Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
Aristotle’s Poetics is the user’s guide to dramatic narrative and dramatic structure. It’s just a ragged little pamphlet really. It’s all about story. Character is important but character comes out of story. People want a great story. But Aristotle is often misrepresented. He says beginning, middle and end, but people talk about the Aristotelian three-act structure. He never said anything about acts.
So art is where we act out our fantasies?
Yes. What I preach in my new book is that the movie theatre is a safe place to live out the brutal aspects of our character. We are violent. History is – God forgive us all – a catalogue of horror and violence. I have, as I do every morning, a copy of the New York Times and a copy of the LA Times in front of me. It’s a bloodbath! I do a lot of commenting in the media and my detractors (it thrills me that I’m prominent enough to have detractors!) say that a retro-hippy university professor like me should be railing against Hollywood, but that in fact I’m a company man, an apologist for Hollywood. But I really believe that film violence does no harm. As Aristotle says of Purgation, the theatre helps people by providing a safe place to experience the lethal aspects of our condition and to expend that energy in a harmless way. In fact, since television and film have become more explicit and violent in the past 30 years there has been a serious decline in crime. In fact, crime is plunging.
But the prison population isn’t.
That’s because of foolhardy drug laws. You could put all the cartels out of business by decriminalising drugs. A medical condition – drug addiction – should be treated medically. Imagine the damage you could do to the Taliban by decriminalising opium. It would rob them of their financial resource.
Tell me about Aristotle.
Aristotle’s Poetics is the user’s guide to dramatic narrative and dramatic structure. It’s just a ragged little pamphlet really.
What is the essence of dramatic narrative?
It’s story. Character is important but character comes out of story. It still impresses me. Nowadays, with instant messaging and texting, word gets out incredibly quickly. There has been a huge reduction in the power of stars because a film comes out on a Friday night and people are already telling each other to stay away from this one or that one. Take Avatar. There’s no star anybody’s heard of in Avatar. It just underscores Aristotle. People want not actors but stories.
But Aristotle gets misrepresented, just like Jesus. He says beginning, middle and end, but people talk about the Aristotelian three-act structure. He did not say that. He talks about the beginning, the middle and the end. The beginning comes first and nothing comes before the beginning. When I say this in class I give a long pause and wait for someone to say: ‘That’s so obvious. What use is that?’ And I say that a lot of movies start before the beginning of the story. Why can’t you just start on page 16? Every scene has a beginning, middle and end. Every line has a beginning, middle and end.
Any line that starts: ‘Look,’ or ‘I think...’ You don’t need that. Start at the beginning.
Read full interview
With a reputation as the godfather of screenwriting, UCLA’s Professor Richard Walter has mentored many of Hollywood’s most successful screenwriters. Walter is a member of the Writers Guild of America and is a writer of substantial professional experience throughout the media. He is the author of Escape From Film School and Screenwriting: The Art, Craft and Business of Film and Television Writing. He has written numerous feature assignments for the major studios and has sold material to all three networks. His latest book, Essentials of Screenwriting, is available from the end of June. Walter lectures on screenwriting throughout the world. He says Aristotle’s guidelines should be followed, not interpreted.
