Welcome back to The Writing Coach!
In our latest episode, I had the absolute pleasure of chatting with Douglas Vigliotti, author of the upcoming book Aristotle for Novelists.
Douglas brings Aristotle’s Poetics to life, showing how its ancient principles still resonate in modern storytelling. We dive deep into the building blocks of a great narrative, from mastering the three-act structure to understanding the profound impact of character believability. Douglas also explains the essential difference between comedies and tragedies and why understanding this distinction can transform your writing.
In the episode, we cover topics such as:
• Aristotle’s Plot Principles: How a change in fortune and a connected sequence of events create a cohesive story.
• Character Crafting: The four characteristics of a “true” character and why they matter.
• Believability vs. Realism: Why stories don’t need to be realistic but must always feel believable.
• Dealing with Criticism: Aristotle’s timeless approach to fair criticism and how writers can embrace feedback without losing their confidence.
• Story Planning for Every Writer: Whether you’re a plotter or a pantser, Aristotle’s principles can help you refine your narrative.
We also had some fun comparing storytelling techniques from Aristotle to modern masters like George Lucas, David Mamet, and even the creators of South Park. Douglas’s passion for storytelling is contagious, and his ability to bridge the gap between ancient philosophy and contemporary writing makes this interview a must-listen.
Douglas doesn’t just talk theory—he offers actionable insights that any writer can apply. His practical approach to Aristotle’s teachings will inspire you to revisit your current projects with fresh eyes and a deeper understanding of story mechanics.
Listen Now!
The Writing Coach Episode #213 Show Notes
Enter your email here for a chance to win:
- (1) signed copy of the new book Aristotle for Novelists: 14 Timeless Principles on the Art of Story
- (1) copy of Poetics by Aristotle
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The Writing Coach Episode #213 Transcript
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Douglas, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me pleasure to be here.
You’ve got a new book out, Aristotle for Novelists. What was of interest first? Was it writer’s craft and story, or philosophy and Aristotle?
It’s an interesting question. I guess one might say they came at the same time, when I wanted to learn how to tell stories, write them down. I started doing a lot of research on the topic, obviously, as one does when they first embark on that journey. And what I quickly found was that everything funnelled back to Aristotle and dramatic. Dramatic writers specifically utilized this material to write their stories for the screen and the stage forever, really. And so when you read any of the masters of the craft in the story, whether it’s Robert McKee or even practitioners like David Mamet or Aaron Sorkin, all of this stuff references Aristotle’s poetics. For me, it was a natural progression. Why am I reading secondary sources? Let’s go straight to the real thing. I doubled down on poetics. Read multiple translations, multiple times, and then it just was nagging me to to write this book, and it took years for me to come around to actually do it, and then I did it, and I’m excited to share it with the world.
When I teach writing, I often reference Aristotle, just as the kind of starting point for writer’s craft because he was the guy who said, “We need a beginning and a middle and an end,” but that’s kind of where I stop talking about Aristotle. But obviously, looking at your book, it goes so much deeper than just the beginning, middle and end. Tell us more about that.
I think beginning, middle and end is a great starting point. It’s in direct reference, or at least how I like to think of it in a three-act structure. So you have the beginning, which is points of each other, cause and effect, and that’s only one. That’s only 50% of a working Aristotelian plot.
Aristotle says that a plot must contain a what, the first the first element being a change in Fortune, in your protagonist. So, the protagonist goes from good to bad or bad to good. The second piece is a connected series, a sequence of events, so your beginning, middle and end, or your three-act structure, your cause and effect, cause, a chain of causality. If we’re looking at it in a macro concept, we say three act structure. If we’re looking at it in a micro concept, we’re looking at chain of causality. Is the scene causing the next scene that that type of thing.
So you have the change in Fortune the protagonist, you have a connected sequence of events, and then A needs to come from B. The change in Fortune has to be derived from the sequence of events, or the chain of causality, or three act and so everything really devolves from that.
Yes, beginning, middle and end is an essential starting piece, and it’s an important one, but there is, as you’ve mentioned, a lot more, that makes up what an Aristotelian plot would be.
