Aristotle’s “Poetics”: Presentation Thinking Book Club

168 Aristotle - "Poetics" Book Club

Mikey: [00:00:00] Molly, let us discuss the art of poetry. Welcome back to Presentation Thinking AKA. The Storyteller Study Club. We're gonna go back to 3 35 bc, Molly y, because Aaron Sorkin told us to.

Molly: That's right. Aaron Sorkin sent us here. We're sitting among Aristotle, Play-Doh, some beautiful Greek architecture.

Music: Yeah,

Molly: I'm trying to think about like what that would feel like in that time.

Probably a little bit less hot. Yeah. The world is a little cooler, but people were writing about things for the first time ever. Art, culture, science, math. People were putting pen to paper. And one of those people was Aristotle. Who? [00:01:00]

Mikey: Aristotle, the homie, the understudy of Play-Doh. But Aristotle was like interested in philosophies, a lot of things, you know, and uh, basically polymath.

He wanted it all. Biology. All right about it. Philosophy. I'm in storytelling. Poetry, Molly.

Molly: Exactly. I'll tell you how to do it. That's why we're here. Yeah. After taking presentation, thinking after taking the amazing. Masterclass from screenwriter Aaron Sorgen, who references the elements of great stories really can all be traced back to Aristotle's Poetics and his art of rhetoric.

These are two separate works that Aristotle put together and Mikey and I have had this on our two read list fruit maybe since we started the podcast. 'cause Aristotle is referenced as like a little bit of the father of storytelling. I think some people would say. But it's a, it's an intimidating endeavor.

So we put it off for a little while until Aaron's work and finally prompted us in there. And I'm happy to say that after reading it, watching [00:02:00] several YouTube synopses that we shared back and forth with each other and essentially digesting some spark notes, I feel there are some really, really valuable presentation thinking connections.

Mikey, uh, I'm sure you feel the same. And I'm excited to talk about them with you today.

Mikey: Yeah. I mean, if these rules apply and can, basically every movie that has ever worked, Sorkin argues that it's because they followed to some degree the rules of poetics, but he doesn't give it them to us in his masterclass.

So we're like, all right. I. Time to go brush up on these. So, yeah, I agree, Molly. I think whether you are a marketer who's developing stories to sell your product or service, you're a seller, you're a subject matter expert, you're a, a leader and you want to guide people along to, to convince people to, to bring customers on a journey.

The storytelling stuff is so buzzy, but I think if we can better know these rules, then it's gonna be a lot easier to, to try to structure and also like poke holes in, I. Something that we [00:03:00] just put together. And so I think Molly Yeah, when you do, so we, we both have the text, which is actually really hard to read for me.

Uh, and then there's always like YouTube links and so many helpful, uh, resources online that try to like put it into modern day lingo and, and also apply like really modern references that we can be like, oh, that's an example of, you know, character whatever

Molly: Jaws.

Mikey: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So. I think our show notes will be robust to this episode.

Feel free, we'll tell you which, which like references we thought were really helpful. And then I think we're just gonna try to unpack it. And a lot of these end up framing poetics as like six key elements that make up essentially a good story. Like these are the rules of storytelling as written by Aristotle a long ass time ago.

Molly: Yeah, absolutely. And we've done, Mikey, we've done story shape, story structures. Lots of people have different frameworks to apply to presentations and decks specifically, but I also wanna add that Aristotle is credited [00:04:00] with, as like the person that created the three act structure or first asserted that stories could be viewed within three acts, right?

So even though he doesn't explicitly say it in this text, all of these six elements. Do fall perfectly along his three act structure, which I think he would later write more about. And so that really fits well if you kind of keep, if you put your three act structure hat on, I think these elements help, uh, to fall on that, on that map.

Mikey: It's true. And like he, he, he might not say three act structure, but he does. Literally like this is where Beginning, middle, end, beginning, middle end. Yeah. That's was born, you know. Exactly. So if you have ever been told that a story has a beginning, middle end, then you already know a lot of poetics because of the six elements.

You know, like plot was number one, and the most he would say like the most important.

Music: Mm-hmm. Fuck. Here we

Mikey: go. And a plot, as he says, should be whole. And that's where he, he defines it as having a, a beginning, middle end. So

Molly: yes. Yes. I don't know

Mikey: if, should we just jump into these things, Molly? [00:05:00] Yeah,

Molly: let's do, I was gonna say, let's, let's get, get in.

Because the dense of the text

Mikey: Yeah.

Molly: The longer the podcast.

Mikey: Sweet. Yeah. So like, he calls plot the source and the soul of tragedy. Like he, he. Does not hide his love for plot. And even in the 48 pages that poetics takes up in my book, 24 of them in like go into plot. And so one of the first elements of like making sure that you actually do have a plot is he says it needs to be complete.

