Today, I’m only travelling a short distance through Aristotle’s poetics. He is again presenting us with a series of definitions, but these definitions are highly practical (at least until we get to book XII which, I think, can be skipped without any real loss occurring). If we use these definitions as a guide, we gain some great insights into what makes a successful scene.

POETICS BOOK X

Simple and Complex Plots

Aristotle makes a really useful distinction here.A simple plot is made of events in sequence. A complex plot involves reversal and/or recognition.

For Aristotle, the difference lies in whether events follow one “after” another in time (are post hoc) or whether events happen “because of” one another (propter hoc).

E. M. Forster’s famous distinction between story and plot provides a useful illustration; “‘The king died and then the queen died’ is a story,” Forster writes. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief’ is a plot”.

More recently, the creators of South Park (Matt Stone and Trey Parker) have expressed the idea in a similar fashion;

When you have a set of story beats (or an outline in other words) and you can put the words “and then” in-between each one – the story fails to grip. That’s boring.

However, if in-between each story beat you can put the words “but” or “therefore” then you have a story in which the events taking place are reacting to each other. The story/plot builds momentum and tension based on everything else that has happened previously, not because of the arbitrary whims of the writer.

POETICS BOOK XI

Peripatea, Anagnorisis, and Pathos

Aristotle introduces three important concepts here; “Peripatea” or reversal, “Anagnorisis” or recognition, and “Pathos” or strong emotion.

As usual, Aristotle is concerned with definitions first, but good stories make use of all three of these plot elements, often in the same scene.

Peripatea

An action occurs but achieves the opposite of its intention – this is reversal.

Reversals are pretty straight forward. A character has an intention that drives their action, but the opposite of the intention results; John sets out to capture a burglar (intention), but is arrested at the scene of the crime by the police (opposite).

Anagnorisis

An action occurs that results in insight, revelation, or understanding – this is recognition.

Recognition occurs where someone discovers something significant about another person – and for Aristotle, recognition nearly always involves discoveries about people in particular (though it can, less usefully, involve discoveries about objects as well); John discovers that Mary is related to every one of the murder victims.

Pathos

An action occurs that results in a strong empathic reaction (the feeling of disgust, sympathy, fear, horror, etc.) in the audience – this is strong emotion.

Strong emotion (in the audience) results where the action involves injury to the individual; John is captured and tortured by the antagonist, losing an eye in the process.

If a scene fails to include at least one of these elements, it fails to be an interesting scene. The success of a scene is heightened by doubling up on these elements.

What is the test of a good scene?

Here are some questions we can apply to our evaluation; Does the action follow causally from what has preceded it? Has something changed by the end of it? Does our audience feel something intense? Have the characters discovered something important about someone? Have the characters experienced a reversal/setback?

If the scene achieves none of the above – that is, there has been no material change to the circumstances of the characters by its conclusion – then the scene itself is a failure, is unnecessary, and should be cut out of the story.

POETICS BOOK XII

The Parts of the Tragedy

This section doesn’t seem particularly helpful (and should probably be ignored). It relates very specifically to the formal structure of Greek plays – a product of their time with little relevance to our present. It is, as you have probably guessed, another set of definitions about the elements of the play.

For the sake of completeness I’ll summarize them here:

Prologue

Extends from the opening of the play to the first full performance by the chorus.

Episode

Those scenes of the tragedy that take place between choric performances.

Exode

Extends from the final choric performance to the end of the play.

Chorus

The choric performances are divided into two parts: the parode, the first full performance of the chorus while it is processing into the stage area, and the stasima, the choric performances that alternate with the episodes of dialogue by the actors.

Commos

A performance within the tragedy in which both actors and chorus take part.

And with that, we at last we leave the preliminary definitions behind and get into what Aristotle advises writers regarding the construction of drama. See you in a couple of weeks.

Next time, we’ll begin to examine the construction of drama in detail.

Copyright Philip Craig Robotham © 2021 .

The post Learning from Aristotle – The Poetics of Aristotle Applied to Audio Drama – Part 3 appeared first on Host Your Own Old Time Radio Drama.

Here we are taking a look at the next 5 sections of Aristotle’s poetics. As I stated last time, I’m working through Aristotle’s Poetics in an attempt to figure out why, even today, he is pointed to by script-writers as a guiding light in the production of drama. He is wordy, and often difficult to work out but, little by little, I’m beginning to see what his fans appreciate about him. Today we look at the elements of drama, in particular, plot, and what makes a good plot (at least according to Aristotle).

POETICS BOOK V

On Comedy and the Epic

In book V Aristotle treats briefly of comedy and the epic.Comedy concerns itself with the ridiculous (but not harmful). That is, in a comedy people behave in dysfunctional or inappropriate ways (such that they appear ridiculous and elicit laughter) but without suffering harm or eliciting sympathy. This was important to Aristotle, because, as already stated, plays in Greek society served an overtly moral purpose and so, he felt the need to establish the moral credentials of comedy. For Aristotle, the comedy was morally useful in rendering inappropriate social behavior ridiculous and thereby furnishing the audience with examples to avoid.