Before I got my master’s in English literature, I studied cinema, and I remember as a young person sitting in the classroom, the professor said, “Here is the film where they invented the close-up.” They’re like, “Yeah, no one ever thought of moving the camera closer before.” And it’s funny, people just assume something like, oh yeah, a story has a beginning in the middle and an end. Just assume that’s always been there. But it takes someone like Aristotle to actually articulate that and set that foundation for everything that comes afterward.
While that is extremely important, I think that the first piece in a change in fortune, in your protagonist, is actually probably the more important piece, right?
Like if you look at every story, almost every story, let’s call it, 99% of stories have a protagonist who wants something, and they have obstacles standing in their way, and those obstacles are either external or internal. And so how does that interplay with your beginning, middle, and end, your three-act structure, your chain of causality, and your connected sequence of events? Is that really the story?
The story is super interesting when a protagonist is trying to beat the external obstacle, the antagonist, the weather, the mom, the dad, and the parents, but it’s even more interesting when we see them battle their internal obstacles. And that is, that change in fortune, it really comes from the protagonist either overcoming their flaw, or, in a tragedy, they succumb to it, right? So in an Aristotelian tragedy, the flaw becomes fatal. Ambition becomes an obsession, or, it’s a fine line, and we see this all the time in modern storytelling, where the protagonist, we see these. We see these, both of these. I’m getting a little ahead of myself here, because in the book, I talk about Aristotelian comedies and Aristotelian tragedies, and we see both in a modern sense, even though I’m using ancient language. Examples are plenty in, all over the place, both in novels and in movies, in both of these, in both of these styles of story, either one, either one, though.
In a tragedy, either in a tragedy or a comedy. The consistent thing is that there is a protagonist that wants something, and there is something standing in their way, and they’re trying to battle obstacles, whether they’re internal or external. The only difference between a comedy and a tragedy is that, in a tragedy, they succumb to those obstacles, and in a comedy, they overcome them.
And 90% of stories are comedic because we want to see triumph. We want to see, the character overcomes their obstacles and battle through these things. But in a tragedy, the reason why it works isn’t because they overcome. We know that they don’t overcome. It’s because, or according to Aristotle, it provides a cathartic experience for the audience. We see the truth get unveiled, so we know that thing is wrong. It’s like Romeo and Juliet. It’s a tragedy, but we know we’re okay with it, because we know passionate love can’t sustain itself, and that’s gonna we know that we’re we know that this is gonna be their demise, or a classic novel that I share a lot with people is The Road by Cormac McCarthy, and that is a classic tragic novel because we know that all humans die. And by the end, although the protagonist, the dad, dies, we’re okay with it, and we and now we have to watch the boy go and live the live his life without his dad, but that’s a truth about life, so we’re okay with that, even though it’s a tragedy and the dad doesn’t overcome his flaw, overcome his obstacles, and he ends up worse off.
We’re okay with it that those are few and far between, though, because most of the time, we want to see that character overcome. And almost, like I said, 90% of stories are probably comedic in their in their nature.
I’m sorry if I went on a tangent there, but I hope that kind of pulls things together a little bit.
No, I mean, this is my jam, man. I can talk about this stuff all day.
I was listening to an interview recently with someone who worked very closely with George Lucas, and he said that George Lucas explained to him that many people get Star Wars wrong because they think it’s science fiction. And George Lucas says, “This isn’t science fiction. This is myth.” And then George Lucas defines myth as “truth wrapped in a story.” I think that’s what you’re getting at here, in terms of, when we’re looking at a tragedy, the cathartic experience is going, “Yeah, that’s truth. That’s what life is like,” and that essential understanding that life isn’t always great.
For sure. Think of movies like Wall Street with Bud Fox.
Bud Fox, he has to get to this ultimate high of making all this money, but we’re okay, seeing him his downfall. Why are we okay? Because we know that people like that should get caught. They need to get caught like. We’re not upset about that.
Tragedies are like, the way to think about them is it’s like a headache, and then when it subsides, it feels good. That’s basically what tragic stories are like. It’s like we’re have this headache, and Aristotle says, the more pity and the more fear that you can cause, the more cathartic the experience is going to be,
Absolutely.