So completeness. And he talks a lot about like. Structure and that basically, this is where he talks about beginning, middle, end, but it shouldn't just be arbitrary, you know, like the beginning, anything that happens before it that was irrelevant, you know, is kind of like wasted. And so I think he really cares about structure and kind of cause effect and sequencing as you've got written in your notes too, Molly.

Mm-hmm. Yes. Yeah, like I think he, he was really keen on making sure things happen for a [00:06:00] reason.

Molly: Yeah. Yeah. There's an immediate. Admiration and adoration of this device working as a holistic thing. So plot's the most important thing and all the other things fit within that. And the beginning, middle end, each have like certain elements that are associated with them.

It could be different action characters do different things. There's different characters, but you can trace it back to certain beats. And, and again, to, to zoom out slightly, this poetics work is mainly focused on tragedy versus comedy. Oh yeah. Which of course, were like the emerging. Genres at the time.

And so this is him kind of extrapolating and putting the science behind what makes a good tragedy. Mm-hmm. So he calls three tragic beats that work together to create a satisfying ending. And there's three really crazy, kind of like these, we've gotta be some like Latin or Greek kind of words here, but one is per per petia.

I mean per petia. Mm-hmm. Which is a sudden reversal of fortune. It's [00:07:00] also known as just the reversal. So you can think of any story where like someone either loses it at all or they get it all, you know? Mm-hmm. They win the lottery, their whole life changes or they lose everything. That's in a literal sense with money, but there's a reversal of fortune.

There's also an anus, which is a recognition, so we've got a reversal and then a recognition. A recognition is when a character makes critical discovery or revelation. I think about those movies. My fee is, well, I'm always, you know, when someone's like trying to get someone in on like a plan and they're like, come on, you gotta do it one less, you know, one less how you set in Vegas or whatever.

And they like, no, I'm done. I'm retired or whatever. But it takes a specific. Event to, or a critical discovery where they're like, all right, I'm in. Like, something kind of motivates them. So I was thinking of that recognition. I think that's one example of many. But, and then at the end there's a catharsis and emotional relief that, um, Aristotle says here, there's a scene of suffering where like, whether it's good or bad, the emotions are [00:08:00] released.

And yeah, there's usually chaos kind of associated with that as well. Yep. And yeah, there's causality this whole time. He, he talks shit in this first part, Mikey, about some episodic is a different kind of storytelling where it's, where it's just a single little story, little anecdote. You can think maybe like a nursery rhyme or fables.

And he definitely refers to those as like inferior poets. The unskilled poet will write an episodic work because they can't, or they, you know, fluff the plot for longer than is necessary or is correct because, or is natural because they don't, uh, they don't know any better. They don't, they haven't thought about these rules the way he has.

So I thought that was kind of funny. Episodic bean. I hate second

Mikey: rate.

Molly: Second rate. Fair? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's also like a, he also talks a lot about in that plot section, the unity, yeah. Of the plot does not equate to the unity of the hero. Mm-hmm. The quote here is, for infinitely various reasons, the incidents in one man's life cannot be reduced to unity.

So obviously, like it's, it's not your [00:09:00] whole life necessarily, it's how it's connected in the plot. So there's uni, everything's like that bottom line thing, like. What's Jaws about? It's the shark. What's Oceans 11 about? It's the heist and like, you know, the relationships they have with each other, but like there's a bottom line.

Mm-hmm. It's not necessarily like the action itself. Yeah, the action is usually like a manifestation of it,

Mikey: but that, yeah, there's that singular drive that everybody, every, everything in the movie or the, the book kind of ladders up to points, back to, so that it. Does feel cohesive and like you keep flipping the page and it's, it's not all over the place.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I really like here this like 5.4 determinate structure. This quote, the structure of the various sections of the events must be such that the transposition or removal of anyone's section dislocates and changes the whole if the presence or absence of something has no discernible effect.

It was not part of the whole, so this has such a big presentation connection for me because we work with speakers and marketers all the time who are trying to [00:10:00] decide what stays, what goes. And I think we've observed the best presenters keep this in mind. They, they're the ones who actually do have that really connected end-to-end presentation, whereas the ones there might be.

Someone who's a really good speaker, they're getting the crowd going, the crowd's loving it. But afterwards it's that, you know, that Tim Pollard effect of like, yeah. Well, of, you know, of those 10 things your CEO just told you, like, can you tell me any of those and, and what's the big idea here and,

Molly: yeah.

Yeah. It's like,

Mikey: ah. I don't know, but it was really interesting.

Molly: Yeah, exactly, exactly. That Memorability, and I wanna zoom out at one point here because before he even gets into the plot part Yeah. The whole instinct of, of human nature, he really emphasizes imitation, like implanted in people from childhood, you know, like we do what other people do and we kind of like see monkey, see monkey dew.

