematic weight, and a sense of
fullness and resolution. In other words, tragedies must be substantial.
looks to be about various dramatic forms common to plays with a further suggestion that
there was at the time Aristotle crafted “Poetics” certain accepted practices in that regard,
i.e., what went where.
appears to speak to the fact that a play is performed by actors who convey an actual story.
Seems to be linked to 3. but instead of actual various narrative forms, such as verse or song,
this is about the way these parts are crafted using rhythm and harmony.
We’ve already considered imitation because Aristotle introduced the idea in Part 1:
For as there are persons who, by conscious are or mere habit, imitate and represent
various objects through the medium of colour and form, or again by the voice; so in
the arts above mentioned, taken as a whole, the imitation is produced by rhythm,
language, or ‘harmony’, either singly or combined.
Now if I get the meaning right, Aristotle does not mean imitation as copying or mere
mimicry, but rather that other word he couples with imitation here: represent.
Or perhaps better re-present. Stories are not exact copies of reality, but rather re-
presentations of them. So when we, the audience, see a movie, watch a TV show or hear a
story, we know it is different than the real thing, it is a fictionalized account.
Here is an example. Do you remember the 1996 movie Ransom starring Mel Gibson?
If you don’t remember the movie, you perhaps may recall the throaty growl Gibson’s
That movie was a huge hit, generating $309M in worldwide box office revenue. And I
remember reading at the time in the trades that one of the prime reasons Ransom
succeeded so well is because the numbers were propelled by one particular group of
moviegoers: Parents.
Think about that: Why would parents want anything to do with a movie which premise is
about one of the single worst fears a parent can have - the kidnapping of their child?
My theory is because Ransom offered parents a safe way to live out those fears. The movie
was an imitation of reality, there was a distance between the story and actual child
kidnapping, therefore parents could attend a screening and have an opportunity to
experience their worst fears, but in a way they could control and know the story would have
a beginning, middle and most important ending allowing them an eventual escape from this
horrific possibility.
That dovetails into the idea of purgation. It’s an interesting word which conjures up
images of ancient Romans chowing down on food and wine, then purging themselves by
vomiting, so they could go back to partying. But I dug deeper to find what the actual Greek
word was: κάθαρσις or catharsis.
Now that is a word I’ve run into a lot in my studies, particularly in the realm of psychology.
In a meta view, catharsis can be about a major moment when various psychological
dynamics come to a head, leading to a sort of purification of an individuals’ psyche, or at
least a more pure self-understanding.
That is valuable for a writer when thinking about Protagonist characters at key points in
stories where what they have experienced in their journey in the External World of actions
and events combined with what they have experienced in their accompanying journey in the
Internal World of reactions and emotions leads to significant shifts in their being,
commonly known as metamorphosis or transformation.
I doubt that’s what Aristotle is referring to here, but the distinction is only by degrees, for
while it’s possible in theory for an audience member to have such a revelatory experience
while witnessing a play, movie or what-not, more often their catharsis is smaller, although
no less meaningful or real in a psychological sense.
And the key to any sort of catharsis in an audience member to any type of story is their
identification with the situation, events, and especially the characters. To the degree we
resonate with the experience of the characters in a story, we connect with them, we
understand and empathize with their emotions, passions, wants and needs, and in effect we
participate in their experiences. That can lead to catharsis, a roiling of feelings and a release
of those feelings when the story resolves.
That dual dynamic right there, my friends, is one of the most fundamental reasons why
stories work, an understanding that Aristotle had hit upon over 2,300 years ago.
Wow.
Again, all of you fine Aristotelians, please let me know if I’ve got any of this wrong, it is just my
interpretation of imitation and purgation from the perspective of what it can mean in terms of
screenwriting (specifically) and storytelling (generally).
This post first hit the blog in 2013. The GITS Comment Archive Here will let you access the
original community conversation for all of Part 6a, and if you’d like to continue the dialogue -
you can join the discussion HERE.
This is interesting because one thing I have heard said about Aristotle is that he perceived
Plot to be preeminent above all else when it came to narrative.
Plot is the imitation of the action - for by plot here I mean the arrangement of the incidents
necessarily implies that a story would have no plot without “personal agents” who
Perhaps Plot may be the most important element of a story, however there is a necessary,
even prior positioning of “personal agents” or what we in the screenwriting trade call
characters.
The use of that term could get a little confusing, seeing as Aristotle has a different definition
for Character and a specific meaning for the concept of Thought:
By Character I mean that in virtue of which we ascribe certain qualities to the agents
This sounds an awful lot like what we may describe as a character’s personality traits or per
Carl Jung the nature of their psyche.
Thought is required wherever a statement is proved, or, it may be, a general truth enunciated
I’ll need some help with this because if Character means personality traits, it would seem to
follow that Thought pertains to the inner mind of a personal agent.
So the former is the way they present themselves to the External World in terms of their
persona, the latter a reflection of their Internal World.
This may not be at all what Aristotle means — again I welcome the insights of those who
If that is accurate, then it drives home to screenwriters the importance of linking “personal
agents” (characters) to actions, and the Internal World of beliefs and ideas as well as the
External World of personality and habits to those actions, and as importantly exploring
both realms to fully understand the actors in our story universe.
How about you? What do you take from this part of Aristotle’s “Poetics”?
The GITS Comment Archive Here will let you access the original community conversation on this
section, from the original 2013 blog posting - those interactions were great fun, and made this
series one of my favorites! Let’s continue the dialogue in the comments section of the blog, and
make your take on this part, a part of the ongoing discourse. You can join the discussion HERE.
The two parts that “constitute the medium of imitation” I would take to be Diction and Song.
Song would musical components of the piece. Diction I figure has to do with the metrical
structure of the written lines.
The one part tied to “manner” would, I think, be Spectacle. And that I’m assuming is the set
design, costumes, and what other elements of the play to make it appealing to the audience,
primarily on a visual level.
The three parts related to the “objects of imitation” would be Plot, Character, and Thought.
Plot, as we have read, is the “imitation of the action… the arrangement of the incidents.”
By Characters, I suspect Aristotle is referring not only to the “personal agents” whose
actions are intimately involved in the “incidents” of the Plot, but also those aspects of
personality we, as audience members, associate with individuals.
And Thought? As suggested previously, “Thought pertains to the inner mind of a personal
agent,” a reflection that in a story there is an External World of action and dialogue, and an
Internal World of intention and subtext.
Now I’m going to embrace my inner Carl Jung and go all alchemist here by adapting
meaning from each of these six that we, as contemporary screenwriters, might find more
specific resonance in them for our craft:
▪ Plot: I think we can all pretty much live with the concept of it being: “the
arrangement of the incidents.”
▪ Character: Also the idea of “personal agents” can work within the context of a
screenplay.
▪ Thought: We haven’t gotten there yet in Poetics, but I suspect Aristotle is going to
suggest that a Character’s actions are closely tied to, even driven by their Thought,
that is what is going on in their Inner Self [my words, not his]. And in my mind, this
is absolutely critical in developing a story. Plot does not emerge in a vacuum, rather
it derives from a specific collection of characters in a specific narrative context, each
character of whom has their unique Wants, Needs, Conscious, Unconscious,
Subconscious, and Backstory influences. I like the idea of Thought as a reference to
all of that ‘stuff,’ although it does risk minimizing Feelings, Emotions, Passions, and
the like which are equally, if not more powerful influences than mere ‘thought’. But if
we look at Thought broadly as referring to the entirety of a Character’s internal
▪ Diction: Since screenplays do not have any formalized sense of meter, although
screenwriters do (generally) cherish tight, lean writing, perhaps we can adapt Diction
to mean what I call Narrative Voice, essentially the attitude of the writer toward the
telling of the story as personified in the story’s invisible narrator. I even have that
nifty formula for it you may remember from earlier:
So Diction can refer to the distinctive ‘voice’ we bring to everything we write in a story
- scene description, dialogue, scene construction, transitions - the personality of our
Narrator as evidenced in the words we use to convey the story.
▪ Song: Again adapting the concept, what if we look at this as the Rhythm of the
narrative? It’s pace, the balance between action scenes and interaction scenes,
between night and day, outside and inside, the harmonies we create through the
interplay of our scenes and sequences?
▪ Spectacle: Here we land on pretty solid ground as movies are primarily a visual
medium and thus Spectacle would seem to best fit referring to the story’s cinematic
potential. What is it about our screenplay that is going to capture the ‘eyes’ of the
reader, and through that experience, their imagination? We must remember movies
were once (and sometimes still are) called ‘motion pictures,’ each word spotlighting
visuality. Motion. Picture. So Spectacle would seem to be a good reminder that we
must always think first about the visual narrative, how to arouse a reader’s sense of
what they can see. Note: “Spectacles” historically referred to someone’s eyeglasses,
so again the word steers us toward the idea of playing to a reader’s visual
sensibilities.
Well, that was fun! At the time of writing (in 2013), I was still awaiting the wisdom of our noble
Aristotelians to bring their heft to the comments on the blog, which they did HERE - but I was
then, and am still now, comfortable appropriating these six concepts into a modern framework,
hopefully in the spirit of their original intention. A reminder: I am looking at “Poetics” through the
lens of screenwriting - its relevance to the craft in contemporary times.
I welcome your thoughts, too. Keep the conversation alive - Join the discussion on the blog.
That is Plot.
And yet as I indicated in previous posts, I can’t get away from what seems to me to be an
equally inescapable fact: you can not have incidents, action, life or Plot without Characters.
Or not to confuse matters because of his use of the term in this section -
and by character here, I take it he means a moral or ethical quality of an individual, then
let’s say it this way:
Great, right? Here we have this place and these generic people.
At this point, it is an origin narrative, but without a plot.
And we all know what happens next. The serpent, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and
Evil; The commandment not to eat its fruit… which Adam and Eve do…
and they Fall from Grace. Now you have a story! A Tragedy at that.
So - to drive home my point, consider the last paragraph from Poetics featured today:
Therefore when Aristotle talks about Plot, he implies the presence of Personal Agents.
You can not dissociate them.
So if what you have thought about Poetics is that Aristotle puts Plot first and Character
second, that is, in my view, a misunderstanding of terms. Moral or ethical values, those
“beautiful colors,” sure, they are secondary in importance to Plot. But since we cannot have a
Plot without Personal Agents, both must by definition exist side-by-side in their importance
in crafting a story.
Why is this particularly important in terms of screenwriting? Because in my view, there is
way too much focus on screenplay structure, and not enough focus on developing characters.
Properly perceived, when developing characters, we concurrently develop plot. And when
developing plot, we concurrently develop characters.
As the creation myths in Genesis remind us, we cannot have a story unless we have
characters who create incidents, events, actions and have lives.