So most when I’m talking about this with people, and I say, like, if you, if you have a problem with the ending of a tragedy, it’s moral, it’s more likely that it’s not the ending, that It’s your problem, it’s how we got there. , it’s like we didn’t do a good enough job getting there, not because ultimately, you have to decide, as the author of your story, whether your protagonist will overcome their obstacles or succumb to them. And if you’ve decided that they will succumb to their obstacles, that means there’s a lot of stuff you have to do in that beginning, middle and end to deliver on that ending when they eventually fall and it’s a tragic ending, right? And if you don’t do that, it will not have that shape necessary to provide that emotional resonance.
That’s something that I actually talk quite a bit about in the principle in Aristotle for Novelists, is novels should are tragedy or comedy, and I talk about the essential nature of the things that we’re discussing.
It’s important that the listener understands that in Poetics, Aristotle only wrote about tragedies, so he didn’t write about comedies. The reason why he didn’t write about comedies is because the second part on comedies was actually lost. So he at the end of poetics, he says, and now I am going to speak on comedies, and we don’t have it. It’s gone forever.
There’s only been 31 works of Aristotle’s that have been recovered out of the 200 that he wrote. So there’s a lot of missing work.
The reason why we know all this about comedies and tragedies because we have a lot of other masters of craft who have then extrapolated on these ideas and pulled this stuff together. So we can talk about both of them pretty confidently, I guess you could say
You probably know that in the world of writers, especially beginner writers or aspiring authors, there’s this divide between plotters and pantsers. How might this book help a plotter or a pantser?
One of the very unique things about these principles is it’s not a framework. This not a template. If the writer writes a working story, and I’m using air quotes, whether they know it or not, these print most of the time, these principles will reveal themselves. And so whether you choose to plot your story or pants your story, you can always look back on your story and see if it is a tragedy or is it a comedy. You can always apply these principles.
And actually, one of the things that Aristotle says in poetics is that an unreflective writer and this is the terminology he used, can experience the same technique as a reflective writer technique as a Greek term for skill art. So basically, I kind of butchered that there but basically, what he’s saying is that an unreflective writer can have the same experience as a reflective writer, even if they don’t know it.
And the translator of the Penguin Classics edition it’s noted in the book he says that he echoes this idea, , basically saying that even the naive can people who don’t know what they are, that they are applying these principles clarity than the people who do know these principles. It’s just that they’re inherent in what they’re doing, and they’ve learned it and self-taught. But no matter what, they’re there.
And I when I say principles, neither Aristotle, or any of the translators of any of poetics, they don’t talk about this in terms of principles. This work, specifically Aristotle for novelists, is an adaptation where I took them and made them into principles for writers. So it’s not like I’m I want to be clear I’m not citing them directly when I’m talking about the principles.
Sure. Well, novels did exist when Aristotle was writing.
This is true. This is true.
We’ve talked a bit about plot and in, , structure and causality and whatnot, but let’s return to character for a moment. I understand that Aristotle writes about four characteristics of a character. Is that correct? Yes,
That is correct. In Aristotle for Novelists, the principle number 13 is novels should contain true characters, and it’s important that listeners or writers understand what Aristotle means by true. It is not true as in fact in fiction. It’s true as in true to that character. And so is it something the character would do? Is it probable? Is it likely? Is it needed? Is it necessary? All those words are words that Aristotle repeatedly uses throughout Poetics because it’s always about believability. It’s always about is this being true to the character.
And when he talks about the four characteristics, the four characteristics are:
1) goodness, not good. Like is the character good? It’s the character is good if their actions are good, not what they say, not what they think actions, if their actions are good, then they are good.
2) would be appropriateness and appropriateness related to the principle true trueness. How true is it your character? Are they appropriate, right? Are they acting appropriately? Not appropriately, like good or bad, like, based on how they would actually act, or are we forcing ourselves upon this character?