It's like so like animalistic and so. Stories are imitations and so [00:11:00] hearing like, yeah, hearing like a story or a sequence of things presented to you is like that memorability thing. Yeah. If you can't walk away with those 10, yeah, 10 things to take away. They weren't sequenced well enough. If it's not part of a holistic story, right.

You aren't remembering them as a whole. You might remember like one or two off, but not the actual baseline of what the takeaway is of like launch a new product or rebrand or something like that. So yeah. Imitation is, yeah. Yeah, you're

Mikey: right, Molly. Like imitation is central to his thesis. Like that's what good drama is.

Good tragedy could probably good comedy too, but

Music: Yeah. Yeah. We

Mikey: imitate and it's, he says it's not an imitation of persons, but of actions and of life. And I think, gosh, when we think about marketing too, and you like comedy Molly, like the stuff that gets us laughing, isn't someone just trying to be funny and slapstick?

But the stuff that really gets us laughing is the stuff that touches a nerve of something we think di Like it touches a truth, right? A truth. Yeah. And I think those marketers relatability who really tap into a persona's pain [00:12:00] points and call them out and maybe, maybe embellish and maybe pump 'em up a little.

But they're still believable. Yeah. That's drama and that's what that what gets an audience kind of like really leaned in.

Molly: Exactly. There could be like, it could be in the most fantastical world, like Avatar, you know, like animated stuff. But if you can't relate to what's going on, then the story won't really land.

Which is a great segue, Mikey, into the next element of tragic stories, specifically as Aristos writing them, which is a character of course, after the plot comes. Characters and he says specifically characters should have certain traits to make them relatable and they need to undergo a transformation or change.

Mikey: Oh yeah.

Molly: And we've talked about that umpteenth times over here. It's true on podcast. True. Related to the hero's journey kind of thing. Joseph Campbell definite character arc always being super, super important. And yeah, again, we can relate to maybe their purpose, if not their actions. They might like. Be doing [00:13:00] something that's bad, you know, breaking laws, committing them crimes.

But we can understand why, because of their motivation. We have to be able to understand why. And I was thinking with that, Mikey, with um, you know, the rise of the anti-hero these days is such a popular narrative. 'cause aerosol has specifically, they have to be good of nature

Music: mix. Yeah.

Molly: And he also says, oh, well, you know, women can't be valor.

They can't have valor. Oh gosh. Or you know, honor in that way, they're usually just a little bit less intelligent. So some funny dated, uh, yeah. Assertions as well.

Mikey: Indeed.

Molly: Exactly This. Yeah. There's a type of manly valor, but valor in a woman or unscrupulous cleverness is inappropriate.

Mikey: Oh God, no.

Molly: No. Clever women.

Yeah. So I thought that was funny, but yeah.

Mikey: No. Yeah, Molly, like that goodness thing, you know? Mm-hmm. And it is true, like we may not approve of all their actions, but if, if we know that they have a good purpose, that's the thing, um, that we root for. And that sounds so familiar. Like what's funny about [00:14:00] this is there's, there's spinoff texts, you know, there's like Save the Cat, which is a whole book about how to hook your, your audience in early in a screenplay.

And that is by showing your hero. Is a good person, you know, like, and within the first two minutes they go up, climb a tree and save a cat. Like, that's kind of the gist. And that's what they teach in screenwriting classes today. And that's just one of the elements of a good character, goodness, appropriateness, likeness.

And then, uh, consistency, he mentions,

Molly: oh yes,

Mikey: so like a character, uh, should understand. We should understand why they're doing what they're doing. And it doesn't have to be predictable, but a good character isn't just all over the place. Unless, unless that's the one thing that's consistent about them, but yes,

Molly: yes

Mikey: he does.

Yeah. Enforce that, you know, consistency would be a good thing to have, but most of all, that they, they're sort of on a mission and they've got this purpose. Mm-hmm.

Molly: One example I'll name in our various, like videos that we sent back and forth was the movie [00:15:00] reference, one of the movie references used when they're talking about this.

Element of a story is the joker from Batman because he always, he's a bit like, yeah, you kind of, you kinda love him 'cause he's so, he is so theatrical and stuff and, but you know, he's also a villain and he constantly repeats that phrase, I forgot, I hadn't seen it in a while, where he is like, you know how I got these scars?

And he tells the same story like over and over again. Yeah. And so he's consistent even though he's like. You know, a bad person. We're also kind of like, okay, you're telling this story. I don't know how fake or not it is, but I'm understanding there's like a certain level of empathy. So I think that's a great example of storytelling done well where you can even empathize with this person that's like, you know, terrorizing people.