The Epic differs from Tragedy in that it is wider in scope and narrative in form. In today’s parlance, the epic is a book, while the tragedy is a play. A book is narrated, while a play is enacted, primarily, before the eyes (as an audio-play is enacted, primarily, before the ears). Everything you might find in a book can be found in a play, but not everything in a play is found in a book.

If we think of the comedies of Shakespeare, we see this principle at work. The plays might deal with serious matter (duels, love, suicide, etc.), but it is all done in good fun and no-one is ever really hurt (humiliated, maybe, but never hurt). The duels are avoided, the suicides are revealed to have been faked etc. Even where the antagonist gets their come-upance, their final fate is dealt with “off-stage”.

We also see that characters rarely grow or change in comedies designed after the Aristotellian model. The character we meet at the beginning of a comedy is just the same as at the end (though their circumstances may have changed). Is the bachelor egotistical and vapid at the beginning of the story? He will be so at the end (even if by that time he is married). Is the character selfish and stupid? They will remain so.We could do worse than follow such a model. For Aristotle, growth or character change undermined the ridiculous nature of the character and, instead, inspire empathy. This, Aristotle felt, removed what made comedy, comedy.Today, we are much more inclined to want to include character depth in comedy writing, but the principle remains true that the more we have a character grow and change, the less ridiculous they become. Fixed and unchanging characters are a feature of comedy that find little place in tragedy (except, perhaps, as comic relief).

POETICS BOOK VI

Tragedy

Now, back to tragedy (or the play).One of Aristotle’s more difficult, and famous, definitions reads “Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions.

“We’ve dealt elsewhere with the notion that plays, “through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions”, are required to be morally useful. This may be a laudable opinion (sort of), but it is not a constraint we feel the need to strictly apply today. Even as recently as the Golden Age of Radio, radio-shows, such as the Shadow, felt constrained (and were in fact constrained by law) to include deliberate moral lessons – “the weed of crime bears bitter fruit. Crime does not pay. The Shadow knows”, etc. Today, we feel far less constrained and can produce a work of art or play simply to be entertaining. That said, it would be foolish to consider art morally neutral. Entertainment is a high calling, providing people with a way to cope with the stresses of life, a temporary release from suffering, a means of sharing joy with others, etc. It can also be deliberately corruptive. Sometimes this is a feature of the design of the work. Sometimes this is a function of the use to which the work is put. Personally, I feel horrendously under-qualified to be giving writers any moral advice beyond ” be aware of the consequences of your choices, be responsible, own your decisions, and, where possible, try to avoid doing harm”.

Much of the remainder of Aristotle’s definition is common sense. According to Aristotle, a play presents a recognizable and plausible imitation of reality (even where that reality is made fantastic by the presence of gods and monsters). More on this later.Tragedy, in distinction to comedy, is serious. Dealing, as it should, with important themes and actions and consequences, etc. If it is not serious, then it is, in fact, comedy.

It is complete, in that it has a beginning, middle, and end that are intrinsic to the story. A good play begins with the first meaningful action of the story, relates only those events necessary to moving the story forward, and concludes as soon as the story is resolved. All irrelevant material is rejected. Completeness, therefore involves not only including everything necessary for the telling of the tale, but also an economic approach, excluding everything that would distract from it.

To say that a play is of a certain magnitude is to say that it is limited in duration, but also that it functions within certain fixed limits. A stage play has a limited amount of time to tell its story, true. But it also has only so much real-estate with which to work (the stage), the patience of the audience with the story (an audience will only sit still so long) as well as budgetary constraints on the degree and quality of the set, costumes, props, orchestra, etc. that accompany it.

It is often said that Radio is free of constraint. We can, in much the way that a book might, place the setting of our play anywhere in this universe or another. We can as easily visit the belly of a whale or the farthest star.

This freedom is not without limits, however. The radio audience must be engaged quickly. Distraction is only a channel-change away. The soundscape and dialog must be readily decodable. The number of voices must not be so many as to make recognition of the characters difficult without visual aid, etc.

A key feature of drama (and especially of audio drama) is that it is delivered in dialog. Yes, exceptions exist – the BBC’s famous sound-only story, The Revenge, by Andrew Sachs, has no dialog and stands out as a case in point. But generally, dialog is the medium of storytelling in audio-drama. Aristotle places language “embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play” front and center.It is safe to say that that audio-dramatist must be able to do the same, harnessing dialog as a means of story-telling, if they wish to produce scripts for this medium.

The famous maxim “show don’t tell” finds its origin in Aristotle’s insistence that, as far as plays are concerned, drama is “found in action, not narrative”.

But what of non-visual media, like radio, that rely on dialog? The maxim still holds. Characters should not tell us that they are, for example, angry. We should intuit the anger via subtext. We show the anger through the characters words and interactions (with supporting sounds), but we should never tell the audience the character’s emotional state, outright.