3) would be relatability. This ties in another piece, an Aristotelian idea around imitation. So are they imitating the qualities that are emblematic in other in human beings? So are they showing imperfections? Are they showing flaws? Are they imitating life? Aristotle says there are two things that two reasons why storytelling, like humans, were drawn to storytelling, and that is imitation and rhythm imitation being we learn to live through imitating as kids, which is why storytelling is a form an imitation of life, and so our characters should imitate qualities human nature that that’s what makes them relatable, that’s what makes us like them, that’s what makes us want to care about them. That’s what makes us want to go on this journey with them. So relatability is a big piece.
4) then the final piece is consistency, which is its own principle, actually. But with characters, it’s particularly important. And before I was just saying how actions characters are good, if their actions are good, it’s this actually applies to actions as well, because even if a character is an Aristotle says is in Poetics, if a character is, by their nature, inconsistent, they should be consistently inconsistent, and all the time in novels or in stories, this is the unreliable narrator. But eventually, what happens with that unreliable narrator is their words and their thoughts Don’t lie. You. And so what they do still Trumps that character. But all in all, the character should be consistent throughout the novel, unless, of course, keep in mind as the arc as they arc as they change, as they grow. But those are the four qualities. So it’s goodness, appropriateness, relatability and consistency.
I noticed you used the word believability several times in there. And there’s a documentary about the making of Frozen 2, the Disney film. It’s like a seven-part documentary on Disney+, and it’s just fascinating because the writers really struggle to get that film made. But there’s a moment when they’re interviewing a Disney animator, and he said something that I thought was profound, and I think it really captures what Aristotle and yourself were talking about. He said, {“Here at Disney, we don’t deal with realism. We deal with believability.” And I think that’s what you’re hitting on: believability.
I love that, because when we talk about believability, we’re not talking about fact versus fiction. We’re not talking about truth. We’re talking did you pull it off? , did you pull it off? And I don’t want to be a little too cynical, but I will say that when I engage with any art, the two questions that I ask myself most of the time, but just one, do they leave me wanting more? And I know that that is a completely subjective question. But the second piece is, do I believe them? And if I believe them, and they leave me wanting more, I’m a fan. I don’t care what you’re doing. I don’t care if you’re drawing ponies. If I’m down with it and I believe it, and I’m buying what you’re selling me, then I’m a fan.
And I think that there’s a lot of ways that we can go wrong as writers and as practitioners with the believability piece, but it’s important to remember that you set the stage for your story early on in your novel. In the first act, you’re the one who sets the parameters and the rules and the boundaries that you have to play inside. Now, once you set those boundaries and those rules and how this is going to go. It’s up to you to stay inside those boundaries and those rules and how this is going to go and not come from outside and disrupt things like believability, but just to echo what you were saying and tie a bow on this. It’s not just Aristotle. It’s not just the directors of Frozen. It’s not just you and I. Countless practitioners talk about the essential nature of believability.
I just shared a recent episode on my podcast about a David Mamet book. And David Mamet says, who’s a famous playwright, Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, screenwriter, he says the audience will accept anything they are not given reason to disbelieve.
Love it.
I’ve heard Tom Petty echo that, I’ve heard Bob Dylan echo stuff like that, believability is it’s the underpinning of the thing that you are doing. It’s like, it’s, it’s, and it’s not something that could be easily defined as the fact and fiction. It’s just once this person opens their mouth, once they set the course for what they are doing, the esthetic, the vibe. Are they pulling it off? are we pulling this thing off?
You mentioned your podcast. Let’s make sure we give folks the title so they can check it out. What’s the podcast?
I have a podcast called Books for Men, and it’s a podcast to inspire more men to read. Every Monday, I’ll share a book, not flipping back and forth from fiction to nonfiction and just sharing, some of my big takeaways what the book is about, a little bit about the author, and really, it’s just bite-size episodes every Monday that are engage, people, men in reading more. And it’s not, it’s not.
I want to be clear: these books aren’t books that are only for men. The angle of the podcast is just to inspire more men to read.
I think that these are books. The whole thing is, I’m a man, I enjoy this book. If you’re a man, you might enjoy it too. And for the record, I have tons of female listeners because I hear from them all the time, and they’re always like, Why do you call the show books for men? And I’m like, I just do it because I think that there’s a void there that I want to try to address, and I want to try to bring some attention to, and if I can do that and inspire even one other guy to pick up a book and read, then I’m a happy camper.