And

Mikey: Molly on top of this, within the character section, the, the one thing I highlighted in green in my notes was like 8.3, visualizing the action. I feel like Molly is this where show Don't Tell was born even. So we've got Oh, yes, yes. Beginning, middle, end, I swear. Listen to this. When constructing plots and working them out complete with their linguistic [00:16:00] expression, one should so far as possible visualize what is happening.

So da, da, da, da. But he talks about how sort of like. If your actors and characters in the story, they're the ones who experience emotions, and if those are convincing, someone who is distressed or angry acts out in distress or irritation, I. It's more authentic. And so I thought that was really interesting because so much, you know, in movies that is kind of a common, you know, thing that they say is like, well if you're leaning all on dialogue, then you're like, you know, it's probably gonna get a little bit, I.

I dunno. Tired. Right? That's a lot like, like mentally exhausting, but

Music: yeah,

Mikey: that's why like Spielberg is known for like, is it called Spielberg face? Where you like he, oh yeah. We show the character. Like realizing something or like seeing something for the first time, having that breakthrough and it, yes.

Yeah. There's a billion words within that, that one facial like reaction that we see that the audience, yeah. Field that

Molly: might be a Scorsese shot. Actually, I think that's the [00:17:00] Scorsese Jurassic part

Mikey: too, where um, it's like, you know, where a ball ling that girl's like looking at the water and then, you know, she's is like those dramatic Oh yeah.

Facial expressions. Is that, that's, I think it goes back to Aristotle.

Molly: Yeah, definitely. I, you know what I'm thinking of Mikey, actually, a Scorsese has all these like wild, you know, Spielberg's, more of those classic action and Scorsese's got these pretty wild, like kind of sometimes a psychological actiony thriller.

And he's known for, I'm thinking of American Psycho. There's always a moment. There's a deep, what's it called? Popin face shot where they're super close and you can see the moment where someone like, kind of like gets unhinged a little bit. Mm-hmm. Like, yeah. A bit of, a bit of an unhinged, yeah. You can watch it happen rather than them just being like, I'm feeling nuts.

Like that's way different than like, you know, sitting talking about it. Yeah. You get to just see it in the music and then of course all these other elements are supporting it, so. The audience knows like the audience isn't dumb and the audience is human. So we'll relate to all of these things and um, that's really interesting.

I love that for the [00:18:00] presentation connection.

Mikey: I do, I do think there is that connection because as much as played outing and cheesy as some stock photography is, one CMO I've worked with for a long time leans in a, a bit, I would say to finding more expressive photography of people and their reactions and like.

If we're doing like a demo or like a day in the life story that shows how such and such customer of this software, you know, does go through these rises and falls of fortune. They want to do something, they're having a hard time doing it, and then breakthrough. They, they start using this new technology and their life is better.

We try to find the same stock photography model and now we can do it better with ai. But finding those emotions is really important to that CMO and I think it really works because. We're releasing this to a bunch of sellers who all might speak to it a little bit differently, but the one commonality is those facial expressions of of a marketer looking [00:19:00] frustrated

Molly: are hard to

Mikey: you like misinterpret.

Right, right.

Molly: Yeah. Or it's something we feel meaning agreement or something like.

Mikey: Exactly.

Molly: Yeah. With happiness. Yeah.

Mikey: So like what can you convey and evoke emotionally? That would register without any words at all. And I think that's, that's a really big, um, consideration when you're thinking about like characters or some people are like, I don't have characters in my sales deck.

But actually you do. And then you should be thinking about that because you certainly have case studies, you've got success stories, and you could have these. Sort of like a day in the life story of how you, how this product or service could be used. And it should have a little skin in the, uh, it should have some stakes and, and plot.

Molly: And now a message from our sponsors.

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Molly: Speaking of stakes, the next element that exists within story is thought for Aristotle. And this is, you know, the correlation between the character's action and the personality and what actually is like the underlying themes in the story. Yeah. What, what's coming through and like kind of the baseline thing.

It's kind of that, uh, that piece where there's a, there's an excitation of the feelings such as pity, fear, anger, and the, like, the suggestion of importance or it's

Music: opposite. Mm-hmm.

Molly: So there's some kind of like morality piece, and that's where I think he does reference rhetoric in [00:21:00] this. Mikey, which is his other work concerning persuasion, which is like.

Egos, pathos, and, uh,

Mikey: logos.

Molly: Logos. Thank you. And, but yeah, incidents should speak for themselves without verbal exposition. And I, and I think this plays into what you were saying with the show, don't tell. Like he, you can look at a lot of movies and be like, well, this movie is a commentary on climate change.

Yeah. Or this movie's a commentary on. The movie one uses, use an example for the military industrial complex, stuff like that. So each, if it's, if your movie is insane something, then it might not resonate as hard. And I was thinking of, I, I'm such a letterbox user for films like tracking what movies you watch and I see like the legit cri critics.

