Way back in university days, when I was a Lit major, I used to be very into the philosophy and criticism of literature. And like the true nerd I’ve always been, I used to read and critique essays and theories on literature. In fact, I had planned to be a lit professor and that was my first try at grad school.
So I’ve been in heaven these last several weeks, working through my nonfiction book (and, yes, I’ll admit, living a bit of nostalgia from grad school past) because I’ve been reading Poetics by Aristotle. (Multiple translations, but I’ll talk about that in a moment.)
The reason for this: the Poetics are going to be a feature discussion point in the Intuitive book, which is coming up. And while I’m not specifically going to dissect any particular piece of Poetics in the book, I am likely going to do some dissection here.
If you’ve never heard of this book before, it is one of the most-referenced books on the origins of plot structure and is also the basis for much of what has come to be seen as either outlining plot or the “what makes compelling fiction” books. In fact, I’m always shocked when I read a book on outlining or on plot that doesn’t reference the Poetics but I also wonder how many of us have actually read it.
As a lit major, it was required reading, so I’d read it decades ago (and yes, it depresses me to now refer to undergrad as “decades” ago…), and I remember forming most of the basis of my intuitive plotting on the primary fact I’m going to discuss today, which is: nowhere (and I mean nowhere) in Aristotle’s work is there an assumption that plot needs to be 1) intentional or 2) conscious.
Let me explain why that’s important.
Almost all of the plotting and outlining books that exist (and there is at least one notable exception… maybe two) assume the elements of plot have to be carefully planned in order to exist. That is the premise upon which a good portion of the “outline ahead” or “if you only knew what happened, it would be easier to write” advice is built. It’s built on the premise that everyone has to be intentional and conscious.
But part of the reason I wanted to go back to read Poetics again was specifically because I did not remember that being a part of the original text. And just to make double sure, I read a bunch of commentaries as well (specifically, the introductions of the translators, which I believe to often be the best commentary). While there are definitely commentators who would hold that intention and consciousness should be part of the process (i.e. “surely, you have to know what you’re doing before you can do it”), none of them assert that Aristotle wrote (or lectured) his Poetics with that assertion.
And because Aristotle is the basis upon which we base so much of our theory, I wanted to go all the way back to the beginning to understand the purpose of the original “plotting” philosopher.
Of course, we often forget, that’s what Poetics is (like The Republic or Nichomachean Ethics or Beyond Good and Evil). It’s philosophical.
It’s not pedagogic.
It’s now a how-to book. It’s a this-is-and-why-is-it book.
Aristotle is describing what compelling poems (plays, in verse, meant to be performed or read) look like. And, at least in reference to Homer, basically admits the creation can be instinctive.
The fact that this book is commonly held up as the basis for forcing everyone to outline has always frustrated me because that’s not at all what the purpose of Poetics is. He’s describing the way compelling poems are constructed. Not how they can be constructed.
(I have to be very careful here not to come off as anti-outlining. I am not anti-plotting or anti-outlining. Not at all. If it’s correct alignment for you to be plotting and it works for you, then you do need to outline, and it’s good for you. It’s just not good for everyone, and unfortunately, we have to fight a bit more against the shoulds in this arena. Not because of any individual outliner, of course. But because of the volume of advice. So, just a quick little love note to all the outliners and plotters here. Y’all rock.) 🙂
In fact, there’s at least some evidence (in others of Aristotle’s work–since we don’t have all of his published works available to us) that he wouldn’t have argued for a mandate to “learn craft” in the way that our current pedagogic model is set up to learn craft. That might be putting words in Aristotle’s mouth, but it’s certainly something I’ve seen to be true in my own experience with writers.
Compelling plot may have some descriptive elements in common, but it does not have predictive elements in common. Especially because, as I’ll discuss in the Intuitive book, it’s often possible to shortcut the natural process of what Aristotle describes because we’re trying to “hit beats.”
What interested me the most about these re-reads (because I read several different translations, as the first translator suggested) was how much it put me into QTP mode. Given how often we just take things for granted, and how much we assume we know exactly what something contains, it reminded me to read the text. When there’s something that I don’t understand or don’t remember, read the text. Question the premise. What if it’s not the way I remember? Or not the way it’s been described? Question the premise.
Anyway, I have to be very careful here not to go on and on, because I am wont to do that. And that won’t be good for any of us. I needed to download some of this out of my head so I could get settled on what I wanted to pull out, as I’m going to discuss this in the Intuitive book. And I may end up commenting more as I read this again. Or it’s possible that some parts of this might end up directly in the Intuitive book. But I’m mostly just processing, still.
Thanks so much for listening to me and I hope, once again, to send much love to all my friends and writers who outline. I always like to state for the record, I’m not anti-outlining. And I know I’ve already said that, but I’ll say it again. 🙂 And with that, I leave you with one final thought.
Where we go from here: if stories have to be compelling in order to be memorable (which is part of what Aristotle is arguing here), and there’s a naturalness to that compelling nature (i.e. the audience has to have enough of a reference point to be able to believe the story, even if it’s fantasy or fiction, then how do you know when a book is compelling?
I have my own thoughts on this one (and they’ll be in the Intuitive book). But I’d like to hear what y’all think about it.
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