Three storytelling tips from Aristotle
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I just finished revisiting Aristotle’s Poetics via an excellent new translation by Philip Freeman, titled How to Tell a Story, part of Princeton UP’s Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers series. It’s been at least a decade since I last read the Poetics, but it’s striking how much of Aristotle’s insight remains applicable despite the drastic differences in art and literature between his day and our own.
The entire book is still worth reading, and I’d certainly recommend Freeman’s translation as the clearest and most accessible version I’ve yet encountered. As a sample, here are three of Aristotle’s ideas about storytelling that I found particularly striking on this readthrough. Think of them less as “tips” than as reminders:
Narrow your scope
Don’t attempt to get the whole world into your story, much less the entire, all-encompassing narrative of a huge event. Start with a discrete, limited plot that fits in as a part of the whole and build outwards from there. Aristotle goes for the greatest available example from his own day:
And so, as I said earlier, Homer’s inspired excellence in respect to other poets is clear in this respect as well. Although he has a beginning and end, he doesn’t try to cover the whole Trojan War in the Iliad. If he had, the plot would have been much too large and impossible to comprehend in one story. Instead he covers only one small part of the war, though he uses the episode on the catalogue of ships and other such episodes to work in other incidents.
Compare Tolkien’s thoughts, in “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” on how the Beowulf poet situated that epic’s narrow set of events within a wider world, and how Tolkien himself did this in The Lord of the Rings.
Consider the strengths and limitations of your medium
Perhaps the last quarter or so of the Poetics is taken up with Aristotle’s adjudication of a debate surrounding two rival poetic media: epic and tragedy. He does not denigrate either medium but carefully examines the relative strengths and weaknesses of each, noting, for example, that
Epic has a special quality which allows it to be longer. In tragedy the plot cannot of course cover simultaneous actions at once since there is only one stage. But epic, because it is a narrative, can cover many actions taking place at the same time. If these simultaneous actions fit together as a whole, they can make an epic a powerful story. Thus epic has the advantage of variety and a diversity of episodes that contribute to its grandeur. Tragedy lacks this variety and can grow dull and tedious, causing many tragedies to fail.
That said, Aristotle is concerned that stories be presented in the medium most suited to the events that occur in them. He draws another example from Homer:
If someone tried to put the scene from the Iliad onstage in which Hector is pursued by Achilles around Troy, it would look ridiculous, with actors standing around while Achilles tells them to stay away. But in epic, this works perfectly well.
Not all stories are suitable for all media. Consider the phenomenon of “unfilmable novels.”
Don’t overexplain
This one is a bit trickier, as the passage below is presented by Aristotle as a counterargument in the tragedy vs epic debate that he is preparing to refute. Nevertheless, I think Aristotle’s imaginary debate partner raises a valid point:
If the more tasteful art is always superior and what appeals to a better kind of audience is always best, then it’s perfectly clear that art that displays everything is more lowly and common. Those who practice such art assume that the audience is incapable of understanding anything the actors don’t make very clear onstage through movement and gesticulation.
There’s a lot going on here, not least that Aristotle is teeing up his final, unassailable arguments in favor of the superiority of… tragedy. A perspective I pretty strongly disagree with, and for reasons articulated earlier by Aristotle himself. But the incidental argument that poor quality storytelling overexplains is a sound one regardless of medium or genre. If you’ve ever complained about a movie “spoonfeeding” the audience or a novel tediously overloading its readers with expository “info dumps,” you’ve noted a literary flaw first described over 2300 years ago.
Give your readers credit—or at least the benefit of the doubt—and don’t insult their intelligence. Your storytelling will be better for it.
Conclusion
As I said at the beginning, there’s much, much more to be mined from this little handbook. But I think these stood out to me as sorely needed reminders in our age of decadent, diffuse, chaotic, incoherent stories. (Aristotle has a lot to say, for instance, about stories that sacrifice believability for spectacle or plots that go nowhere.) If you want to read, write, and think better about storytelling and art, the Poetics is a good book to start with, and How to Tell a Story is an excellent edition.