I'm just like writing stupid snarky stuff on there. But I see the legit critics often say, what is this film? I couldn't tell what this film was trying to say. I liked this and I felt the great strong performances, but I couldn't tell what this was really saying or something. And I think that's a, it's a common, I, [00:22:00] I think that's a lack of, maybe, maybe there's some thought there from the director or whatever, but I'm thinking of something a little soulless, like Transformers, I like, what is, what are we trying to say here?

What is going on? You know, what's, and so there's, there needs to be some underlying motivation for you as the creator to share it with your audience too. Yeah. What's your take on thought, Mikey,

Mikey: with you? Yeah, I mean, just I think, um, art for art's sake. Sure. Like maybe there are some pieces that are just beautiful to look at, but I think what he's saying here is it should get the audience thinking about some bigger ideas, right.

For it to have real merit as a, as a drama or as a story. And I think that's true. And a lot of these presentations that we make sometimes, like we think categorically, like we think we, you know, we're trying to sell this service. We're talking about what's going on in the greater market and you know, when Salesforce kind of drew a line in the sand and said, you know, like, no more software, you know, like it's all about the cloud baby, and mm-hmm.

They [00:23:00] absolutely were creating a bigger narrative, a bigger thought, and um, I think that had massive, massive, um, implications.

Music: Definitely. So, yeah.

Mikey: Go, go big. What, what is the big idea? Like the big idea that is about your market and where things are going, where you where and what your point of view. Right.

Molly?

Molly: Establish a point of view though. We see that in story frameworks too, and I think you should know this as the creator, you should know that going into the plot, right? But then your audience, that's something your audience will glean over, like throughout the holistic production of it, right? Yeah.

Whether it's a play, a presentation, a speech, whatever. To give a Pixar example, Mikey, I know we've done this in the past. I'm just thinking of Frozen, you know, I know your girls love it and my niece has just entered into her frozen era. Yeah. It's, you know, it's really got work some magic with kids, but you know, that's like, there's characters that has special powers with the ice princess situation.

There's mm-hmm. There's lots of stuff going on, but ultimately it's a story about embracing who you, you are as like your [00:24:00] unique self and like supporting your sister if you have one. And um, and, um, and so that's like the, the underlying like baseline there. So it's not just like a story about snowman or not getting married to like the dumb guy or whatever.

Music: Yeah.

Molly: But it's ultimately like embrace who you are as a unique person. There's like a little bit of, I think, morals comes in here, which is, uh, reserved a little more for rhetoric, which we'll get into another time.

Mikey: Show yourself. Nice. Yeah. Yeah. What about, what about like the, what to say and then the how to say it is I think Yeah, totally.

This whole number four diction that next is about,

Molly: yeah. Character and thought are merely obs obscured by addiction. That is over. Brilliant. That's him saying don't overly complicate stuff. Don't get too flowery with it. If you do get flowery with it and you have like moments of no, no dialogue or long dialogue, different monologues and stuff that can be used as a point to create them pacing and slow things down, especially balancing that out with action.

Yeah, so diction should be elaborated in the pauses of action [00:25:00] pieces. I like this. This was our totally our stage element when we're talking Ted talking, Mikey. Or Yeah, stage the delivery of a, of a speaker. And he has a whole long list about letter syllable connecting word, noun and verb inflection, case, sentence and phrase.

So he define and metaphor, he just defines all of those things in the section too. And that made me think of like our conversations with the vocal coach Michelle Cusa, and how you say something can really change and help develop a character and the story.

Mikey: The purpose. I think it's super trending right now within the B2B marketing and just probably always has in, in marketing.

But he emphasizes clarity, you know, and I think with someone like Emma Stratton writing make it punchy all about economy with our use of words and what, you know. It's all back to that, uh, mark Twain line about I didn't have time to write, you know, something short. So here's a, here's a big fat novel. [00:26:00] Yes, yes.

It is hard to be clear with the written word. I. And so it's all about that word choice, grammatical decisions, sentence structure. Yeah. And, and so no, it's, it's crucial. And I'm, you know, but I, it's funny that it's also not to him as crucial as plot and structure and the, the big what to say in the first place and how to, how to put it together.

But this is the way we deliver it. And this is sort of, to me, I think about like positioning way up top and then, or, or like messaging frameworks way up top. Then down, down the line, the external facing thing is copywriting.

Music: Hmm. Yes. And

Mikey: so I think of this diction as, yeah, like a form of, of that copywriting speech writing, and then messaging, as you said, the, the thinking about the delivery.

If it's the spoken word. Yeah.

Molly: Hell yeah. We love talking about that part. Yeah. And then to kind of close it out, these last two elements, five and six go together. I saw a lot of synopsis bringing them. Yeah. Like in as one, and he certainly just kind of floats by them as compared to like spending, as you said, like 50 pages on a [00:27:00] plot.