How about you? What do you take from this part of Aristotle’s “Poetics”?
A reminder: I am looking at “Poetics” through the lens of screenwriting - its relevance to the craft
in contemporary times. And I welcome the observations of any Aristotle experts to set me straight
as I’m just trying to work my way through this content the best I can. If you’d like to catch up,
You can read the Comments Archive from the original post. Why not add your own observations?
Keep the conversation alive and evolving on the blog by joining the discussion here.
Saying. Enunciated. This would suggest that unlike the idea of thought being an inner activity
of our mind, Aristotle’s take on Thought is something that emerges into the External World
through the act of speech. It is, however, more than simply words, rather it is language that
This takes me into the arena of theme. It could be an articulation of what is “possible and
pertinent” within the context of the overall narrative.
It could be the enunciation of a “general maxim” central to the story.
It could be a premise that is “proved to be or not to be.”
But it does seem to me that the way Aristotle views Thought, at least as he describes it
here, and a general notion of Theme as we typically refer to it nowadays are related.
With these first three components of Tragedy, clearly we see we cannot take them on face
value:
Plot is not just the structure of events, but as mythos, how those incidents
are organized to convey a coherent articulation of something of meaning.
All of which is to say, if we read “Poetics” merely at the surface level of meaning, we will
likely miss the essence of what Aristotle intended and certainly of what value we can glean
from his ideas as they relate to screenwriting.
I am looking at “Poetics” through the lens of screenwriting - its relevance to the craft in
contemporary times. I welcome the observations of any Aristotle experts to set me straight as I’m
just trying to work my way through this content the best I can. If you’d like to catch up, You can
read the Comments Archive from the original post.
Add your own observations! Keep the conversation alive - by joining the discussion here.
Song is an EMBELLISHMENT!
Not a necessity.
So please, any of you who go on to make movies, you don’t have to squeeze every sixteenth
note from your composer to amortize the project’s music budget. You don’t have to
telegraph with music what we’re supposed to feel each second of the story.
Give the characters and the narrative some room to breathe, stretches of quiet so the
audience members can process what’s going on rather than be assaulted by a ceaseless
cacophony of symphonic noise.
If you think I sound like a grumpy geezer now, just wait until we discuss the 6th element of
Tragedy which Aristotle considers to be at the very bottom in terms of importance.
I updated my blog post from the comments archive - with an observation by Jennine
Lanouette, author of the paper “The Uses and Abuses of Aristotle’s Poetics in Screenwriting
How-to Books” To see that paper, click here. Thanks so much for your contribution to the
discourse, Jennine.
I did my own immersion study of the Poetics about 15 years ago when, after I had
already been teaching screenwriting for a few years, I went back to graduate school
to brush up on drama history. I soon learned that what I had been taught about the
Poetics in film school was not entirely accurate. I decided to write a term paper on
all the misinterpretations of the Poetics I was finding in screenwriting how-to books,
a subject I found rather distressing, but that my (theater) professor thought was
hilarious. Thus, I have since endeavored, as far as possible, to seek a deeper
understanding. A couple of thoughts on the discussion so far:
I think it’s important to keep in mind that the Poetics marks only the beginning of
drama theory, not the end. Much more has come to be understood since then and
more is yet to be learned. Also, it was written in a specific cultural and historical
context that we can’t know fully, which is further complicated by our dependence on
translations. I would caution, therefore, against getting too minute and too literal
with the text. Better to simply appreciate the general principles.
For example, there are those out there who would like to read Aristotle’s prioritizing
of plot over character in a literal manner to justify cardboard character action films.
But this doesn’t take into account that for Aristotle the word Character was with a
capital C, meaning the inherent moral qualities of an individual, as opposed to
personality traits or psychology, and that frequently, in those days, Character was
portrayed through declamatory recitation, either by the chorus or the character
himself.
It was the tendency to describe a character’s inherent moral qualities through
dialogue that Aristotle was arguing against by relegating Character to second place.
This came from his philosophical belief that the true measure of a person’s moral
character is in his actions. It was also why he considered Tragedy a superior art
form to the Epic Poem, in that it provides the opportunity to show moral character
through a person’s actions rather than just talking about it. It was the relatively new
practice of revealing story elements through action that he was giving priority to by
putting plot first.
What does this tell us about screenwriting? First, we can let go of the idea that
character is secondary to plot since our understanding of character by now is quite
expanded from Aristotle’s, including as it does personality and psychology. He
couldn’t possibly have meant character as we know it because it didn’t exist in his
world. But more so, when Aristotle placed plot first, he was referring to structure,
which is to say the manner in which the actions are organized. What distinguishes
drama (Tragedy then, movies now) from narrative (the epic poem then, the novel
now) is the ability to use action to tell the story. But in order to be successful, the
action must be organized in a coherent structure. This was the radical new idea in
Aristotle’s time that still holds true today.
I was all set to go off on a rant about Hollywood’s obsession with ginormous CGI
(Computer Generated Imagery) movies with aliens, robots, monsters, superheroes,
vampires, zombies, global disasters…
Armed with Aristotle’s Totem Pole of Tragedy Elements and spectacle sitting right there at
the very bottom of importance, I was going to gleefully dance all over the mindless detritus
which was Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, the paradigm of this type of movie, a
product so utterly caught up in the spectacle of violence and destruction, my then almost
nine year-old son summed it up aptly when I asked him what the movie was about. His
succinct response: “Blowing stuff up.”
• That bombast of a movie blew up at the box office, generating a worldwide total of
$836M, so that should pretty much shut me up right there.
• Aristotle’s perception of what ‘spectacle’ was is light years away from what the CGI
and VFX wizards are capable of producing nowadays, coming a looooooong way
from the “stage machinsts” of old.
• And that brings up another big point: If Aristotle were alive today, what would he
think of the seemingly limitless visual possibilities available to storytellers?
What if he was one of those obsessed cosplay Comic-Con souls? Maybe he would have
enjoyed Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen?
I’ll have to rely on our Aristotelian experts for further analysis of this question:
When Aristotle says,
And if that is true, then we can introduce the idea of a “character driven” story.
Yes, it can be high concept.
It may have spectacle.
But for it to constitute something more than just “blowing stuff up”, the events that happen
to the personal agents in a story must be grounded in who, what, why and how those
characters are.
I am looking at “Poetics” through the lens of screenwriting, its relevance to the craft in
contemporary times. I welcome the observations of any Aristotle experts to set me straight as I’m
just trying to work my way through this content the best I can. The lively discussions in the
comment archive are well worth the read, and helped make this series one of my all-time favorites.
How about you? Click here and keep the conversation going on the blog. What do you take from
this part of Aristotle’s Poetics?
Okay, here we go. Arguably this second paragraph is the foundation stone of what we have
come to know as Three Act Structure:
Furthermore there are innate cycles in the physical universe, which reflect three movements:
• Sunrise - Day - Sunset
• Departure - Journey - Return
• Birth - Life - Death.
The idea of these three movements is so fundamental to the human experience, it is little
wonder that story structure evolved to Beginning, Middle and End. Nor I guess that
Aristotle should land on this articulation as well.
There are those nowadays who claim Three Act Structure in relation to a screenplay is a
“myth,” such as here and here. In my view, they do so at their peril.
Does each act have a substructure? Certainly.
May we divide each act into smaller sequences? Yes.
But almost invariably, those smaller components can be interpreted as comprising an act or
acts, and the overall narrative of a screenplay will more than likely have three overarching
movements.
I am looking at “Poetics” through the lens of screenwriting, its relevance to the craft in
contemporary times. I welcome the observations of any Aristotle experts to set me straight as I’m
just trying to work my way through this content the best I can. The lively discussions in the
comment archive are well worth the read, and helped make this series one of my all-time favorites.
How about you? Click here and keep the conversation going on the blog. What do you take from
this part of Aristotle’s Poetics?
Three substantive concepts in one short sentence. I trust our Aristotelians will provide more
background on each. Here is my quick take from what we’ve read thus far in “Poetics”
including this excerpt:
Order:
An “orderly arrangements of parts,” such as in a story Beginning, Middle and End.
Presumably not just those three aspects, but a balance between the three parts and
the overall appearance or experience of the parts in combination as a coherent
whole.
Magnitude:
As I read the excerpt above, I was reminded of the Goldilocks fable, how the
porridge of the Three Bears was too hot or too cold, their beds too big or too small,
the little girl only finding satisfaction with something in the middle. Likewise per
Aristotle, an object cannot be beautiful if it is too small - “for the view of it is
confused, the object being seen in an almost imperceptible moment of time” - nor
too big - “for as the eye cannot take it all in at once, the unity and sense of the whole
is lost for the spectator”. It must have sufficient magnitude, a “certain length” at
minimum, but one that can be “easily embraced by the memory” so not too large.
Beauty:
Dredging into my brain cells housing knowledge implanted there in college, I seem
to remember some talk about Aristotle equating Beauty with Truth. However I
don’t think he’s using the term in that way here, rather in the context of discussing
Tragedy and plays, Beauty is an aesthetic description of a process whereby an artist
creates something. And I must say, the use of this concept in relation to writing
truly appeals to me. No matter the scope of a creative breakthrough, from a big
Indeed if we were to mix up all three concepts, I think we could easily land on a word I
mentioned above: Balance. So much of what we do in a screenplay is achieve to find
balance — page count, scene length, subplots, dialogue compared to action, act length,
exterior and interior scenes, day and night scenes, action and interaction scenes, themes and
motifs, and so on.
So these concepts of Beauty, Magnitude and Order would seem to have great applicability
for a contemporary screenwriter in plying their craft in the creation of a feature length
screenplay.
I am looking at “Poetics” through the lens of screenwriting, its relevance to the craft in
contemporary times. I welcome the observations of any Aristotle experts to set me straight as I’m
just trying to work my way through this content the best I can. The lively discussions in the
comment archive are well worth the read, and helped make this series one of my all-time favorites.
How about you? Click here and keep the conversation going on the blog. What do you take from
this part of Aristotle’s Poetics?
It seems that Aristotle’s point about story “length” reflects his previous comments about
magnitude, that “the more beautiful will the piece be by reason of its size,” suggesting that —
ahem — size does matter. ! (That's the only emoji I'm giving you - this is serious)
the greater the length, the more beautiful will the piece be
by reason of its size, provided that the whole be perspicuous.
Then Aristotle adds this point: “…provided that the whole be perspicuous.” If that twenty-
five cent word throws you, basically it means intelligible. So it’s not enough for a plot to
have merely a Beginning, Middle and End, or a random chain of events. Rather there has to
be a coherence to the narrative, it has to convey meaning that is understandable to the
audience.It’s that last part that really grabs my attention:
Change, either ‘positive’ or ‘negative,’ must occur. And once again, we have a direct
connection of Character, as in our current use of the term, or Personal Agents per Aristotle,
to Plot. Because good fortune or bad fortune happens to Characters, it is their fates that
change. Thus it would seem Aristotle assumes this narrative element to be an essential part
of Plot.
