ABCDEF – Linear

BEFDAC – Non – linear

Incorporate principles of tragedy into your writing!

It means something bad happens because as a result of a flaw in your character, and you show how this tragic fall forces your character to learn something about himself/herself.

Group A:

1.  Who is Aristotle?

He was a Greek philosopher.

2.  When and where did Aristotle live?

Greece, 384 – 322 B.C

3.  What was Aristotle’s Poetics?

He taught that Poetry should be divided into 3 genres – tragedy, comedy and epic.

Poetics focuses on tragedy.

4.  What is the definition of Greek tragedy?

Tragedy is the ‘imitation of an action’ according to the law of probability or necessity’

 

Group B:

1.  Explain Aristotle’s 6 required parts of a tragedy?

Plot, Character, Thought, Diction, Song/Melody, Spectacl

2.  What is the “cause-and-effect” chain?

Reveals what MAY happen.

3.  How can a good plot create a “unity of action”?

‘Arrangement of incidents’, not the story itself but the way the incidents are presented to the audience.

4.  Definition of mimesis:

Imitation/Representation

 

Group C:

1. Aristotle thought episodic plots were the worst kind of storytelling. What is an episodic plot and why did Aristotle think this way?

Episodic plots only concentrate on random and unrelated incidents that happen to a character.

2. What is an example of a movie or a play that follows Aristotle’s definition of tragedy? Explain your selection.

 

3. Definition of katharsis:

Purification/Clarification

 

Group D:

1.  What is the difference between a simple and a complex plot?

 

2.  What can scriptwriters today learn from the opinions of Aristotle?

 

3.  Definition of the Greek word ‘peripetieia’

Reversal

 

Group E:

1.  What is the responsibility of characters in an Aristotelian tragedy?

They support the plot. Their motivation is connected to part of the cause & effect chain.

2.  Aristotle originated the concept of the three act structure. What is it, and how does it apply to scriptwriting?

3.  Definition of anagnorisis?

Discovery of recognition, a hero suddenly becoming aware of a situation.