He, and so these final elements are song and spectacle. Yeah. And song of course is true. Literally the relation of music to the plot again, where, yeah, where he, that's my white Lotus. Yeah, exactly. Little white Lotus. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Think about it, people we're in three 50 BC so. You have a little band playing with the play.

Like this is the stories he's talking about. He's not even talking about movies yet, but Right. Would, would he, I, I think he'd be delighted to know that the score is a huge component of movies and storytelling now.

Music: Yeah.

Molly: I just, yeah. I always come back to the example Jaws. I know we've talked about this, where the score just enhances that drama so much.

Yeah. And like you can, it almost becomes a character itself. Good music will really like do that, you know? It's

Mikey: so good. Yeah.

Molly: I'm thinking, did you see challengers, Mikey? Tennis. Oh man, I started it tennis movie.

Mikey: I, yeah,

Molly: people really loved the soundtrack. It wasn't nominated for an Oscar and there was an uproar this last year, but it was this just driving like base, very like Trip Resner and Atticus Ross did.

Okay. Very like electric base, just the whole time. Really fun. There's [00:28:00] like kind of like clubby and sexy at times, but they, the drives to like this really like stressful moment, you know? That was really good.

Mikey: Yeah. Love that. Yeah. And so spectacle then are the actual, like the visual aesthetics. We think of like in a play like costume, probably the stage, you know, like staging and stuff.

Of course stuff staging. But for modern day cinema, it's like special effects, truly like the embellishment and yeah, definitely. He kind of dogs it as like, he calls it the least artistic form, which I think is hilarious.

Molly: That's kinda interesting.

Mikey: But yeah, you know, he's making statements here.

Molly: They didn't have what they have, you know, they didn't have sewing machines yet, potentially.

So like, you know, like. We're having men drape, drape like curtain. It's, do you want red toga or curtain to Yeah. Curtains over themself and like do like paint their face. It's like kind of kinda, yeah. True. That it wasn't too super artistic. Maybe it is the moment. Yeah. But it certainly has gotten, you know, now.

Exactly. And I think spectacle, he just warns should never distract from the true substance and the, the thought and the purpose [00:29:00] and the plot. Because as we sit here, Mikey, a presentation thinking. Presentations are more than just decorative. Yeah. That's a whole thesis at Ghost Ranch is that your presentations are more than just slapping on that pretty template and calling or adding some random gen AI stuff for no reason.

Like each, each piece of the spectacle should add to it. For sure.

Mikey: Yeah, I agree. Like it's not just pretty for pretty's sake. Like May, and maybe that's what, you know, spectacle I think is a little different than quote, like what we call visual storytelling today. Mm-hmm. He, he says, uh, I forget, was this from that SparkNote YouTube?

I liked this line. I think it's from them. A good plot alone should have an emotional effect on the audience. If you just tell the audience the narrative, they should already be gripped, spectacle and song can be the cherries on top. Yes. So I think that's kind of a good way to do it. Yes. You

Music: just say that.

Yeah.

Mikey: And, and when you do read or hear, like, I remember taking Judd Apatow's, um, masterclass a long time ago on how to [00:30:00] pitch your movie, and you get it down to that sort of like elevator sentence. If you can pitch, pitch an idea, and it's got the grip, um, then you know there's something there. And it's like a lot of times it's about a premise that's really interesting that's presents in it, uh, sort of conflict against all odds kind of thing.

Music: Yeah.

Mikey: Yeah. Can, can you whittle down your narrative into something that would actually get someone really hooked? I, if you have that foundation, you probably, you're on your way to something great.

Molly: Yeah. And he says those emotions are most often and I event, like even business people could. Like whittle it down to this reaction as well, is fear, pity, or joy.

Yeah. So like, like fear could be that fomo, feeling pity could be like, oh shoot. Like should I take action and donate? Should I like something like that? Yeah. And joy being like, oh, this is so exciting. I gotta get in on this. Like, I wanna be part of it. Right. So there's, there's different, each of those approaches evokes something in people.

Yeah. It's all about the emotional response. Something I thought was funny that he [00:31:00] said about style, like talking about like spectacle and song is. You don't wanna be overly complicated with it. And yeah, as he said, like obscure the purpose and he said the perfection of style is to be clear without being mean.

So don't confuse people if it just add to the vibe it needs to be adding. Yeah. I liked, I, I thought that really enforced some of our presentation thinking assertions for sure. Sure. And you gotta be able to make it look good as well. I'm thinking of like as well, the Romeo, Romeo Plus Juliet, Bob Osman, the.