COMPARE…

BOB: I’m so angry, I feel like slamming the door today. The yellow party won the election.

WITH…

BOB: Get the hell out of my way! And take that damned yellow hat off. I don’t care who won the election. I’m not having one of those hats in this office.

SOUND: OFFICE DOOR SLAMS

According to Aristotle, tragedy is made up of six parts, organized under three categories;

Category 1: Objects of Action (comprising of Plot, Character, and Thought)

Category 2: Means or Manner of Action (comprising of Language – diction – and Melody)

Category 3: Mode or Medium of Action (comprising of Spectacle (costume, special effects, and scenery).

Aristotle makes plot the primary element of storytelling. For this he has been roundly criticized on many occasions. Those who enjoy character-based drama have often found his opinion obnoxious, feeling, with some justification, that writers who focus primarily on plot produce weak stories. There would be some justification to this viewpoint if Aristotle was only interested in plot (to the exclusion of all else), but he is not. His interest in plot is fundamentally an interest in action and reaction.

Character is revealed in the actions and reactions that the dramatis personae have to the events around them. Character is internal, but, internal character is not accessible to the eye. Because people are capable of deception and lies, it is not accessible to the ear, either. As human beings we can choose to believe or disbelieve what a person says, but we rarely discount what we see them do.

As a result, Aristotle argues that a person’s true character is not revealed by their statements but by their actions. The coward may talk of his bravery, but his true character is revealed when it is tested by events and results in action (standing-fast or running away). Because Aristotle emphasizes the revelation of character through the actions and reactions of characters (rather than through narrative explanation), he argues that events/plot are primary. In no way does he exclude the importance of character. He merely demands that character be revealed in action.

Of the elements of a plot, he singles out the reversal and recognition (discussed later) as the most significant.

Aristotle places character second in his list. Character is where we learn of the moral qualities of the individual (remember his idea that characters are either better, worse, or the same as us). It’s worth stating again that extremes of character are to be avoided (except, perhaps, in comedy). The perfectly good and perfectly evil character do not feel real to us. We know ourselves to be flawed and we empathize with the flaws we observe in others (even as we like or dislike the character overall). The catalyst for the revelation of character are the events of the plot.

Thirdly, Aristotle discusses thought, more properly understood as motivation. A character’s action must never be random. Something must motivate it and that motivation must be plausible. If a character expresses fear, there must be something in the environment or in the mind/thoughts of the character that elicits that fear. If a character begins to run, there must be an accompanying motivation (a desire to exercise, or the fear of an axe-wielding maniac).

While the motivation may be hidden for a time (in order to increase curiosity) it cannot stay so. The motivation of the action must be clear, revealed in sound and dialog, to be satisfying.At a more basic level, motivation relates to desire. Characters never initiate action without wanting… something. Even when coerced there is desire (to get out from under the coercion).

The characters desire/motivation is revealed in what they choose to do or avoid and in their decisions.

When characters face choices, anticipate, consider, weigh up, and explore the potential consequences of those choices, and then settle upon an action, thought is further revealed.

Fourth comes diction– the way voices are differentiated and the idiosyncratic ways that characters speak. Does the character speak slowly and thoughtfully, using big words? Does the character drop the “h”? Does the character mispronounce words, or utilize an accent? Is there a rhythm to the words, or are the words abrasive and jarring?

Aristotle also discusses, fifthly, song. The lyrics, rhythms, and melody of Gilbert and Sullivan spring readily to mind (although the art of the musical is somewhat foreign to a non-musician like myself). Song is something that Aristotle sees as an embellishment of the dialog.

With that understanding we turn to our final element; spectacle. On the stage this consists of costuming, props, and set. In film this is expanded to include CGI and special effects. But in audio-drama, the “spectacle” is created by sound effects and music. The sound effects support and illustrate the action of the story, creating the pictures in our minds that help to sell the reality of the story world to us, while music underscores and emphasizes the emotion and tone of the story. But both, in combination with the dialog, can bring the world of the play to life.

Aristotle makes the spectacle least important in his list on the grounds that, were it left out, a good play could still be enjoyed on the basis of the dialog alone. While sound is essential to a sound-only production such as the BBC’s “Revenge”, it is certainly the exception rather than the rule. As a life-long reader of plays (both for entertainment and as a means of self-education regarding the art of play-writing) generally speaking a play doesn’t “need” the embellishments (except at points and to achieve certain effects). However, the embellishments of sound and music can and do significantly increase the immersion generated by the story and, in many cases, could not be removed without doing violence to the whole.

POETICS BOOK VII

The PlotThere are times when reading Aristotle’s Poetics that I find myself wanting to scream. He often goes into frustrating detail about more obvious matters, while providing very little detail on the more complex topics that I find harder to understand. In book vii, he labors over the seemingly obvious, but there is value here nonetheless.He reminds us of his definition (again) that drama is “an imitation that is complete and whole and of a certain magnitude” before going on to define what that completeness is.

