Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. This month, we mark the one year anniversary of the Hopeless Academic! To mark this very auspicious occasion, I will be doing a summary of one of my favorite analytical works when it comes to literature, everyone’s absolute favorite: The Poetics by Aristotle. I referenced this work in almost every paper I wrote in college, and for good reason. In this work, Aristotle lays out several rules that are still followed (with several exceptions and improvements) by storywriters and even filmmakers today. If you studied literature at all in high school or college, you were probably introduced to the “story arc,” a diagram which reduced literature into a mathematical equation. (Exposition + Rising Action = Climax… or at least the graphical representation of that.) Aristotle is the great great great grandfather of that diagram, or at the very least, parts of it.
Obviously, I’m going to be leaving some things out, because… well.. it literally is Greek to me. (Seriously, the words are in actual Greek. At least I’m pretty sure they’re Greek.) Besides, I want to make this more fun, and if you wanted a chapter by chapter summary, you could go read sparknotes.
Now, in the Poetics, Aristotle makes a distinction between Tragedy and Comedy, but he focuses mostly on how a Tragic play should be constructed. Most people extrapolate his advice from tragic plays only to how stories in general should be constructed, including comedies, which is what we’re going to do today. Aristotle’s advice is solid regardless, so why not use it?
Most of what Aristotle has to say centers around plot, and how the elements of a tragic play can serve that plot. To him, the essence of a story should center around an action rather than a particular character, though modern filmmakers and authors might disagree. If we get down to brass tacks, though, I think that most people would choose to watch a movie where a bunch of boring people do something rather than a film where a bunch of interesting people do nothing. I think Aristotle knows this, too, but he sort of insulates himself from criticism by saying that a plot needs characters in order to accomplish anything. Even if he says that plot is the most important thing, he knows that plot almost by definition relies on characters.
In order to have a good plot, Aristotle also lays out what he thinks are the most essential structural elements to said plot. Two of the structural elements that he thinks every good plot should have are a peripeteia and an anagnorisis. Which are… what?
For those who know their Greek, a peripeteia is a reversal of the situation — in other words, that’s when things go from good to bad, or from bad to good. For example, in Cinderella’s story, her peripeteia is when she puts on the glass slipper — at least, that’s officially when her situation reverses. Before, her life was full of misery and abuse, but after she put on that slipper, her fate was sealed as the bride of Prince Charming, or whatever his name is. “But what about before, when Cinderella’s life was wonderful and then her father died?” you ask, and rightfully so. Didn’t her situation reverse then, too? Because this happens so early on in the story, most people would qualify this as exposition, or simply setting up the story. In fact, the animated Disney version has this part in voiceover, giving you only the necessary details so you know the facts of the story — the story itself doesn’t really begin until after her father dies.
So much for a peripeteia. What about anagnorisis? An anagnorisis , or recognition, is when somebody goes from ignorance to knowledge — honestly, it’s just when someone recognizes something. (Quite the fancy term for such a basic thing.) Aristotle apparently likes a bit of suspense in his stories. There are a bunch of movies and stories with recognition scenes, like the animated movie Anastasia. Anastasia has amnesia and doesn’t remember if she is the Duchess of Russia, but she recognizes the perfume on her grandmother’s hands, and the memories come flooding back to her. Her grandmother recognizes the necklace she had given Anastasia before they were separated, and the two reunite.
The other elements of the plot are a lot more basic — the complication is basically the rising action, or setting up the conflict in the story. The unraveling is the falling action in the story; this comes after the climax, and wraps up the story in a neat little bow.
“Great,” you think, “I have all of the basic structure in order to write a story that Aristotle would love.” Not so fast. Those are just some basic plot elements — he has a lot more rules.
Aristotle also has some thoughts on the length of the story. To him, the perfect plot follows along with an action that is roughly twenty-four hours in length. While it may seem overly restrictive, Aristotle’s idea is that the human brain can only handle so much — remember, people are remarkably lazy. Once you hit two days or longer, the plot gets too complicated for people to handle. Or at least, Aristotle thinks so. This is one of the rules that I’d chalk up to preference, personally, instead of doing a Jack Baur-esque type plot where everything you watch is shown in “real time.” Sadly, Aristotle wouldn’t even appreciate that type of television show, because it’s episodic. According to him, episodic plots are “the worst” (translation from the Greek.) His argument would be that it would be too difficult to keep up with all of that action. And honestly? This is actually kinda fair. Before the Netflix binge culture we somehow created, episodes were shown a week apart — who remembers all of the details of a show from three weeks ago? This is why most of the time, the only thing that remained consistent were the characters, and each episode was a story unto itself. With shows that aired on network tv, like The Office or Friends, you could skip most installments, and just watch that one singular episode. Even with shows that do have a continuous plot, there’s a quickie “Previously On…” recap. Maybe the ol’ man was onto something.
Ok. So we’ve got a complication, a peripeteia, an anagnorisis, some falling action, and a singular story with that takes place within twenty-four hours. Great! But you’re not done yet. This next rule is probably one of the most important rules.
You gotta keep it consistent. Aristotle calls this rule the “rule of probability and necessity.” It basically means that all of the characters have to be consistent unto themselves, and the plot can’t just randomly jump to a conclusion because… plot. Let’s take a character like Captain America, for example. He has been built up as a caring, noble character who would go to the ends of the earth for his friends. Above all, he’s seen as loyal, especially to those he views as family, and he’s been pretty consistent in every MCU movie he’s been in over the course of a decade. It would make no sense if, oh, I don’t know, he decided to make an entirely selfish choice and leave all of his friends behind just because he had a crush on some girl. Especially if he abandoned said friends after nearly killing himself to save said friends from brainwashing. That would make no sense at all.
Aristotle also wants to make sure that your story makes sense. You can’t have Superman showing up at every twist and turn just to save the day. Superman has a schedule to keep, and honestly, having him show up at every twist and turn is unimaginative and unexciting. Imagine watching a Batman movie and Superman just shows up at the very last second to save Batman from Joker. Sure, you’re happy Batman was saved, but wouldn’t it have been a bit more fun to watch Batman use his own ingenuity to save himself? Pixar actually has a rule for this, and they are famous for their quality storytelling. Their rule: “Coincidences that get characters into trouble are great; coincidences that get them out of it are cheating.” Aristotle, however, explains that sometimes, you have to cheat. It’s inevitable. Tony Stark needs his suit, but the nearest warehouse is thousands of miles away, and in order to get there in time, his Iron Man suit would need to break the sound barrier, which would be nearly impossible. That’s ok! Just don’t make us watch the suit traveling across the country. Just have it show up — CinemaSins can nitpick it later.
Obviously, Aristotle talks a lot more about what goes into a good story. There’s how you present everything, and the set design, and even the meter of the songs. (Which I suppose is the Ancient Greek precursor to sound design.) He has a lot of rules, not to mention his own philosophy on what tragedy is for and how it fits into the human experience.
Maybe some of his rules are outdated. Clearly, the episode thing is going to stick around for a long time to come. And stories told within only twenty-four hour periods don’t really exist that much anymore either. We’ve grown in sophistication since the days of Ancient Greek plays, too—almost everything that we depict onscreen in the twenty-first century looks incredibly realistic. The movie industry is worth billions, and actors praised like the gods Aristotle worshipped. But he certainly got something right, if studios like Pixar share his ideas. Every aspiring playwright, author, and screenwriter should memorize The Poetics. Maybe then Hollywood might start turning out some original films.