Where is that? It's on like Miami Beach. Like the very florid is like Leonardo DiCaprio one. It's Leo DiCaprio. Okay. Lair Danes. Yes. And it's just like that Floridian interpretation of her and Juliet. And the costuming is so specific, obviously to the place and the time. Yeah. And, but it really enhances like, 'cause it is a drama, it's a tragedy.

And so like the over the topness is done really, really well. And so all of that costuming is like truly part of that story. Mm-hmm. And I think that's one of the iterations taken way outta [00:32:00] context into a different timeline that. That was really executed nicely.

Mikey: Yeah. I like when a, a company or like for a user conference or a sales kickoff leans into a theme, you know, for, and all the decks and speakers kind of like embrace it.

I think that's kind of fun and you can see it show up across slides too.

Molly: And then, so that's the six elements of the story. Mikey, we've got, let's see, plot, character, thought, diction, song, and spectacle.

Music: Yeah.

Molly: And then he does a little bit of emphasis that you have to close, like your ending has to be, Hmm.

Perfect. Like this is the most important act, the third act. And he talks about the Denu MA and kind of those resolutions and those loose ends getting tied up. And I was thinking about, well, oftentimes with presentations at the end, you often hear people go, well, and that's it. This on my last slide,

Mikey: that's my presentation.

And

Molly: you're like, oh my God. Like wait. What, and so you gotta, I'm just thinking of like the, and the importance of like a call to action, leaving people with a feeling. Yeah. A quote, a vibe. Anything more than just, well does it.

Mikey: [00:33:00] Thanks. Yeah. Oh, Molly, thanks for having me. We talk so much about the importance of that 1% message.

Yeah. That is going to, the one thing that people remember from your presentation, assuming they're gonna forget a lot, what's the one thing, so. We love to see closure and callbacks and yeah, putting a bow on it, you know, like that is the chef's kiss approach to presentations where it is not like you show the gun in the first scene and you, you know, something gets fired later on.

Like it all connects and that that is a beautiful ending and it should, you should be almost. Sometimes, sometimes you start, you start there, right? And, um, if you need to work through the middle stuff, kind of have in mind what you want them to, how, how you want it all to come together.

Molly: Mm-hmm. Exactly.

Easier said and done,

Mikey: Molly. Yeah.

Molly: Yes, definitely. Oh, wow. Well, and that's, and that was a very structure on Aristotle, but Mikey, I really, I was glad we finally got to this. [00:34:00] Something I was thinking about. I don't know if I said this before I started. We started recording. That people have been commenting on storytelling since the age of time, clearly.

Here's Aristotle, how nice it was for him to just be like, no one's ever written about this. Here are the rules. And so, even though it's like a very old text, it's the fact that like every screenwriter book and media creator has some kind of reference to like story shape, three act structure, elements of story.

I think it just shows how potent it's Yeah. And how and honestly yeah. How right. He was. And it's interesting, he uses all these examples. Everybody has to use examples when they talk about stories. Mm-hmm. And he's using examples from like Homer ID and Odyssey and the, the current playwrights of the time and some of the like ancient Greek stories.

And I just, you know, every synopsis we watched had like examples from movies and books and everything like that. So people have been analyzing this and using modern, their relative modern examples since forever. And we're doing that for presentations, [00:35:00] right? First. First people ever. Yeah. So I feel like the pioneer,

Mikey: no, it's cool.

Yeah. And it goes to show, again, I think everyone who talks about this stuff talks about the fact that humans. Just, we are built for stories. We love them and wired. So, you know, from Sorkin back on to Play-Doh, who acknowledges like, yeah, I bet. Yeah, I love me some Odysseus. You know, he's, he's not afraid to, to embrace the, the pop culture of the day.

And, uh, he was into those books and

Molly: Yeah, exactly. Tell

Mikey: Epics, not so much the epics, but

Molly: Yeah. Yeah. He. All right, well let's get into the spice cabinet, the Greek spice cabinet here, a we will link, Mikey and I will link our resources we used, obviously.

Music: Yeah,

Molly: totally goes without saying that. Like we, we leaned on a lot of other creators here to help us kinda understand this, and translators, every version of poetics is translated, of course, from Greek a little bit differently.

So just keep that in mind when you're looking through quotes or. If you heard us say something, it might [00:36:00] sound a little different or look a little different. Even Mikey and I were comparing, like I had some like kinda shitty academic thing online. Mikey. Yeah, I think you had the book, the actual book, right?

Mikey: I did, yeah.

Molly: Nice. How hefty? I think

Mikey: Penguin Classics. No, it's, it's honestly, look how thin it is.

Molly: That one's thin. Yeah. And this is rhetoric and the

Mikey: introduction is. Whoever set it up.

Molly: A hundred pages

Mikey: well over half. Yeah, yeah. Totally. Honestly, the, the actual meat of this is under 50 pages.