Of course, this dovetails directly into Joseph Campbell’s perspective that the whole point of a
Hero’s Journey is the transformation that happens to the Hero, their change. And in my
view, that links up beautifully with Carl Jung’s notion of individuation, the process
whereby an individual moves toward wholeness by engaging and understanding all aspects of
their psyche. It confirms the approach I take in teaching Core I: Plot which combines
Aristotle, Campbell, Jung and the Whammo Theory, all four combining to create a solid
theoretical foundation for screenplay structure as well as one grounded in the pragmatic
realities of working in Hollywood.
Observations by the Aristotle experts who graced the blog discussions when this material was first
published in 2013 can be found in the comment archive are well worth the read, and helped
make this blog series one of my all-time favorites on Go Into The Story. Why not add your take?
Well!
We are clearly into some substantial ideas here, ones that relate to the very essence of story.
Let me cull out some key parts:
An obvious question to an outsider living in the modern age [read: me] is this:
that a whole, the structural union of the parts being such that, if any one of
them is displaced or removed, the whole will be disjointed and disturbed.
This all writers ought to be able to understand. Whether we can assess a piece of material
from a vaunted perspective of Unity or a more proletariat vantage point whereby this scene
leads to that scene which leads to that scene, we get that there is a flow of events that if
altered runs the risk of being disrupted and become ‘disunified.’
We also should be able to grasp this: If a scene or character contributes nothing to the
story, it is not an inherently valuable, beneficial, necessary or “organic” part of the whole.
Therefore the whole “unity” angle is something screenwriters know and struggle with in
crafting a story. However I want some clarity on precisely what Aristotle means by “action”.
Is it the inciting incident? The entire plot? Or does it describe something else?
I am looking at “Poetics” through the lens of screenwriting, its relevance to the craft in
contemporary times. I welcome the observations of any Aristotle experts to set me straight as I’m
just trying to work my way through this content the best I can. The lively discussions in the
comment archive are well worth the read, and helped make this series one of my all-time favorites.
How about you? Click here and keep the conversation going on the blog. What do you take from
this part of Aristotle’s Poetics?
Here's the text in its entirety: I'll discuss it in the above-listed sections in the following
pages:
It is, moreover, evident from what has been said, that it is not the function of the poet to
relate what has happened, but what may happen- what is possible according to the law of
probability or necessity. The poet and the historian differ not by writing in verse or in prose.
The work of Herodotus might be put into verse, and it would still be a species of history,
with meter no less than without it. The true difference is that one relates what has
happened, the other what may happen.
Poetry, therefore, is a more philosophical and a higher thing than history: for poetry tends to
express the universal, history the particular. By the universal I mean how a person of a
certain type on occasion speak or act, according to the law of probability or necessity; and it
is this universality at which poetry aims in the names she attaches to the personages. The
particular is- for example- what Alcibiades did or suffered.
In Comedy this is already apparent: for here the poet first constructs the plot on the lines of
probability, and then inserts characteristic names - unlike the lampooners who write about
particular individuals. But tragedians still keep to real names, the reason being that what is
possible is credible: what has not happened we do not at once feel sure to be possible; but
what has happened is manifestly possible: otherwise it would not have happened.
Still there are even some tragedies in which there are only one or two well-known names,
the rest being fictitious. In others, none are well known- as in Agathon's Antheus, where
incidents and names alike are fictitious, and yet they give none the less pleasure.
We must not, therefore, at all costs keep to the received legends, which are the usual
subjects of Tragedy. Indeed, it would be absurd to attempt it; for even subjects that are
known are known only to a few, and yet give pleasure to all.
It clearly follows that the poet or 'maker' should be the maker of plots rather than of verses;
since he is a poet because he imitates, and what he imitates are actions. And even if he
chances to take a historical subject, he is none the less a poet; for there is no reason why
some events that have actually happened should not conform to the law of the probable
and possible, and in virtue of that quality in them he is their poet or maker.
Of all plots and actions the episodic are the worst. I call a plot 'episodic' in which the
So, here we go! Stick with me while we make our way through the sections of Part 9.
Based on what follows in Part 9 and elsewhere, I think it’s safe to make the assumption
Aristotle is speaking about how many, if not most plays of the time were based upon or
grounded in historical events and/or figures. Later in Part 9, he does mention Agathon’s
Antheus,
Given that frame of reference, we can see why this point he makes here -
one (historian) relates what has happened, the other (poet) what may happen
- which seems quite obvious is a critical one worth underscoring. Whereas an historian’s
domain is about what is already known, the poet’s area of focus is on what is not known,
that is the outcome of the story’s plot.
As a result, there is a kind of dynamism that derives from the latter that history cannot
replicate for as long as a writer can create a narrative with the potential for anything to
happen, that is in theory at least more compelling and engaging for the audience: the
mystery of what will happen, how will it turn out, how will it get to the point where it does
resolve itself.
As a screenwriter, this speaks to me in a powerful way relative to the dynamic of Time that
exists in a script universe. As we discussed earlier, screenplays are written in the present
tense, unlike most novels and short stories which are composed in the past tense. That
means there is an immediacy in the action that pulls the reader into the narrative
because of an experience we have that it is unfolding in The Now.
But there is, I believe, something more going on in The Present of a script: There is
the push of the Backstory and everything that happens post-FADE IN after the fact,
what we may call Present-Past, and there is the pull of Narrative Destiny and
everything that lies ahead, what we may call Present-Future. So that in any given
scene, there can be this dynamic tension between the Past and Future, each tugging
on and influencing the Present.
But as we shall see, Aristotle has a vigorous view about how “what may happen” must be
grounded in logic, not just some random set of events.
A reminder: I am looking at “Poetics” through the lens of screenwriting - its relevance to the craft in
contemporary times. I’m just trying to work my way through this content the best I can.
When the contents of this book was first published as a weekly series of GITS blog posts back in 2013, I
welcomed and relished the input of the traveling feast of Aristotelians who gathered to engage weekly in
the discourse. If you have just stumbled onto this material via the GITS free ebook series, you should
really go back and read the comments archive, as the folks who participated have added incredible
insight into this seminal work by Aristotle. Why not add your own take to the discussion?
To read the Comment Archive click here. To add your voice to the discourse, go here.
To start the discussion, let me excerpt this from a comment made by Jennine Lanouette:
The fifth sentence begins “Poetry, therefore, . . .” giving a clear indication that what
follows will shed light on what came before. He then says that poetry is a higher form than
history because, whereas history is for reporting the particular (i.e., chronicling factual
incident), poetry is for expressing the universal (i.e., drawing larger meaning from the
specific incidents). Considering this, I disagree that Aristotle sees the poet’s area of focus
as being on the outcome of the story’s plot. Over and over, he uses the phrase “of
probability and necessity” which to me pretty easily translates to what we call “cause and
effect,” the backbone of dramatic structure. Thus, he is not saying that the outcome of
the plot is unknown (indeed, if it’s based on a historical incident, the outcome is known)
so much as that it is the poets job to draw cause and effect relationships between the
particular incidents in order to illuminate their larger meaning. To my reading, the
remainder of that paragraph also supports the idea that, while the historian chronicles a
series of events, the poet looks for cause and effect relationships among those events
and structures their account accordingly. The implication being that it is the structuring of
those cause and effect relationships that elevates the story to a higher universal
expression.
Yes, not only a riddle, but a fundamental reality for a writer of rubber meeting the road.
How to do that, indeed! I have two further things to add re this part, one a question, one a
crazy interpretation that may be of some help in that regard:
If we dig down deep enough into the Protagonist and grasp the essence of their
Metamorphosis, can we not discern the narrative destiny implied therein?
How the possibilities the Protagonist believes are present, and the probabilities the
entire Collective of other characters believe to be in play, are actually all tethered to
the Protagonist’s own fate as grounded upon their transformation-journey.
Thus from a writer’s perspective outside the story universe, we can divine and
understand the necessity of the chain of events.
And so, circling back to pgronk’s point about the “riddle of the Sphinx”, the trick may be for
us, as writers, understanding the necessity of the chain of events, where the narrative destiny
must go, but by writing each scene from the perspective of the Protagonist, who believes in
possibility, and the Collective, which traffics in probability, we can imbue our writing
with that sense of potential — anything can happen — while at the same time moving the
plot forward toward its inevitable conclusion.
Of all plots and actions the episodic are the worst. I call a plot ‘episodic’ in which the
episodes or acts succeed one another without probable or necessary sequence. Bad
poets compose such pieces by their own fault, good poets, to please the players; for,
as they write show pieces for competition, they stretch the plot beyond its capacity,
and are often forced to break the natural continuity.
I chose to excerpt this small section because it is important in at least two ways.
First, the concept of an ‘episodic’ plot helps Aristotle drive home what ‘unity’ means.
Let’s remember this from Part 8:
As therefore, in the other imitative arts, the imitation is one when the object imitated is
one, so the plot, being an imitation of an action, must imitate one action and that a
whole, the structural union of the parts being such that, if any one of them is displaced
or removed, the whole will be disjointed and disturbed.
Note:
Each of these three expressions is a reflection of the idea of unity of action. Combined with
the discussion in the first half of Part 9, where the focus is on possibility, probability and
necessity, the sort of guiding principles for a writer in constructing a narrative, then if a
story has “acts that succeed one another without probably or necessary sequence,” we are
dealing with something that is ‘episodic’ in nature.
My take on this is that ‘unity of action’ is not just about a story being about one thing, it
must also have a flow from scene to scene, event to event that is as well both probable and
necessary.
The second point is this: In terms of screenwriting, where we have limited time to tell a story
(as compared to a novel), we must create that sense of flow, or what can be called
narrative drive.
William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Princess Bride, Marathon Man)
Rule of thumb: You always attack a movie scene as late as you possibly can. You
always come into the scene at the last possible moment, which is why when you
see a scene in a movie where a person is a teacher, for instance, the scene always
begins with the teacher saying, ‘Well, class…’ and the bell rings. And then you
get into another scene because it’s very dull watching a man talk to people in a
room… In a book you might start with some dialogue, and then describe your
clothing, and more dialogue. The camera gets that in an instant. Boom, and
you’re on. Get on, get on. The camera is relentless. Makes you keep running.
[emphasis added]
How to deal with a “relentless” camera? It almost always involves some sort of ‘engine’ to
propel the plot forward. If we do not find that ‘engine,’ if our story has little or no narrative
drive, scenes happening one after the other in a kind of random or thoughtless manner, a
script reader is likely to critique the script for being ‘episodic.’