A drama has a beginning, middle, and end. The beginning starts at the last possible initial and essential moment (a moment that nothing essential can come before). The ending occurs at the last possible final and essential moment (a moment that nothing essential can follow after). And the middle is made up of those essential moments that come between the beginning and end.

Obvious, right?

But it is the essential nature of the parts that are significant to Aristotle. A story doesn’t begin just anywhere. It begins with an event that initiates the action and leads irrevocably through a chain of events to a conclusion. These events are selected by the writer and NONE of them can be purposeless, random, or unnecessary if the writing is to be successful.

Artistotle goes on to point out that a dramatic work of art must be comprehensible (that it must make sense). If it is too short, a beginning only, it will not satisfy. If it is too long (so that, either because of its complexity or duration, its parts and their working together cannot be discovered by the viewer/listener) it also fails to satisfy.

Here he is concerned with both duration and completeness. A play may be long or short, but it must be complete and, in being complete, it must not be stuffed with anything un-necessary.

Finally, he makes the point that a plot must be concerned with change. He takes as his primary examples a change from “good fortune to bad” or “bad fortune to good”.

For Aristotle, a story cannot be good where the status quo does not alter.In terms of how this applies to audio-drama, the following can be stated;

An audio drama (of whatever length) whether an episode in a series or a feature length story must describe a change in the circumstances of a character (or characters) from its beginning to its end in as economical, yet essentially complete, a manner as possible.

POETICS BOOK VIII

The Unity of the Plot

Unity is an essential feature of a story. Sometimes a writer makes the mistake of thinking that a story is unified because it deals with a single subject or character, but, as Aristotle points out, a life is not a plot. The fact that I was born, lived in a home with my parents, went to school, worked in a series of jobs, married, and had a family does not make these events a unified plot simply because they are about me.

A plot is formed by the selection of events around a particular character goal/desire and restricts itself to only those events relevant to the complete telling of that tale. The Odyssey by Homer, for example, carefully selects from the life of Odysseus only those events relevant to his home-coming.

A successful plot is dependent on the skill of the writer at selecting those events that contribute to the whole in an essential way. Recounting what the protagonist ate for breakfast is not essential to a story where the protagonist’s goal is to rescue his kidnapped son, for example.

The test of the unity of a story consists of ensuring that no element of a story can be removed or added without significantly changing or distorting the whole. A whole must be understood in relation to its parts and its parts in relation to the whole. Anything that cannot contribute to the unity of the story must be excluded.

POETICS BOOK IX

Plot vs. History

Just as a life is not a story, neither is history, in and of itself. Recording events as they happened, in sequence does not result in a plot. Stories involve invention. They are about what might be, or what might have been, more than they are about what actually was. And, unlike history, which concerns itself (at least according to Aristotle), with producing a comprehensive record of events, drama aims, more philosophically, at communicating ideas. In this, I suspect Aristotle is groping towards the notion of “theme”.

Rather than being a mere chronological sequencing of events, a story is about something. And in Artistotle’s Greece, where drama primarily served a civic function (teaching and promoting civic duty) it is not hard to see why Aristotle felt this way.

But as a general principle, beyond the culture of Greece, this has a lot of merit. Stories aren’t merely collections of events from a life or history. They are, in fact about something; about coping with change, about love, or revenge, or grief, or achievement, etc. They are, to paraphrase Aristotle, about universal experiences that we all can relate to (or they are if they are any good).The value of history, as a source of story, lies in its plausibility. The story based on history is believable because its events have in fact happened in the real world. However, Aristotle is at pains to point out that we are not restricted to “historical” stories. All stories, even the historical ones, must be fictionalized to a degree (through selection and invention) so that they can express their message. History lends a sense of reality to stories, but wild flights of fiction can be plausible so long as each event is linked to each by a clear chain of cause and effect.

That which Aristotle calls the episodic story is to be avoided. A story that is merely a series of events in sequence. The “and then” story – “I got up and then I went outside and then I caught a rabbit and then I ate it and then I looked at the sky and then I noticed a storm gathering” – is ultimately unsatisfying.

For Aristotle, the satisfaction and believability of a story is tied up with it being motivated effectively. Eg. “Cold and hungry, I left the cave and caught a rabbit for breakfast. The wind was picking up, so I scanned the sky and noted the gathering clouds. Storms in the mountains could be dangerous, so I would need to seek shelter.”

The inclusion of motivational links takes the “episodes” related earlier and makes them plausible and part of a unified whole. This story is one of survival against the elements. It is about something.

Here, Aristotle makes an aside that speaks directly to our present. Good writers will, from time to time, include unmotivated episodic material at the behest of (and to placate) their actors, or studio, or investors. Bad writers do it because they can’t do otherwise.