Molly: That's interesting.

Mikey: Yeah.

Molly: So just all that to say, take everything with a grave salt. Totally, totally different interpretations from three 50 bc.

Music: Yeah. Yeah.

Molly: What else in the spice cabinet? Mikey, we, we can link Aaron Sorkin's masterclass. Again. An absolute class act and impetus for us to even begin such. Yeah. Um, the, this official studying.

I think we're gonna have to talk about rhetoric next.

Mikey: Yeah, let's do it. Yeah. The, uh, finally get our heads around the, the triangle, the, yeah. Let's do it Molly. Absolutely. Maybe in a couple weeks I could use a little Aristotle break. Okay.

Molly: And one more [00:37:00] thing. Yeah, absolutely. One more thing to add to the spice cabinet.

Speaking of stories, is a little, little event happening in Park City, Utah?

Music: Yeah.

Molly: On July 23rd and 24th Story Camp is happening. And Mikey. Yeah. Tell us what's going, what's it about? It's

Mikey: so much fun. We have three workshops like that we've dreamed up. I, I've told you, Molly, I feel like Wayne Campbell from Wayne's World two, where he has the dream for Wayne Stock, you know, and we've had this dream and we follow so many storytelling luminaries.

And we were like, what if we could get three of them? Yeah. One to cover story. To cover screen? Like what, what are the visuals you're working with? Yes. Or one to cover stage, like the body present stuff.

Music: The diction. Yeah, the

Mikey: delivery. And we've done it. We've locked in three incredible speakers. Terry Zla, who is, he was a former White House speech writer for Barack Obama.

He's gonna tell us how to get from who, from page to podium. Uh, Steve Frank is a professor [00:38:00] of design and psychology at Northwestern. Uh, Kellogg's School of Business and he leads research on like data visualization. It's gonna be amazing. And Amy Cuddy, who is Yes, the Amy Cuddy second most like, watched Ted Talk ever about presence and, uh, she's gonna come in and help us, uh, be, be more comfortable on a stage.

So mall? Yeah, I, I can't wait. It's at Park City. Beautiful time of year. And the reason we picked late July is because it's before fall conference season. So if you're a marketer, if you're a product manager and you need a lot of people to show up to that user conference or could be customer facing, or if you're in the VC space and you need to go be pitching VCs once they're back from the Hamptons this summer, come sharpen your storytelling skills.

These are the most important skills left to humans. Okay? Like our industries are changing really quickly. This has always been a skill that's needed. Ask Aristotle. It's growing [00:39:00] even more important every day. So if you're a manager and you wanna level up your team, go to story camp.com. It's gonna be awesome.

I really hope to see you there.

Molly: Ah, so good. Amy Cuddy, one of our most listened to podcast episodes. We gotta read Terry Zoo Platt's book next too. Maybe we'll do that before. Let's do it the next. A So, Mikey, what do you think? Aristotle's walkout song, man. Close this. Close this one out. What? I don't know. Is he walking out on stage two in three 50 BC in his buds?

Mikey: What if, but what if he had the bill and Ted like visit from the um, you know, the time traveling phone booth and he got to go pick some, like some Jay-Z or you know, ac, CDC? I would say he

Molly: need to pick anything he wants from the modern era. Oh my God. How did you have this? How crazy would that beta? Had to like listen to the modern music after, not I,

Mikey: earplugs.

I feel like earmuffs, I feel like he smokes a lot of weed and or like today he would,

Molly: the philosophers. Oh, for sure. Yeah,

Mikey: yeah, yeah. They had

Molly: some drinks, they had some things going around.

Mikey: Yeah.

Molly: [00:40:00] In the time, absolutely. Some, some plants being consumed. I had, I have one that's a little funny.

Music: Yeah.

Molly: I think that classic country music does amazing storytelling.

I think the track Goodbye Earl by the chicks Aristotle would love because yeah, cheer me out because it is incredible exposition. Yeah. You know, Marian and Wanda were the best of friends and after graduate they takes them through their like kinda lifeline event and then we hear about something bad happening, you know, and they take care of it, you know, Earl has to die.

Goodbye Earl. And, but they don't say it explicitly. They just say, those black eyed peas, they tasted all right to me. And I think that's h and I think that's show Don tell.

Mikey: Oh, all right. Well I can't trump that. That was perfect.

Molly: I think. I think

Mikey: Aristotle, he's a chick. He's into it.

Molly: I think Aristotle a chick.

Totally. Yeah. I think he'd willingly go in. He was a little

Mikey: game [00:41:00] on. I love it.

Molly: Very fun. Um, well thanks for tuning in. Presentation Thinkers send us your favorite Aristotle nuggets if you information if you have them. Otherwise, until next time,

Music: keep on pitching,

keep on pitching.