Also, it should be short enough that you can take in the beauty of the work in more or less one glance, and every element included should be an essential part of an organic whole. So what makes a good plot? Well, it should have a big reveal and a sudden reversal of the hero's fortunes, preferably at one and the same point. The plot structure is much more important than the spectacle of actually performing the thing: the actors, the music, etc. By seeing a great (but flawed) hero brought low, we experience a mix of pity and fear that gets these bad feelings out of our system this text is where the term "catharsis" comes from.Ī few pieces of advice Aristotle gives about putting together a story: Plot (mythos) is more important than character development. Unlike history, which tells about a specific thing that happened, fiction uses a specific situation to present something universal, the kind of thing likely to happen given human nature. What is art? Aristotle says it's mimesis (imitation), and fiction (poetry) is imitation of human action in particular, in a manner that shows us what human nature is all about. These probably-lecture-notes from around 335 BCE are still used in screenwriting classes today: Aristotle serves up a formula for what will most move us, derived from Sophocles's tragedies like Oedipus Rex. Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 48:57 - 44.9MB)
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