But what of surprises and twists? According to Aristotle, an action does not have to be predictable to be motivated. In fact, the best actions are surprising when they occur – however, when we look back at them they must appear to have been inevitable (that is, we must be able to see the antecedent causes and motivations that led inevitably to them).

It may be a shocking surprise that the mild mannered wife takes an axe to her husband in the second act, but given his dismissive and insulting behavior, when we look back over their interactions, it should appear thoroughly motivated and plausible.

Next time, we’ll examine Aristotle’s break-down of the key elements of a plot.

Copyright Philip Craig Robotham © 2021 .

The post Learning from Aristotle – The Poetics of Aristotle Applied to Audio Drama – Part 2 appeared first on Host Your Own Old Time Radio Drama.

This is a rambling exploration of Aristotle’s guide to understanding and writing drama (as applied to audio drama) that began as a set of personal notes on Artistotle’s little book “The Poetics”, but, as I wrote, turned into a one-sided imaginary address to other writers, who like myself, are interested in figuring out why script-writing professionals from David Mamet to Aaron Sorkin consider it such a masterful guide to the craft.

If you find it a bit preachy or pretentious, I can only apologize and say, yeah, that’s how most of my first drafts look. I’ve rushed to publish it simply to get some content out (with the full realization that, given how busy I am at the moment, any delay at all would result in it never seeing the light of day).

This is only the first part and deals with Aristotle’s introduction to his subject matter. Future articles will go further into depth regarding his theory of script-writing.

TLDR Version

Art is creative imitation. Art forms differ in terms of the medium, object, and manner of this imitation. A painting, for example, is quite different to a play. Unsurprisingly, audio drama is a unique art-form telling human stories (object) through sound, music, and speech (medium) in the form of recordings of scripted and acted play performances designed specifically for the ear (manner). A proper understanding of the unique elements of the form we choose to work in is essential to the successful creation of art.

Dramatic art has a long history that is still evolving, one we ignore (or over-emphasise) at our peril; a point that is as true of audio-drama as any other art-form.

The Poetics of Artistotle applied to Audio Drama (Part 1)

Background

Back in 330 BC Aristotle explained his “theory of Art” to his students in his Poetics. He did so, largely, to refute his great teacher, Plato, who felt that art, being but an imitation of life, had little value because it distorts the world and, being fiction, is a form of deceit – a view that the Puritans would have found themselves whole-heartedly in agreement with.

Aristotle, however, saw things differently. He saw the way art imitates life as essentially redeeming and justified.”

The Poetics” isn’t a particularly long or difficult read, but it does refer to some things (familiar enough once you see what they are) in language and terminology that differ in meaning and usage today. So a little background is in order.

According to Aristotle, art imitates life, and imitation is the key to learning. As children we learn by imitating those around us. Language is acquired as we imitate the sounds made by adults. Moral character is learned as we imitate and enact the behaviour of others. In fact, according to the Greeks, learning doesn’t take place fully until it is expressed in action. That is, the Greeks did not consider head-knowledge to be knowledge at all. In Greek culture knowledge had to be applied, practically, before it could be considered “truly” learned.

That said, experience did not have to be first hand for learning to occur. It was possible to share in the experience that made learning real by watching it (or perhaps, by listening to it – if we try to apply this idea to the realm of audio).

By imitation, Aristotle didn’t see the role of art as being to provide exact imitations of life from which the audience might learn, rather he saw art as a genuinely creative process in which the distortions of real life that art was capable of, could be harnessed, shaped, and directed for positive effect.

For the Greeks, art was NOT entertainment. Art, while entertaining, served another purpose entirely, and one that we do not easily comprehend in the modern world.Greece, in particular Athens, was a fairly brutal culture. While free (by ancient standards) and inclusive in its decision making (having a form of democracy) it was also a violent and conquering power. It held up cold (even ruthless) logic as the social ideal and viewed emotion (especially pity and compassion) as something to be put aside as dangerous and antithetical to the completion of one’s civic duty.

Once a year, during a festival, the people of Athens would gather to watch plays produced in a competition. These plays were intended to teach important civic values and the winner would be presented with a wreath in recognition of their service to the community. According to Aristotle, along with fulfilling this overtly preachy purpose, plays functioned also as a means of exciting and ridding the populace of unwanted emotions (such as pity and fear) that had no place in the fulfilment of civic duty. By allowing them to be experienced via proxy, the audience could safely vent these “unhealthy” emotions without allowing them to impact life in the real world.

While this made a kind of cruel sense in the Greek world, it’s certainly not the case that art is limited to, or even expected to perform, this function in the modern world. We often enjoy art for its own sake, as a form of expression and entertainment to be admired simply because it is there. Aristotle’s ideas regarding catharsis and purgation, therefore, have little to say to us today (being more or less nonsense), however many of his other ideas are particularly useful to the audio dramatist.