In fact, I have a name for this: The Dreaded Episodic Curse! I came up with that because
when I receive notes on a script where a producer or exec says, “It feels episodic,” I know I’ve
got work to do.
It’s a complex circumstance because some movies which have a rather free-form or random
feel to scene placement and transitions can work fine in part because that is a conscious
part of the filmmaker’s style or more likely the characters are so compelling, our emotional
connection to those characters creates a narrative drive of our own, our desire to learn what
happens to them propels us through the script, one page after the other.
But for most mainstream commercial movies, we have to find that ‘engine’ that moves the
story forward, one scene to the next.
So a takeaway from Parts 8 and 9 of “Poetics” for a contemporary screenwriter is that the
narrative we construct must move, scene to scene, according to what is probable and what is
necessary, as Aristotle states. If not, that in and of itself will lead to a story that feels
‘episodic.’
But that is not enough. We also need to create some type of narrative drive to propel the
story ahead because even if each event is probable and necessary, it can nonetheless suffer
from The Dreaded Episodic Curse.
A reminder: I am looking at “Poetics” through the lens of screenwriting - its relevance to the craft in
contemporary times. I’m just trying to work my way through this content the best I can.
When the contents of this book was first published as a weekly series of GITS blog posts back in 2013, I
welcomed and relished the input of the traveling feast of Aristotelians who gathered to engage weekly in
the discourse. If you have just stumbled onto this material via the GITS free ebook series, you should
really go back and read the comments archive, as the folks who participated have added incredible
insight into this seminal work by Aristotle. Why not add your own take to the discussion?
To read the Comment Archive click here. To add your voice to the discourse, go here.
Unfamiliar with the story of Mitys at Argos, I did some research. There’s not much I could
find beyond Aristotle’s description. Mitys is slain by his murderer. Later a statue is erected
in Mitys’ honor. The murderer stands before the statue, presumably inspecting and/or
admiring. Then the statue falls on the murderer killing him.
Something like this: YouTube Video - A Monumental Demise
- Okay, probably not much like that, but still it’s a visual reference.
What I gather from Aristotle’s comments in referencing the fate of Mitys’ killer is the best
type of stories have these type of twists, especially as endings, featuring two aspects:
Surprise: Some sort of reversal or twist which the reader will not expect (i.e., the statue falls
on the killer).
Cause and Effect: The surprising event, upon reflection by the reader, will seem not to be born
out of happenstance, but in fact is in retrospect inevitable within the context of the dynamics set
into motion in the narrative.
Thus an echo of something Aristotle raised previously in this chapter: While we may
experience the surprise in the present as a possibility, albeit one we could not have anticipated,
when we look back on it as a past event, we will see it as having been tied to narrative destiny.
This is good advice, it seems to me, for all writers, you can click on these links to witness these
notable movie surprises:
Each a surprise in the moment. Each inevitable in retrospect due to cause and effect.
A reminder: I am looking at “Poetics” through the lens of screenwriting - its relevance to the craft in
contemporary times. I’m just trying to work my way through this content the best I can.
When the contents of this book was first published as a weekly series of GITS blog posts back in 2013, I
welcomed and relished the input of the traveling feast of Aristotelians who gathered to engage weekly in
the discourse. If you have just stumbled onto this material via the GITS free ebook series, you should
really go back and read the comments archive, as the folks who participated have added incredible
insight into this seminal work by Aristotle. Why not add your own take to the discussion?
To read the Comment Archive click here. To add your voice to the discourse on the blog, go here.
Here Aristotle draws a distinction between two general types of plots: Simple and Complex.
It’s interesting how he describes the former through what it is missing, namely Reversal and
Recognition.
What a Simple plot actually consists of is rather amorphous based on what Aristotle
presents here. The use of the phrase post hoc, literally “after this,” suggests that a Simple
plot is comprised of a set of events that while continuous in nature lacks a sense of causality.
A Complex plot is propter hoc, literally “because of this,” which means there is a sense of
causality in the emergence of events.
We will delve more fully into Reversal and Recognition in Part 11, but for purposes of our
discussion here, my initial take on these two concepts is this:
If that is anywhere close to Aristotle’s meaning, that intrigues me for two reasons in relation
to screenwriting:
Thus it seems safe to infer that for Aristotle, a successful Complex plot must traffic in
and service both the Physical journey and the Psychological journey.
2. This connection of Reversal and Recognition brings to mind the cosmogonic cycle
as represented in the Hero’s Journey:
You can see both Reversal and Recognition at work:
The former in the way the Hero comes full circle in their journey,
the latter with those key words revelation and especially transformation.
Joseph Campbell asserted that the whole point of the Journey is transformation:
1. the Hero separates from the Old World
2. is initiated in the New World (those events and actions impacting the Hero)
3. who then returns home a changed individual.
This linking of the Psychological World with the Physical World is another way of driving
home the difference between a Simple and Complex plot: The interweaving connections
between events in the plot and the change that occurs within a character’s psyche puts the
story in propter hoc territory. Indeed from a screenwriting standpoint, it speaks to the
narrative destiny of a Protagonist, reflected in the harmonic convergence of plot events and
personal transformation.
A reminder: I am looking at “Poetics” through the lens of screenwriting - its relevance to the craft in
contemporary times. I’m just trying to work my way through this content the best I can.
When the contents of this book was first published as a weekly series of GITS blog posts back in 2013, I
welcomed and relished the input of the traveling feast of Aristotelians who gathered to engage weekly in
the discourse. If you have just stumbled onto this material via the GITS free ebook series, you should
really go back and read the comments archive, as the folks who participated have added incredible
insight into this seminal work by Aristotle. Why not add your own take to the discussion?
To read the Comment Archive click here. To add your voice to the discourse on the blog, go here.
As I was reading this, what I thought was a good example of these two dynamics in tandem
came to mind:
Two things:
First, we have to note that up to this point in his life, Paul (known as Saul), actively
persecuted those who professed faith in Jesus as the Christ. After this conversion experience,
Paul became an advocate for the faith, even coming to be known as one of the Apostles.
Second, his conversion is what precipitated him changing his name from Saul to Paul,
signifying a distinction between his new life from his old life. Paul veering around to his
“opposite” way of being and believing exemplifies, I think, Reversal and Recognition.
As to the third part — the “Scene of Suffering” (Pathos) — I’m a bit in the gray on this. Is
Aristotle suggesting there is some sort of inherent causality within a tragedy that requires
I realize this is not Suffering per se, but the idea of catharsis during the story’s Final
Struggle does seem to derive from the interplay of Reversal and Recognition.
The GITS community had plenty to say when this post first hit the blog in 2013. Visit the
Comment Archive to hear what our venerable Aristotelian scholars had to say! Join in the
discussion and add your take on this part in the comments section of the blog here.
The parts of Tragedy which must be treated as elements of the whole have been
already mentioned. We now come to the quantitative parts - the separate parts into
which Tragedy is divided - namely, Prologue, Episode, Exode, Choric song; this last
being divided into Parode and Stasimon. These are common to all plays: peculiar to
some are the songs of actors from the stage and the Commoi.
The Prologue is that entire part of a tragedy which precedes the Parode of the Chorus.
The Episode is that entire part of a tragedy which is between complete choric songs.
The Exode is that entire part of a tragedy which has no choric song after it. Of the
Choric part the Parode is the first undivided utterance of the Chorus: the Stasimon is a
Choric ode without anapaests or trochaic tetrameters: the Commos is a joint
lamentation of Chorus and actors. The parts of Tragedy which must be treated as
elements of the whole have been already mentioned.
The quantitative parts- the separate parts into which it is divided - are here
enumerated.
Let me just acknowledge up front: I’m reaching out to our honored group of Aristotelians to
provide a deeper context and analysis of how Greek plays operated thousands of years ago
as the specifics listed here are largely outside my realm of study. However, I do have three
musings on this section:
My guess: Probably.
I look forward to more feedback from our resident experts.
If you have just stumbled onto this material via the GITS free ebook series, you should know that
when I first published this content as a weekly blog series, the contributions and engagement of
bright and engaging Aristotelian scholars was a real highlight, and often an eye-opener for me.
You can read their illuminating observations on each section of Poetics as we go along - the links
are below. What did you take from this part of Aristotle’s Poetics - Why not keep the conversation
alive? Share your observations and engage with Aristotle and the GITS community!
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• the change of fortune presented must not be the spectacle of a virtuous man
brought from prosperity to adversity
• Nor, again, that of a bad man passing from adversity to prosperity.
• Nor, again, should the downfall of the utter villain be exhibited.
In the end, Aristotle presents an ideal character as the subject for a Perfect Tragedy:
…a man who is not eminently good and just, yet whose misfortune is brought
about not by vice or depravity, but by some error or frailty.
In both cases, Aristotle grounds sympathy in the proximity of the character to the audience.
They are a “man like ourselves.” They are not hugely overrun by consumptive or corrupting
instincts, but rather mere mortals prone to mistakes.
In modern parlance, we might refer to this character as a “good guy” or “good gal.”
What this reminds me of is how in screenplays, one of our primary goals is to create reader
(or audience) identification with the Protagonist. This is critical to engage a reader and get
them hooked on the journey and outcome of the narrative. Sympathy and proximity are a
solid one-two punch to engender that identification.
All of which leads me to my second thought:
Why was Tragedy such a big deal to the Greeks?
Why was it considered to be the acme of contemporary literature and cultural art? How and
why did ancient Greeks find Tragedies so entertaining? Something to do with the power of
morality tales? Witnessing misfortunes befalling a “good guy” and left to think, “There but
the grace of God go I”?
Next there is Aristotle’s use of the Greek word ἁµαρτία (Hamartia). Here “errors.”
In the New Testament, it is translated as “sin.” While the latter would seem to have more
existential heft to it (sin against God), they both have this in common: Bolstering the
universality of the human experience.
Each of us has made errors. Each of us has frailties. Each of us has sinned and “fallen short
of the glory of God.”
It’s that guy (or gal), the mere mortal, who is the subject of Tragedies per Aristotle, which
helps us to relate to such characters.
Final thought: Whereas Aristotle may have found “pity and fear” to be something of a
“pleasurable” experience, mainstream Hollywood movies for the most part go in an entirely
opposite direction. Not pity and fear, but empathy and hope… for a happy ending. So in
effect, Aristotle as a representative and cheerleader for Tragedy could serve as a reverse
barometer for contemporary commercial movies at least as far as Hollywood’s conventional
wisdom is concerned, that most consumers want upbeat resolutions to stories.
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Looking at these attributes from the perspective of a modern screenplay, “single in its issue”
suggests a story that has a tight, clear narrative focus. “From good to bad” seems obvious if
a writer is to maximize the dramatic nature of a character’s ‘fall.’
