In today’s media, stories can expand across any amount of time, from a measly half hour to spanning entire generations. Unity of Time: This one seems immediately useless from a modern perspective.

You may have instinctively agreed or disagreed with one or all of these points, so let’s take a moment to look at their merits and faults.ġ. (If Aristotle had known what non-linear storytelling was, he probably would’ve advised against that, as well.) Accomplish the emotional beats and relevant plot points in few, efficient steps. Unity of Action: The action of the play should be as succinct as possible. A public square or palace courtyard would usually serve this purpose well.ģ. Unity of Place: the action should take place in a minimal number of locations–ideally, just one. Unity of Time: the action of the play should take place in a short internal chronology, ideally, no more than 24 hours.Ģ. Of the rich bounty Poetics provides, today we’re going to look at a concept known as the “Three Unities” or “Dramatic Unities”. Again, we’ll look at that in a later blog post.Īristotle also wrote on comedy, but sadly this text was lost in some great flood or fire or other calamity that was always insensitively destroying creative accomplishments, so we’ll have to move ahead with the tragedy stuff alone. Cathartic moments are extremely important, and learning to create them is a valuable tool. Possibly one of the most important topics is the concept of catharsis, which is an emotional purging: that moment when you release a breath you’ve been holding all through a terrible scene that was sure to end in someone’s death or disaster. It looks at a lot of things to do with theme, tone, and emotionally-satisfying character arcs (which we will inevitably look at in a later blog post). The purpose of the Poetics was to explore some of the storytelling elements that made the tragedies so gut-wrenchingly tremendous and successful. Especially as the rudimentary lessons of storytelling are essentially just exercises in pattern recognition. Nevertheless, the foundations are there for a reason–and it’s always a good idea to know the rules, even if you continue to go ahead and ignore them. These writings focussed on contemporary dramatic tragedies and are of more or less use to you as a modern writer depending on your personal technique. We’ll start this foray into story by discussing Aristotle’s Poetics, a text written approximately a billion years ago (or 335 BCE, depending on whom you ask).

Aristotle poetics pdf