Of particular interest to the modern writer is Aristotle’s differentiation between tragedy and comedy. To understand Aristotle properly we must recognise that comedy meant much the same in his time as it does in our own (the depiction of the ridiculous and humorous), but that tragedy refers fundamentally to EVERYTHING else (ALL serious drama that is not intended to exaggerate for the sake of a laugh or that has as its primary object presenting the ridiculous or absurd).It’s my intention to work through Aristotle’s little pamphlet and draw out the insights he has found that have stood the test of time, hopefully discovering, in the process, why so many writers refer to “The Poetics” as a master work of instruction in the creation of stage drama and how those principles might be applied to the writing of audio drama.

Before I do, however, I feel like I need to say one more thing. Aristotle comes across like a boring elderly professor, all “let’s define our terms” and “this thing can be broken into twenty-seven subcategories that we will discuss in detail”. Working through his book, short though it is, can be a little daunting as a result. I think it’s worth the effort, though, especially if we apply what we are learning as we go.So, without further ado…

POETICS BOOK I

Introduction

Aristotle starts by telling us his purpose, he intends to analyse the types and parts of storytelling (particularly the plot) that are on display in Athens. At this time, poetry was a performance art, one that told stories in the form of plays, songs, and narrative recitals – a subset of the fine arts that included music, painting, sculpture etc. Abstraction was not really something that the Greeks had a concept for – though they did use patterns on their pottery that were simply decoration.It also appears to be the case that written stories were only just emerging and presented a particular problem for Aristotle in deciding how to classify them.

The Medium Of Imitation

To help determine how he would classify the different kinds of arts, Aristotle settled on the unifying concept of imitation (that is, if it is art, it imitates life in some way) but that this imitation differs in manner, medium, and object (remember what I said about his being overly fond of definitions). For example a painting might represent real world things (like bowls of fruit and goblets of wine – the objects), using paint, color, light, and canvas (the medium), applied via brush strokes (the manner). A play might, likewise, represent people in argument (the objects), using language, movement, music (the medium), delivered by the acting out of the play on stage before an audience (the manner) with the aid of script, set, props, etc.

According to Aristotle, different forms of dramatic story-telling (treating of objects and manner in diverse ways) have a tendancy to be expressed in three specific media (movement, language, and music – singly and in combination).Aristotle wasn’t quite sure of how to classify the emerging art-form of textual narrative, but does deal with that category later). For now, he focuses on classifying the play. He suggests that plays involve language (of course), movement (rhythm) and harmony (song/music).

For our purposes, it is helpful to think about how an audio/radio play is to be categorised in general. I say “in general” because exceptions always exist.

So let’s engage in a little classification exercise with regard to our own focus of attention (the radio play). A radio play uses the following media; language (dialog and narration), sound effects, and music to communicate the story – with volume acting as a spotlight to direct our attention to what is most important. The manner of delivery is via an auditory, edited, recording (or live performance) of the (vocally) acted out events – enhanced with and supported by sound-effects and given emotional depth by music – and listened to by an audience that takes this input and constructs the story in their minds. The objects are the characters and their situations. Not all elements must be present in all cases, but enough must be present for the thing to be recognized as a play for the ears.

There is a lot here to unpack, and all of it impacts the final form that an audio-drama takes.An audio drama is not, strictly speaking, a full cast audio book. In this day and age, where discoverability is so significant, the suggestion that audio books, if they employ a full cast and sound-effects in the reading, are functionally identical to audio drama is plainly false. For those who produce the niche form that is audio drama, having audio-books invade their space and reduce and impede their chances of being found by actual audio-drama enthusiasts is a never-ending source of frustration.

An audio drama is not a book reading, neither is it a stage play. It has characteristics that are uniquely its own, though it does borrow or share elements with these other categories.An audio-drama is, firstly, a play for the ears. In it some characters, perhaps with the aid of a line or two of narration, act out a story in dialog. The action of the story is revealed through dialog and (limited) narration. It is illustrated with supporting sound effects and music may also accompany the story to support and enhance the emotional response of the audience.

It differs from the stage play in that none of the action is seen. It all takes places in the mind of the listener. It differs from a book reading in that the action is heard directly and constructed in the minds of the audience via character actors, without long sections of description. Short prompts in the form of narration or clues to setting are provided in the scene, but the heavy lifting of scene construction is left entirely up to the audience member. It is this reliance on the audience (without overt descriptive assistance) that separates the telling of stories from the audio-dramatization of the same.

Before concluding this discussion of the first part of Aristotle’s poetics, it is worth discussing poetic rhythm. Poem’s and plays were delivered, largely, in rhyme. It appears that plays grew out of choral songs in Greek society, rather than story-telling around the campfire. As a result, rhythm (or meter) is a significant element of Aristotle’s discussion and analysis. That English speech has a certain rhythm to it is beyond dispute. How a writer might use these rhythms to advance the story is a thing which will need some unpacking, later, however.