“Of some great error or frailty” I find to be particularly interesting. While waiting for our
Aristotelians to weigh in on these two concepts and their more specific historical meaning, I
can extrapolate this from a screenwriting perspective:
To really work for our purposes, we would have to change the conjunction from “or” to this:
“Of some great error and frailty.” The events in the plot of a contemporary screenplay have
to be intimately tied to inner lives of the characters, specifically the Protagonist, one feeds
the other which impacts the other which feeds the other again which impacts the other
again, and so on, a continuous interweaving that translate into a transformational
narrative.
As to the meaning of the second paragraph, it would appear Aristotle is suggesting that the
best writing aims for some sort of aesthetic purity rather than attempting to satisfy the
whims of an audience. Perhaps an early stab at the dynamic tension between art and
commerce? Based on this, I doubt Aristotle would have much success going up for open
writing assignments in Hollywood where one of the most important questions a
screenwriter, agent, producer or studio executive can ask about any given project is this:
Who is the audience?
Fortunately there were no Hollywood movie moguls back in the time of Aristotle. I guess we
had to wait for Shakespeare to come along to concretize the notion of ‘popcorn
entertainment’… before there was any popcorn, of course!
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Fear and pity may be aroused by spectacular means; but they may also result from
the inner structure of the piece, which is the better way, and indicates a superior poet.
For the plot ought to be so constructed that, even without the aid of the eye, he who
hears the tale told will thrill with horror and melt to pity at what takes Place. This is
the impression we should receive from hearing the story of the Oedipus. But to
produce this effect by the mere spectacle is a less artistic method, and dependent on
extraneous aids. Those who employ spectacular means to create a sense not of the
terrible but only of the monstrous, are strangers to the purpose of Tragedy; for we must
not demand of Tragedy any and every kind of pleasure, but only that which is proper
to it. And since the pleasure which the poet should afford is that which comes from
pity and fear through imitation, it is evident that this quality must be impressed upon
the incidents.
Let us then determine what are the circumstances which strike us as terrible or pitiful.
Actions capable of this effect must happen between persons who are either friends or
enemies or indifferent to one another. If an enemy kills an enemy, there is nothing to
excite pity either in the act or the intention- except so far as the suffering in itself is
pitiful. So again with indifferent persons. But when the tragic incident occurs between
those who are near or dear to one another- if, for example, a brother kills, or intends
to kill, a brother, a son his father, a mother her son, a son his mother, or any other
deed of the kind is done- these are the situations to be looked for by the poet. He may
not indeed destroy the framework of the received legends- the fact, for instance, that
Clytemnestra was slain by Orestes and Eriphyle by Alcmaeon- but he ought to show of
his own, and skilfully handle the traditional. material. Let us explain more clearly
what is meant by skilful handling.
The action may be done consciously and with knowledge of the persons, in the
manner of the older poets. It is thus too that Euripides makes Medea slay her children.
Or, again, the deed of horror may be done, but done in ignorance, and the tie of
kinship or friendship be discovered afterwards. The Oedipus of Sophocles is an
example. Here, indeed, the incident is outside the drama proper; but cases occur
where it falls within the action of the play: one may cite the Alcmaeon of Astydamas,
or Telegonus in the Wounded Odysseus. Again, there is a third case- [to be about to
act with knowledge of the persons and then not to act. The fourth case] is when some
one is about to do an irreparable deed through ignorance, and makes the discovery
before it is done. These are the only possible ways. For the deed must either be done
or not done- and that wittingly or unwittingly. But of all these ways, to be about to act
knowing the persons, and then not to act, is the worst. It is shocking without being
tragic, for no disaster follows It is, therefore, never, or very rarely, found in poetry.
One instance, however, is in the Antigone, where Haemon threatens to kill Creon.
The next and better way is that the deed should be perpetrated. Still better, that it
should be perpetrated in ignorance, and the discovery made afterwards. There is then
The Spectacle has, indeed, an emotional attraction of its own, but, of all the
parts, it is the least artistic, and connected least with the art of poetry. For the
power of Tragedy, we may be sure, is felt even apart from representation and
actors. Besides, the production of spectacular effects depends more on the art
of the stage machinist than on that of the poet.
In Part 14, he drives home the same point in two additional ways. First, Aristotle contrasts
spectacle to the “inner structure of the piece.” In modern film, we might say “special
effects” vs. “narrative.” And I think we could all agree that the former without the context of
the latter is pretty much just a bunch of eye candy and noise, devoid of any emotional
meaning (re: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen).
There is a certain kind of reliance upon the “spectacular” that can take a story completely
out of the realm of Tragedy. I can’t help but get the feeling Aristotle is saying this as a kind
of warning, perceiving the “spectacular” to have some sort of lure to writers, a seemingly
easy path to creating a reaction in the audience. However that would seem to be a path
toward ‘cheap’ writing, not worthy of Tragedy, nor likely to produce content that is
consistent with the genre.
Which leaves us with this: What of “fear”? What of “pity”? We have seen this coupling
before in Parts 9, 11 and 13. Clearly it is significant. What precisely does Aristotle intend in
the use of these two concepts?
I await the insight of our faithful Aristotelians, steeped in the literature as they are.
In the meantime, here is my speculative response:
Empathy:
If empathy can lead to a sense of identification, then perhaps fear is a vicarious
experience, seeing and hearing tragic events happening to characters which raises a
concern: These, too, could befall us.
Over the course of our ongoing discussion, I seem to remember an observation that the idea
of “audience identification” was not a goal for ancient Greek dramatists, caught up more
generally in the wonder of superheroes, gods and goddesses circumnavigating a series of
sizable challenges.
Moreover it is the dynamic of “audience identification” that helps to create one of the most
powerful aspects of a story: The ability for the audience to safely experience fearful and
pitiful events.
I recall the 1996 movie Ransom in which a mother and father go through a parent’s worst
nightmare: The kidnapping of their child. The movie grossed $309M worldwide, hugely
successful. Here’s the shocker: The primary audience members were parents! Why would
they willingly pay money to watch a movie that features the trauma of a child’s kidnapping?
Precisely because Ransom provided a safe haven in which parents could live out their
darkest fears. Through their identification with the parents Tom (Mel Gibson) and Kate
(Rene Russo), we experience what they experience. We feel their fears. We feel pity for them.
Those emotions are real… even if the story is not. And precisely because the story is not real,
that enables us, as audience members, to enter fully into it, knowing it is a contained,
fictional environment.
Thus for certain stories, we would aim to arouse fear and pity in script readers and audience
members. How to do that? Best not through spectacle, but rather the “inner structure of the
piece” (narrative). And at least for contemporary stories, aim to create a sense of audience
identification with the characters and events in the stories we write.
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Actions capable of this effect must happen between persons who are
either friends or enemies or indifferent to one another.
This speaks to the respective narrative functions of characters involved in the story and sets
up for the use of archetypes in terms of story development (Protagonist, Nemesis, Attractor,
Mentor, Trickster).
• The action may be done consciously and with knowledge of the persons.
• …the deed of horror may be done, but done in ignorance.
• …to be about to act with knowledge of the persons and then not to act.
• …when some one is about to do an irreparable deed through ignorance,
and makes the discovery before it is done.
This reads like classic Aristotelian logic, reminiscent of his explanation (Part 7) of
beginning, middle and end:
From a screenwriting perspective, I find myself agreeing with Aristotle’s contention that the
best way of handling a story is when a character is about to “do an irreparable deed through
ignorance,” then “makes the discovery before it is done.”
That elevates both Fear and Pity to the maximum state of intensity. It also seems to follow
the old Hollywood dictum about movie endings: “Give the audience what they expect, then
give them what they want.”
Of course, Shakespeare took this approach and went one step further with the play “Romeo
and Juliet” by having one character commit suicide — when Romeo mistakenly thinks Juliet
is dead, an unwitting act - then the other commits suicide - when Juliet kills herself
knowing that Romeo has actually died. That is some serious tragedy.
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Let’s just bracket the culturally specific bias against women and slaves represented here —
thankfully, humankind has made some progress on those fronts - to focus on “four things
to be aimed at,” what I think we can describe as ‘qualities.’ But before we go there, don’t we
need to revisit the subject of what Aristotle meant by character?
“By Character I mean that in virtue of which we ascribe certain qualities to the agents.”
If I have got this right, Aristotle uses ‘character’ to refer to virtue and one’s moral standing.
What we would mean by a character in a story, Aristotle employs the term “personal agent.”
Thus when Aristotle ascribes these “four things” in “respect to Character,” I take it he is
talking about moral virtue. Furthermore that character is represented by this quartet of
qualities:
⁃ A hero must be good.
⁃ This goodness must be proper to the nature of the hero.
⁃ The goodness must also feel realistic.
⁃ The exhibition of character by a hero must be consistent.
That said most mainstream movies feature Protagonists who are in essence ‘good’ people.
They may begin in an inauthentic psychological state and/or have some significant
unresolved issues in their past, but ‘heroic’ nonetheless. This is especially so with big
blockbuster movies like 2013 hits Gravity, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Star Trek:
Into Darkness, Thor: The Dark World, World War Z, Frozen, and Captain Phillips.
Thus while there may be more latitude in terms of modern story heroes in terms of their
‘goodness,’ it is still a pretty relevant quality for most Protagonist figures.
The other three qualities — propriety, realistic, consistency — are all completely in line with
modern screenwriting and TV writing sensibilities. If a character’s goodness fails on any of
these fronts, that character is an example of flawed execution.
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And to me, this speaks primarily about where the narrative drive originates. Does it derive
from the characters within the story universe? Or does it derive from the writer from
outside the story universe? The former is what I take Aristotle to mean. The latter can be an
example of deus ex machina or as I refer to it in my teaching: writer’s convenience. That is,
we force something to happen in the story universe to fit our needs as writers. That is
inauthentic. An authentic plot is one driven by the characters and their needs.
Once again, this is, in my view - where plot goes directly back to character. Each character,
and in particular the Protagonist, has a destiny. What they do derives from the probability
of the choices they make. What happens then is tied to the necessity of those choices. It’s
what I call the narrative imperative and I believe that aligns nicely with Aristotle’s
articulation here.
Every single one of these problems could be resolved if a writer dug deeply into their
characters (especially the Protagonist), determining what their Disunity is, what their Core
Interesting, too, the script reader’s use of the word “unravels” which has a negative
connotation in contrast to Aristotle which I take to mean “unspools” or “plays out,” the
natural chronology of events and in a well-constructed story.
Bottom line, when we craft a story, that’s what we want: a narrative that flows organically
and by necessity.
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I’m sure our Aristotelians will be able to put some historical context to this point Aristotle
makes and provide some deep insight.
“So too the poet, in representing men who are irascible or indolent, or
have other defects of character, should preserve the type and yet ennoble it.”