POETICS BOOK II

The Objects of Imitation

In this second part to Aristotle’s analysis he treats, briefly, of characters. According to Aristotle, drama is necessarily about characters. He refers to characters as “men in action”. But effectively, he means any characters with human traits. Whether gods or monsters, or oracles, (or anthropomorphised household objects in the Disney sense) characters in stories must, necessarily, be in action. They must want something and act to achieve it, even if what they want is to be left alone in order to do nothing.

It’s worth noting that in audio-drama, as in any form of drama, characters in action are crucial. No behaviour should ever be unmotivated and no driving motivation should be left un-acted upon. This is one of the keys to making our characters authentic and relatable.

It is also the case that a character’s motivation must be known to the audience (even if it is only known through sub-text). A character who acts in a senseless or unmotivated manner will always lack authenticity, as will a character who fails to act on, or acts contrary to, a driving (or significant) motivation that is known to the audience. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the titular character’s dithering inaction is authentic because we understand it to be motivated by a desire to avoid confrontation and discomfort.

In typically Aristotelian fashion, Aristotle seeks to describe and categorise the things he is studying. In this case, characters (“men in action”) fall into three groups; those who are better (more noble and/or morally “good”) than we are, those who are as we are (having both strengths and weaknesses), and those who are worse (more foolish and/or morally “bad”) than we are. As usual, this is more a spectrum than a distinct set of classes without overlap. At the outer edges lie the caricatures (the “Dudley Do-rights” and the moustache twirling villains) but as we move a little towards the center, heroes begin to demonstrate flaws and villains begin to demonstrate redeeming features, while in the middle our “heroes” and “villains” may be all but indistinguishable, having “strengths” and “weaknesses” in equal measure. While tragedy and comedy (as Aristotle understood them) can draw on any of these types, he tended to see comedy as drawing primarily upon characters who are worse than we are, and serious drama (tragedy) as drawing on characters who are the same or better than we are.

This focus on the moral nature of characters is a little surprising to the modern thinker, but makes sense in the context of Ancient Greek society and its insistence that plays serve a civic purpose.

For the audio dramatist, the division is somewhat arbitrary. Exaggerated and foolish characters lend themselves to comedy, true, but the ability of an audience to relate to and identify with characters increases the further towards the middle of the spectrum characters are placed. Perfectly good, or capable characters (the dreaded “Mary Sue”) are the bane of engaging story-telling. Likewise, the unambiguously evil, or incapable character comes across as a caricature and leaves the audience unconvinced and unmoved by the action of the story.

Of more importance is the principle that characters must be in action (even if that action is a motivated desire to do nothing) and that characters must act according to motivations that the audience can recognize and relate to – the only, possible, exception to this would be where a character is sufficiently alien that we wish to emphasise its “unfathomable and alien nature” as lying beyond human understanding. Even here, however, great caution needs to be exercised, or the character becomes farcical. Better to give an alien being an understandable motivation (for example hunger) and bend it a little, than to present something too off the wall (such as a desire to merge with the color blue, or a tendency to lick people’s ankles every 17th of June).

POETICS BOOK III

The Manner of Imitation

Book, play, song, poem, (and today film, television, and audio-drama) are all means of delivering these imitations of life that we understand to be stories. Aristotle points out that books are different to plays. In a prose work, the author chooses who’s voice to address the reader with (his own, perhaps, or that of one of his characters). In a play numerous voices are employed and the action is made visual. In a radio drama, the voices are numerous and the action is made audible. Unlike the stage play (in which each performance is a varied and unique experience, even if performed night after night) the radio play is usually recorded and can be experienced over and over. The emphasis on rendering the action of the play through sound requires some unique understandings that do not necessarily apply as completely to other forms of art.

In film and on stage for example, the action, generally, occurs in front of the audience and the sounds support this. Any sounds are explicable. They are provided to add verisimilitude (realism) but require little explanation because we can generally see what the sound applies to.

In audio drama, however, sound is, while occasionally self-explanatory, typically quite ambiguous. The crackle of cellophane can be “read” by the audience as a crackling fire, a foot stepping on dry twigs, rain falling, or a sweet-wrapper being opened, to list just a few possibilities.

The more ambiguous nature of sound as compared with sight (and also as compared with the long narrative descriptions of a novel) makes clarity harder to achieve. And a lack of clarity breaks the immersion that is so central to the effectiveness of audio-drama.

I’ve written elsewhere in detail about immersion, sound, music, dialog, casting, and narration. If you’re interested in these matters (and they do, after all, contribute to a proper understanding of the elements that make audio-drama a distinct form of Imitation in the Aristotelian sense) the following articles may be of use…

1. The Deaf Writer’s Guide to Sound and Silence in Audio Drama
2. In Defense of (limited) Narration
3. How to increase engagement in Audio Drama by Writing Less
4. Tips for Keeping Your Audio Drama From Being Forgotten – Memory and Audience Focus
5. How to Decide on the Optimal Cast size for your Scripts.

PART IV

A Short History of Drama

This has turned into a longer discussion than I originally intended, but I do want to have a quick look at Aristotle’s discussion of the history and origin of story-telling in the Greek context before we complete Part 1.

As noted previously, for Aristotle, art is a form of imitation. He places the origin of the impulse to imitate, unsurprisingly, in human nature. Children, especially, learn through the imitation of things in the wider world (particularly their parents), and adults likewise do the same, though not with the same alacrity or delight necessarily. Aristotle points out that imitations of things delight us and give us pleasure. We see a particularly beautiful painting, or hear a particularly exemplary song, and we take pleasure in it. Even things which are frightening to experience in reality – war or spiders – can be enjoyed if experienced as a representation (a painting or picture or story).

Also as noted in the introduction, Aristotle saw plays as an outgrowth of song, which in turn grew out of fireside story telling. It’s long been known that pre-literate societies (which the Greeks were well in advance of) used rhythm and rhyme as a way of aiding the memory in the learning and transmitting of stories. In Europe, fairy and folk tales were passed down in pre-literate societies using patterns of language, etc. to aid in their remembering. Songs are remembered far longer and with more accuracy than any teacher’s lecture ever delivered.

As he explains it, the history of dramatic story telling is one in which the telling of stories became a matter of religious ritual, song and dance, performed by a group. At some point (Aristotle attributes the innovation to Aeschylus) actors began stepping out of this chorus to deliver lines. While at another (this time attributed to Sophocles) backdrops and props began to be used. The rhymes themselves began to be delivered in different rhythms (originally delivered in trochaic tetrameter – a rhythm suited to dance – but shifting to the iambic – a rhythm more closely approximating speech).

For millennia, verse was the primary means of delivering dialog in a play. Shakespeare used Iambic Pentameter for his noble characters (though the non-nobles spoke in a much more normal fashion). In deference to the Greek use of masks and archetypes, characters were often simplified caricatures, though throughout human history, uniquely human characters were being drawn by playwrights. The modern era of realistic dialog and characters was an innovation brought to us, not that long ago, by Henrik Ibsen and others of the “realist” school.

Aristotle had the good sense, born out by history, to understand that the dramatic form of his day was not necessarily the final “true” form that it would assume.

Those of us involved in the writing and production of audio drama need, likewise, to be wary of adopting a “one true way” attitude to the art. Audio drama is a unique art-form, different from a book and a film, but audio-drama is NOT a complete and proscribed art-form. It will continue to evolve and change, develop and adapt. There will be many expressions of audio-drama and this diversity is both to be expected and to be welcomed. Innovation is one of the signs that an art-form is alive.

A second lesson to be learned here is that Audio drama has a history and we fail to pay attention to that history at our cost. Many audio-dramatists look at the work done in the past with haughty disapproval. Often this is based on ignorance (an egotistical disregard for the past borne of the erroneous belief that we have, in the present, already surpassed it). In other cases, it is more realistic, having been born of exposure to the large amount of sub-standard material that was produced in the factory-like heyday of Old-Time-Radio. The result is that many new entrants in the audio-drama arena waste a lot of time recreating past errors, reinventing already established techniques, and stumbling over problems for which ready solutions already exist (and have existed for a long time).

Our attention to the past must be selective (we need to look at and learn from the masters of the form such as Arch Oboler, the team behind Gunsmoke, Carlton Morse, Norman Corwin, and many others) while also being critical (recognizing the importance of modern pacing, the failures and lazy excesses of the factory-like production system etc.).

Further, we need to be wary of any pre-conceived ideas about how the industry works (or should work). It’s not uncommon for folks to assume that work-for-hire, Hollywood, business models and conventions are the only ones available to those who want to work in the audio-drama space. This is, of course, not the case, as any examination of the history of the art-form will tell you. Investment money may attempt to tie up all manner of rights and one-sided-obligations in exchange for funding, but those rules are not written in stone and a couple of kids with a microphone can still attract the kind of audiences and revenue that the so-called “big-boys” can only dream of.Here are a couple of articles I have written on the importance of Audio drama’s history…

1. The History of Commercial Radio – Audio Drama for Schools Lesson 02
2. Read Scripts to Improve Your Writing

I will close with one last point. Something in the constitution of human beings, something deep within our psychology, predisposes us to enjoy and seek out stories. As well as getting an understanding of the past and present, it is essential for the writer of audio-drama to understand the nature of human psychology and work in cooperation with it to produce stories that most effectively produce delight. Earlier, I listed some articles I have written that discuss the unique way in which audio-drama interacts with the human mind. When we fight or ignore these features of human psychology (much as occurs when we ignore the lessons of the past and present) we fail to achieve the heights of which we and our art-form are capable. Perhaps this is the fundamental reason why a critical examination of a 2000 year old philosopher is worth our time, even today.

Next time, in Part 2, I will begin looking at Aristotle’s understanding the types of drama and the importance of plot.

Copyright Philip Craig Robotham © 2021 .

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