Writers know that the greater the distance for a character to travel in their psychological
and emotional journey, the better. It makes for better drama and a more satisfying
resolution of the story. So most writers’ instincts pretty much default to starting our stories
with — in particular — Protagonists in a decided state of Disunity, whether the character is
aware of this fact or not. This is where the infamous “character flaw” that always gets
kicked around in development circles has its roots.
The suits tend to operate from a different perspective. They are concerned about many
things, of course, but here are two big ones:
And that’s the root of the tension: Writers starting the character as far away as possible
psychologically from where they need to end up and the good folks on the other side of the
desk worrying a character that flawed may be off-putting.
I have had a variation of this discussion dozens of times. Go here for just one example.
If you’re gonna make the character a pig, at least put lipstick on them…
you know… like a good portrait painter.
A related point to Aristotle’s idea of beauty. I’d love to see our Aristotelians weigh in on the
subject because to me beauty is perhaps the single most important touch point for
contemporary storytelling. For starters, when we experience beauty, we are lifted out of the
mundane and transported somewhere special, a modern approximation of the ‘sacred’. Next
beauty transcends the boundaries of human experience. Tragedy or comedy, high brow or
low brow, big events or tiny moments, something can happen within any genre which we
experience as beauty.
My guess is Aristotle had what I guess we could call a more traditional sense of beauty,
reflective of his time and cultural milieu… as in how good portrait painters know how to
make a subject “beautiful.” But as I suggested above, contemporary stories can have beauty
emerge across the breadth of human experience.
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The root of the Greek word is related to “gnosis” which means “knowledge,” thus
recognition is tied to some new knowledge a character learns that pivots their understanding
of their situation.
Aristotle’s list of five types of recognition evolves from least “artistic” to most. Briefly they
are:
⁃ Signs or marks
⁃ Contrived by author
⁃ Prompted by memory
⁃ Deductive reasoning
There appears to be an intriguing arc at work here. The first two would seem to be the most
obvious examples of a writer’s handprint. The next two are elevated in status because they
move the recognition from outside the story universe — the writer’s hand — to inside, rooted
in the experience of the characters. Memory would seem to be less than deductive reasoning
because the former is more internal in nature while the latter lends itself to an interactive
experience with the audience whereby we participate in the character’s revelatory process.
Based upon what we have studied thus far, it is abundantly clear why the last type on the list
ranks the highest in Aristotle’s opinion:
“But, of all recognitions, the best is that which arises from the incidents themselves,
where the startling discovery is made by natural means” (emphasis added).
This reads like classic Aristotle, taking us back to the ideas of ‘necessity’ and ‘probability’
whereby it is the events in the plot themselves that create the circumstances of the
revelation. And this makes perfect sense as from an audience standpoint, it represents the
most immersive way of participating in the recognition — as the character experiences
occurrences which lead to discovery, so too do we.
Yet even as Aristotle talks about “incidents” that drive the revelation, thus seemingly
grounded in plot, there is an implicit connection to character: For the very idea of
‘recognition’ requires a character to do the recognizing. That is, the incidents are
meaningless unless they mean something revelatory to specific characters.
In other words, revelation can happen in the plot. But recognition requires an awareness
arising within a character.
So once again in “Poetics,” a discussion about plot necessarily involves character, a fact
which continues to support my ongoing take about Aristotle’s theories: Plot cannot be
separated from character.
This recognition falls entirely into Aristotle’s fifth category, Malcolm looking back at key
incidents in his experience, stitching them together and now seeing them in a different light.
But they are his memories and his emotions that create and drive the recognition. The
incidents are meaningless without the meaning Malcolm ascribes to them in this moment of
revelation.
How about you? What do you take from this part of Aristotle’s Poetics?
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sounds incredibly like the approach I take in prep-writing, figuring out the story’s major
Plotline points, then working out all the subplots and character dynamics accordingly. Or I’d
be on safer ground if I said my approach resembles his!
Here again Aristotle emphasizes how the plot needs to flow from within the nature of the
story universe, not the writer manipulating events from the outside. As I suggested
previously, the best way I have found to accomplish this end is immerse oneself in the story’s
characters and allow them to lead us through the emerging narrative.
Finally I am intrigued by the relationship in this part between plot and episode. As far as I
can tell, Aristotle’s use of ‘plot’ here refers to the overall narrative, while ‘episode’ refers to
the sets of events that transpire within the larger story.
Would it be the plot point, a significant event that twists the plot in a new direction?
Would it be a sequence, a set of scenes, each one with its own beginning, middle and end,
each moving seamlessly, one to the other?
I’d be curious to hear what our wonderful band of Aristotelians think on the matter,
hopefully providing a clearer definition of ‘episode’ per Aristotle’s usage.
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Every tragedy falls into two parts- Complication and Unraveling or Denouement.
Incidents extraneous to the action are frequently combined with a portion of the
action proper, to form the Complication; the rest is the Unraveling. By the
Complication I mean all that extends from the beginning of the action to the part
which marks the turning-point to good or bad fortune. The Unraveling is that which
extends from the beginning of the change to the end. Thus, in the Lynceus of
Theodectes, the Complication consists of the incidents presupposed in the drama, the
seizure of the child, and then again ... [the Unraveling] extends from the accusation of
murder to
There are four kinds of Tragedy: the Complex, depending entirely on Reversal of the
Situation and Recognition; the Pathetic (where the motive is passion)- such as the
tragedies on Ajax and Ixion; the Ethical (where the motives are ethical)- such as the
Phthiotides and the Peleus. The fourth kind is the Simple. [We here exclude the purely
spectacular element], exemplified by the Phorcides, the Prometheus, and scenes laid
in Hades. The poet should endeavor, if possible, to combine all poetic elements; or
failing that, the greatest number and those the most important; the more so, in face of
the caviling criticism of the day. For whereas there have hitherto been good poets,
each in his own branch, the critics now expect one man to surpass all others in their
several lines of excellence.
In speaking of a tragedy as the same or different, the best test to take is the plot.
Identity exists where the Complication and Unraveling are the same. Many poets tie
the knot well, but unravel it Both arts, however, should always be mastered.
Again, the poet should remember what has been often said, and not make an Epic
structure into a tragedy- by an Epic structure I mean one with a multiplicity of plots- as
if, for instance, you were to make a tragedy out of the entire story of the Iliad. In the
Epic poem, owing to its length, each part assumes its proper magnitude. In the drama
the result is far from answering to the poet's expectation. The proof is that the poets
who have dramatized the whole story of the Fall of Troy, instead of selecting portions,
like Euripides; or who have taken the whole tale of Niobe, and not a part of her story,
like Aeschylus, either fail utterly or meet with poor success on the stage. Even
Agathon has been known to fail from this one defect. In his Reversals of the Situation,
however, he shows a marvelous skill in the effort to hit the popular taste- to produce a
tragic effect that satisfies the moral sense. This effect is produced when the clever
rogue, like Sisyphus, is outwitted, or the brave villain defeated. Such an event is
probable in Agathon's sense of the word: 'is probable,' he says, 'that many things
should happen contrary to probability.'
The Chorus too should be regarded as one of the actors; it should be an integral part of
the whole, and share in the action, in the manner not of Euripides but of Sophocles. As
for the later poets, their choral songs pertain as little to the subject of the piece as to
that of any other tragedy. They are, therefore, sung as mere interludes- a practice first
begun by Agathon. Yet what difference is there between introducing such choral
interludes, and transferring a speech, or even a whole act, from one play to another.
Having once mispronounced denouement in a meeting with a studio exec, this term is pretty
much seared into my consciousness, having consulted several dictionaries to gain more
precision in my understanding of the word’s meaning… and how to say it [day-new -mah].
From the French, its literal meaning is “untying.” So we may think of Complication, as used
here by Aristotle, to signify “tying,” as in the various strands of a rope, and the Denouement
then the untying of those strands, so that by the end of the story, the knot (the core of the
Complication) is undone and the narrative resolved.
I’m also able to amortize some of the cost of my college education as I remember having
studied this part of “Poetics” wherein we learned the concepts of rising action and falling
action, the former related to Complication, the latter to Denouement.
Going one level deeper into my brain cells, I seem to recall that rising action related
primarily to the circumstances surrounding the Protagonist while falling action occurred
after a reversal, thus the narrative flow turned against the Antagonist.
After the climax of the story, you wanna give the audience a glimpse
of what it all means to the hero. To the victor goes the spoils.
The denouement is seeing the spoils.
So, two basic screenwriting takeaways from this first part of Part XVIII:
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If Tragedy is equivalent to what we mean nowadays when we say Genre, then would these
four “kinds” be considered sub-genres?
Not quite. Whereas Romantic Comedy or Contained Thriller are examples of sub-genres,
these four categories Aristotle cites feel more like narrative approaches. Two of them —
Pathetic and Ethical — seem like they fall into the arena of Theme, what sort of meaning the
writer may be attempting to work with, whereas the other two — Complex and Simple —
appear to be more about the scope of the story.
This comment -
I like to think of those “multiple dynamics” as layers, how a story can function at different
levels of our human experience. There is Conscious, Subconsious, and Unconscious. Within
Conscious, there is Emotional, Rational, Intuitive, Symbolic, and so forth [obviously these
are all artificial categories, but ironically in keeping with Aristotle who does the same
thing!]
This is yet another reason why my son’s advice — “Go into the story and find the animals” —
was so prescient because one way of perceiving the use of that term “animals” is that it can
refer to the multiple layers of a story. As writers, we are tasked with going beneath the
surface of the narrative, finding those layers, determining how they can work as story
dynamics, then do our best to wrangle everything into a coherent and comprehensive whole.
That is a lot of theoretical jargon, which basically means, “Write a compelling story.”
For whereas there have hitherto been good poets, each in his own branch, the
critics now expect one man to surpass all others in their several lines of excellence.
It’s been said, “We stand on the shoulders of those who have come before us.” Aristotle
seems to be suggesting that is an imperative for writers: You must climb above those who
have preceded you! Whereas previously, a ‘good’ writer is one who employed one or two of
these different “kinds” of tragedy, we are tasked with doing better, and one way of achieving
that is to use all four narrative approaches: Complex, Pathetic, Ethical, Simple.
For screenwriters, it’s the same thing. We cannot simply replicate movies that have been
produced. Rather must find a way to do something distinctive, interesting, surprising,
elevate our stories beyond past iterations.
I am looking at “Poetics” through the lens of screenwriting, - its relevance to the screenwriting craft in
contemporary times. This material was first published in 2013 on my blog Go Into The Story. The
conversation got quite lively with the enormously valuable contributions of Aristotle experts . To check
it out, or give us your take on this part of Poetics - use these links below.
Read the Comment Archive here. To add your voice to the discourse on the blog, go here.
These observations drive me back to Aristotle’s notion of “unity of action,” how a play
should have one main action. Once again, it makes me feel like Aristotle would have bonded
with the narrative form of a screenplay because a vast majority of mainstream commercial
Hollywood movies are of this paradigm: Single Protagonist, positive transformation.
True, there are movies like Babel, Crash, and Traffic, known as hyperlink cinema, what I call
‘multilinear’ storytelling, however they are in a tiny minority. It is much easier to write — and
for an audience to access and comprehend — a single Protagonist story which is one major
reason why they are so prevalent.
I discussed this with screenwriter Arash Amel in our interview about his movie Grace of Monaco:
Increasingly we see these snapshot biographies and that reflects the sentiments of Aristotle’s
main point in this section of “Poetics”.
This is not to suggest we should feel constrained from pursuing a multilinear story if that’s
what emerges in our creative process. However this is a harder path to tread, a sentiment
with which both Aristotle and today’s studio executives would agree.
This material was first published in 2013 on my blog Go Into The Story. The conversation got
quite lively. To check it out, or give us your take on this part of Poetics - use these links below.
Read the Comment Archive here. To add your voice to the discourse on the blog, go here.
I find this fascinating because the way Aristotle refers to the Chorus is pretty much how I
talk about what I call Narrative Voice.
What are the points of connection between how Aristotle refers to chorus in this
section of “Poetics” and Narrative Voice?
A writer should develop their sense of Narrative Voice in conjunction with the tone,
atmosphere and feel of the story.
Here are some examples from the screenplay for the movie American Hustle, written by
Eric Warren Singer and David O. Russell (the editorializing in scene description italicized):
P.39: Richie stares at Edith elated that she just stuck up for
him. He’s really enjoying this position of power she’s
putting him in.
So while the Greek chorus may have vanished over time, it’s interesting to think about a
possible legacy in screenwriting: Narrative Voice.
I am looking at “Poetics” through the lens of screenwriting, - its relevance to the screenwriting craft in
contemporary times. This material was first published in 2013 on my blog Go Into The Story. The
conversation got quite lively with the enormously valuable contributions of Aristotle experts . To check
it out, or give us your take on this part of Poetics - use these links below.
Read the Comment Archive here. To add your voice to the discourse on the blog, go here.
I may be taking a simplistic view here, but let me run with this and see what our Aristotelian
experts have to say on Part 19: Isn’t this simply Aristotle’s way of drawing a distinction
between what screenwriters would call Dialogue and Action?
Dialogue:
Under Thought is included every effect which has to be produced by speech *
Action:
Now, it is evident that the dramatic incidents* must be treated from the same points
of view as the dramatic speeches
(*emphasis added)
proof and refutation; the excitation of the feelings, such as pity, fear,
anger, and the like; the suggestion of importance or its opposite.
As to the observations about Diction, I’m thinking this is an implicit nod to the nature of
ancient plays which were, I am supposing, heavily dialogue oriented. They are, after all,
considered to be “poetry”, not some other “art”.
Of course with the advent of motion pictures, especially during the silent film era, the
emphasis switched almost entirely to visual storytelling.
Motion. Pictures. Both visual words. To this day, movies are primarily a visual medium. As
screenwriters, our scripts may very well have a
“command, a prayer, a statement, a threat, a question, an answer, and so forth”
but whatever dialogue we write can be best served while maximizing the visual trappings of
a scene. In any event, the distinction between Dialogue and Action is an important one,
reminding screenwriters to find a balance between the two, something that can differ genre
to genre, story to story, but should always be a consideration in the writer’s consciousness.
Furthermore as Dialogue and Action occur in the physical realm of a movie, what we hear
and what we see, there is an implied meaning in the psychological realm, what we interpret
and intuit. For Dialogue, we may call that Subtext. For Action, we may call that Intention.
I am looking at “Poetics” through the lens of screenwriting, - its relevance to the screenwriting craft in
contemporary times. This material was first published in 2013 on my blog Go Into The Story.
The conversation got quite lively with the enormously valuable contributions of Aristotle experts .
To catch up on the comments, or give us your take on this part of Poetics - use these links below.
Read the Comment Archive here. To add your voice to the discourse on the blog, go here.
For instance, to scatter seed is called sowing: but the action of the sun in scattering his
rays is nameless. Still this process bears to the sun the same relation as sowing to the
seed. Hence the expression of the poet ‘sowing the god-created light.’ There is
another way in which this kind of metaphor may be employed. We may apply an
alien term, and then deny of that term one of its proper attributes; as if we were to call
the shield, not ‘the cup of Ares,’ but ‘the wineless cup’.
A newly-coined word is one which has never been even in local use, but is adopted
by the poet himself. Some such words there appear to be: as ernyges, ‘sprouters,’ for
kerata, ‘horns’; and areter, ‘supplicator’, for hiereus, ‘priest.’
A word is lengthened when its own vowel is exchanged for a longer one, or when a
syllable is inserted. A word is contracted when some part of it is removed. Instances of
An altered word is one in which part of the ordinary form is left unchanged, and part
is recast: as in dexiteron kata mazon, ‘on the right breast,’ dexiteron is for dexion.
Nouns in themselves are either masculine, feminine, or neuter. Masculine are such as
end in N, R, S, or in some letter compounded with S – these being two, PS and X.
Feminine, such as end in vowels that are always long, namely E and O, and – of
vowels that admit of lengthening – those in A. Thus the number of letters in which
nouns masculine and feminine end is the same; for PS and X are equivalent to endings
in S. No noun ends in a mute or a vowel short by nature. Three only end in I- meli,
‘honey’; kommi, ‘gum’; peperi, ‘pepper’; five end in U. Neuter nouns end in these
two latter vowels; also in N and S.
I don’t have much to say here other than this: As writers, we are wordsmiths.
Words are our tools and as such, we must care about language. Deeply.
As to his dissection of metaphor, I got lost in it twice. However the journey was worth it just
to read this:
For instance, to scatter seed is called sowing: but the action of the sun in scattering
his rays is nameless. Still this process bears to the sun the same relation as sowing to
the seed. Hence the expression of the poet ‘sowing the god-created light.’
Just stumbling across the idea of a poet ‘sowing god-created light’ makes me smile. Having
become a fan of poetry late in my life, I get this observation, I feel it. A wonderful expression
of the power of inspiration words can bring us. Beautiful!
This material was first published in 2013 on my blog Go Into The Story. To check out the blog
comments, or give us your take on this part of Poetics - use these links below.
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To employ such license at all obtrusively is, no doubt, grotesque; but in any mode of
poetic diction there must be moderation. Even metaphors, strange (or rare) words, or
any similar forms of speech, would produce the like effect if used without propriety
and with the express purpose of being ludicrous. How great a difference is made by
the appropriate use of lengthening, may be seen in Epic poetry by the insertion of
ordinary forms in the verse. So, again, if we take a strange (or rare) word, a
metaphor, or any similar mode of expression, and replace it by the current or proper
term, the truth of our observation will be manifest. For example, Aeschylus and
Euripides each composed the same iambic line. But the alteration of a single word by
Euripides, who employed the rarer term instead of the ordinary one, makes one verse
appear beautiful and the other trivial. Aeschylus in his Philoctetes says:
“phagedaina d’he mou sarkas esthiei podos.
“The tumor which is eating the flesh of my foot.
“But the alteration of a single word by Euripides, who employed the rarer term
instead of the ordinary one, makes one verse appear beautiful and the other trivial”
(emphasis added).
Over the years, I’ve come to think of screenwriting as much more like poetry than prose. If
the average scene is about one-and-a-half pages long, we by default have to embrace a less is
more attitude. As a result, every word we choose is critical, especially with regard to scene
description. The more we use strong verbs and vivid descriptors, the more we engender
visuals to emerge in the mind of the reader, just like in poems.
So in the edit phase, we labor over every word, making sure collectively they pack a punch.
Just like one of my writing mantras: Minimum words, maximum impact.
As the anecdote goes, Thalberg was meeting with some writers under contract at MGM,
expressing his frustration about some scripted project. At some point, he proclaimed:
“This writing business you do shouldn’t be that hard. After all, it’s just words.”
To which one of the writers replied, “Yes, Irving, but which words?”
That in a nutshell describes a writer’s task: To discover which words work to tell a story
best. And as Aristotle notes, a single word has the power to alter something from beautiful
to trivial or hopefully… from trivial to beautiful.
I am looking at “Poetics” through the lens of screenwriting, - its relevance to the screenwriting craft in
contemporary times. This material was first published in 2013 on my blog Go Into The Story.
The conversation got quite lively with the enormously valuable contributions of Aristotle experts .
To catch up on the comments, or give us your take on this part of Poetics - use these links below.
Read the Comment Archive here. To add your voice to the discourse on the blog, go here.
This chapter is worth the price of admission… which is why I emphasized the critical text. I
suppose if there is only one thing you’ve ever heard associated with Poetics, it would be this
idea: Unity of Action. Some observations:
• The idea of a plot being “whole and complete” infers that it has “a beginning, a
middle, and an end.” Aristotle has previously dealt with this subject here: Part 7:
Beginning, Middle, End. This makes total sense with any traditional form of
narrative, even if the plot is inverted, told in a nonlinear fashion, or jumbled up: As
long as there are scenes which constitute a Beginning, a Middle and an End, the plot
will have the necessary elements to be whole and complete.
• This idea of how it “will thus resemble a living organism” really appeals to me. I tell
my students all the time — and hammer this on the blog as well — a story is an
organic entity. Due to the very presence of characters, who live and breathe within
the context of their own story universe, there is an innate dynamism to the narrative
elements that emerge. Indeed, this lies at the heart of what I teach about Character
Based Screenwriting, that by tapping into who a story’s characters are — their Core
Essence, respective narrative functions as represented by the five primary character
archetypes (Protagonist, Nemesis, Attractor, Mentor, Trickster), backstory — the
plot will naturally emerge from that process. Taking this approach is the very
antithesis of using formulas and as a result formulaic writing.
• Also this concept that a well-crafted narrative which has a unity of action appeals to
me. For it is a pleasurable experience to type THE END, then read a story we have
written and see the unity of action at work throughout, each scene flowing
organically into each other.
Finally the distinction Aristotle draws between an epic poem or tragedy and an “historical
composition” is reflected in some screenwriters and their approach to what are typically
known as “biopics”, movies that tell the story of a specific real-life individual from the past.
Whereas we used to have these enormous sweeping sagas such as Lawrence of Arabia or
Gandhi,
nowadays there is something known as a Snapshot Bio. The idea is to take a specific event or
period of time in an individual’s life and use that not only to construct a contained story, but
also use that narrative as a lens through which to interpret and assess the character’s life.
We will see another example when the movie Grace of Monaco comes out as it uses a
compressed period of time around a single event to tell the story of Princess Grace and
former actress Grace Kelly.
There is a saying in Hollywood: “Never let the facts get in the way of the story.” In a way
what Aristotle is saying here supports that approach, although I doubt he would have felt
entirely at ease with the sentiment of this statement.
But the reality is in adapting a real life event or set of events into a story that can work as a
movie, the writer must be willing to find the emotional truth and adhere to that over the
literal historical truth as represented by a litany of one occurrence after another.
I am looking at “Poetics” through the lens of screenwriting, - its relevance to the screenwriting craft in
contemporary times. This material was first published in 2013 on my blog Go Into The Story. The
conversation got quite lively with the enormously valuable contributions of Aristotle experts . To catch
up on the conversation, or give us your take on this part of Poetics - use these links below.
Read the Comment Archive here. To add your voice to the discourse on the blog, go here.
Epic poetry has, however, a great- a special- capacity for enlarging its dimensions,
and we can see the reason. In Tragedy we cannot imitate several lines of actions
carried on at one and the same time; we must confine ourselves to the action on the
stage and the part taken by the players. But in Epic poetry, owing to the narrative
form, many events simultaneously transacted can be presented; and these, if relevant
to the subject, add mass and dignity to the poem. The Epic has here an advantage,
and one that conduces to grandeur of effect, to diverting the mind of the hearer, and
relieving the story with varying episodes.
For sameness of incident soon produces satiety, and makes tragedies fail on the stage.
As for the meter, the heroic measure has proved its fitness by hexameter test of
experience. If a narrative poem in any other meter or in many meters were now
composed, it would be found incongruous. For of all measures the heroic is the
stateliest and the most massive; and hence it most readily admits rare words and
metaphors, which is another point in which the narrative form of imitation stands
alone. On the other hand, the iambic and the trochaic tetrameter are stirring
measures, the latter being akin to dancing, the former expressive of action.
Still more absurd would it be to mix together different meters, as was done by
Chaeremon. Hence no one has ever composed a poem on a great scale in any other
than heroic verse. Nature herself, as we have said, teaches the choice of the proper
measure. Homer, admirable in all respects, has the special merit of being the only
poet who rightly appreciates the part he should take himself.
The poet should speak as little as possible in his own person, for it is not this that makes
him an imitator. Other poets appear themselves upon the scene throughout, and
imitate but little and rarely. Homer, after a few prefatory words, at once brings in a
man, or woman, or other personage; none of them wanting in characteristic qualities,
but each with a character of his own.
I leave it up to our roaming band of wise Aristotelians to decipher the finer points of this
lengthy chapter drawing distinctions between two, I guess you could say, narrative forms:
Tragedy and Epic Poem. As far as I can make out, Aristotle is saying the main difference is
what he calls “scale”. Tragedy is more contained in scope. An epic poem is more expansive.
There is some relevance about this point to contemporary screenwriting. Setting aside the
two specific categories — Tragedy, Epic Poem — and just focusing the idea of scale, the very
idea of your story — its central conceit — can dictate the scope of the story. If you have an
concept that involves a war between interstellar planets, then you know you are writing a
story with a huge scale. If, however, the ‘war’ you explore is between a married couple like it
was in 1979’s Kramer vs. Kramer:
…we must confine ourselves to the action on the stage and the part taken by the players.
There are two other points I’d like extract from this section:
For sameness of incident soon produces satiety:
David Mamet says the number one rule of writing is “Never be boring.” That is a variation
on the theme Aristotle lays down here.
The poet should speak as little as possible in his own person,
for it is not this that makes him an imitator:
I’m tempted to say, “Tell that to Shane Black!” Or Charlie Kaufman who on occasion goes
so far as to insert himself, as the writer, into the story as he did in the movie Adaptation.
Depending upon the genre, the story and the writer, we have the freedom to make our
Narrative Voice… our Narrative Voice. Novelists do this. Poets, too. Songwriters. Why not
screenwriters? Again, I’m talking selling script, not necessarily the same as a production
draft / shooting script.
The line of least resistance and conventional wisdom echoes what Aristotle recommends,
essentially let the story speak for itself. And that is a safe, secure touchstone for most
writers and most stories.
I am looking at “Poetics” through the lens of screenwriting, - its relevance to the screenwriting craft in
contemporary times. This material was first published in 2013 on my blog Go Into The Story. The
conversation got quite lively with the enormously valuable contributions of Aristotle experts . To catch
up on the conversation, or give us your take on this part of Poetics - use these links below.
Read the Comment Archive here. To add your voice to the discourse on the blog, go here.
Well… huh. That’s a lot of words! I mean, I went to UVA and Yale, and I had to slog my way
through it. Clearly it would be a benefit to be steeped in classical Greek history and
literature, and know the language intimately in order to divine much of what’s going on here.
While I did take classical Greek and have read some of the classics, not nearly enough to
parse what’s going on in much of 25.
In using brain cells I hadn’t awakened since graduate school, I was particularly perplexed by
this:
And I had a moment of understanding, not necessarily what Aristotle intended, but the truth
of these two assertions as they pertain to Story (in general) and Movies (in particular).
What we may call Rational Logic dictates the Heroine cannot succeed. But by the rule of
Emotional Logic as it exists in the realm of Story, it almost always means she does prevail.
If we create odds so long against the Protagonist, the goal would seem to be impossible…
If in their journey, the Protagonist learns Wisdom that feeds their development and
understanding…
If we lead the Protagonist to a decisive Final Struggle moment where everything is on the
line…
No matter how impossible the effort required, if the Protagonist succeeds, the reader will
buy into the result because it makes sense, both in relation to the narrative and the
emotional experience of the reader.
And that is where “the end of the art” is “thereby attained”, and the “error” of the
“impossible” is “justified”.
I am looking at “Poetics” through the lens of screenwriting, - its relevance to the screenwriting craft in
contemporary times. This material was first published in 2013 on my blog Go Into The Story. The
conversation got quite lively with the enormously valuable contributions of Aristotle experts . To catch
up on the conversation, or give us your take on this part of Poetics - use these links below.
Read the Comment Archive here. To add your voice to the discourse on the blog, go here.
The safer route — at least intellectually — would have been for Aristotle to take the opposite
position — advocate for Epic Poem over Tragedy.
My guess is this is an example where the principle of unity of action trumps all else.
To wit:
“Moreover, the art attains its end within narrower limits for the concentrated
effect is more pleasurable than one which is spread over a long time and so
diluted… Thus if the story adopted by the poet has a strict unity, it must either
be concisely told and appear truncated; or, if it conforms to the Epic canon of
length, it must seem weak and watery.”
Of course, this emphasis on unity of action extends to original screenplays, too, as we have
discussed previously. Notably, for example, when we identify a story’s central theme as a
thread to connect every aspect of the script we write.
Let me end with a final point that is absolutely fundamental to screenwriting. Aristotle
makes the same point twice:
“Again, Tragedy like Epic poetry produces its effect even without
action; it reveals its power by mere reading… Further, it has vividness
of impression in reading as well as in representation”
(emphasis added)
I have heard many more than one writer say this in defense of a poorly executed script:
“Yeah, but imagine Tom Hanks or Sandra Bullock in this role. Can’t you just see it?”
Wrong!
If you have to rely on the impression of an A-list actor to elevate your story to life…
then you have failed.
The vitality and vibrancy of your story must be on the page itself.
The unique combination of your words — scene description and dialogue — needs to create a
movie in the mind of the reader, a compelling and visual story that sustains their interest
from FADE IN to FADE OUT. It is a massive challenge, indeed. But there it is:
With that, we have reached the end of this immersion into Aristotle’s Poetics.
To which I say: “Day-um! We made it!”
That’s it! Our look at Poetics through the lens of screenwriting and its relevance to the
screenwriting craft in contemporary times is complete! Well done for staying the distance!
This material was first published in 2013 on my blog Go Into The Story as a 44-week
series, and would have been a lesser experience without the insights of our stalwart and
engaging Aristotelian scholars, who livened up the conversation each week.
Now as then, I offer a sincere THANK YOU!
I have thoroughly enjoyed the peripatetic experience of walking this path with all of you.
To catch up on the conversation, or offer your take on this part of Poetics - use these links:
Read the Comment Archive here. To add your voice to the discourse on the blog, go here.
What did you learn from reading this guide to Poetics and diving into the comment archive?
Is there any aspect of Aristotle’s ideas which jumped out at you or captured your imagination?
Did something here perhaps become a mainstay of your approach to writing?
Now who knows what Luke was really thinking at the time. Stupidly I didn’t follow
up with him, flummoxed as I was at his comment. I remember mulling it over and
thinking that the whole idea of going into a story is precisely what a writer does,
immersing themselves in a narrative universe that they create. That has always
seemed just right to me, both in its simplicity and profundity, which is frankly why I
named this blog GoIntoTheStory.
But over time, it’s the other part in which I’ve discovered more and more layers of
meaning.
Start with the verb “find.” Is there any word more appropriate to describe the
writing process? Here are some of its definitions:
to come upon by chance:
Doesn’t that sound like brainstorming?
to locate, attain, or obtain by search or effort:
Doesn’t that sound like research?
to discover or perceive after consideration:
Doesn’t that sound like what happens when we mull over our story?
to feel or perceive:
As we go into the story, we become more emotionally connected to it.
to become aware of, or discover:
The biggie, where as explorers we uncover a story’s hidden gems.
I’m almost sure what Luke was thinking about was how a children’s story so often is
habituated by animals. Thus in his eyes, my task was probably pretty simple:
Go find the animals. They are your characters.
I’m sure if you think about it, you could probably come up with other shades of
meaning for the mantra.
I just know that this one’s my favorite mantra of all because of its source.
There you have it: My approach to rewriting a screenplay and my wish for you.
I hope that you have resonated with at least one of them. Use them to help you focus
your thoughts and bring clarity to your writing process.
But for now and always, my wish for each of you is the same sentiment as once
uttered by a cherubic youngster with bright blue eyes and a look of deep intention in
his face:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoIntoTheStory
Email: GITSblog@gmail.com
Special thanks to Franklin Leonard and the entire Black List team. In the 12 years of
its existence, the Black List has evolved into the single most important screenwriting
brand in Hollywood. Their commitment to shining a spotlight on the craft of
screenwriting and notable screenplays, and to create new avenues for outsiders to
break into the movie and TV business is a vision I share. I’m proud to contribute to
the Black List’s efforts through Go Into The Story and serve as a mentor at their
outstanding screenwriter labs.
For previously published Free GITS ebooks - you’ll find links in the Preface of this
book, and at the link to Go Into The Story at the top of this page.