And most people would say, because most men that read don’t think it’s an issue, but it’s sort of an open secret in publishing that then don’t read if you, even if you’re in even if you’re around a group of guys, I would challenge you to ask them what they are reading, and you would be surprised that probably nine out of 10 aren’t reading anything. And they’ll tell you that, , I don’t really read or I should read more, or I want to read more, and if they are most of the time, it’s nonfiction, not fiction.
I think the statistic is one out of every five people that buy a novel as a man. So only 20% of novels are purchased by men. And I mean, the statistics are just they’re there, but we don’t have to go over them right now. I’m kind of going on a tangent on this.
No, it’s funny… You and I were connecting on hockey before we hit record here, when I published my first novel I told my hockey team about it, and one of the guys on my team, they bought the book from me. They said, “Kevin, I’ve never read a book before, but I’m going to give yours a shot.” So it’s true. It’s pretty wild.
I’m a big proponent of story planning and getting people to do some thinking about their books before they get going. In Aristotle for Novelists, you talked about three big questions that writers need to answer in order to write their story. Can you tell us a bit about those three questions?
Aristotle is pretty specific that there are three things that writers need to grab a hold of when they’re telling their story. And he calls them 1) medium, 2) object and 3) mode.
And so medium, this pertains to the novelist, medium would be the style and structure of your story. So stylistically, how do you want to tell your story? Structurally? How are you going to tell your story, not necessarily internally, but how are you it’s more what is the layout of this novel going to be? And it’s only if you’re a novel reader or fiction reader that there are countless ways that you can arrange the external layout of a novel, even if it’s got a solid internal working 3x structure. And I don’t want to get too off on the beaten path on that but medium would be style and structure.
The object would be the characters who are necessary to tell this story, other than your protagonist.
Then specifically mode would be for the writer, for the novelist, what is the narration? What point of view are you utilizing, and what tense Are you telling this story in?
And having a handle on all of these questions before you start, is a, is a probably a really good idea, , otherwise, your novel could get quite messy, , during the construction of it.
It is worth it to note that just like everything in the novel, Aristotle thinks that consistency is important, and so this is why having a hold on these things is really important so you can maintain consistency of point of view, consistency of tense, consistency of the style or the structure of how you’re telling the story.
And by the way, that doesn’t mean that every chapter has to be the same point of view, or every chapter has to be the same style, there’s wonderful novels that I’ve shared plenty of them on my podcast, I mean, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabriel’s Evan that came out like a year ago. She does, , she switches to a second person point of view in the middle of the story. Does a great job with that.
But the thing that is like consistent is when they’re in that part, the author, they’re very consistent, right? So, when they’re in the part that they’re telling the second when they switch all of a sudden, the second person for whatever reason in the chapter, that is consistent.
And then, if you’re using a first person point of view or a third person point of view, it’s radically different in how you’re going to tell the story. Like a first person brings more intimate, third person expands the perspective. But being more intimate and narrow isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and expanding isn’t necessarily a good thing. These are just choices that one would have to make.
But as Aristotle reminds us, everything you do for your story should be in service of the story itself. So what is best served for your story? I don’t know what type of story you’re telling, is that gonna, that’s gonna change depending on the story that you’re telling and what’s gonna be best served for that story.
Something a lot of novelists worry about, and writers in general, is criticism and haters and people not liking your book, and one star reviews, and something you tackle in the book is Aristotle’s approach to fair criticism of stories. Tell us about that.
Aristotle says that a book can be criticized on five different qualities you have 1) impossibility, 2) irrationality, 3) contradiction, 4) harmfulness and 5) artistic standards.
Impossibility, irrationality, contradiction, relate to other principles that you would read about in this book. Like, novels should be believable, novels should be logical, novels should be cohesive. So, like contradiction, are you contradicting things that happened earlier in your novel? Fair criticism is what you’re telling me irrational based on everything else that has come before it. It’s breaking the chain of causality, breaking logic, fair criticism. Is it impossible? Could this not possibly happen based on everything that I know about your story, fair criticism?
The fourth piece would be harmfulness. He’s not talking about morally, morally scrupulous people, or, and he’s actually quite open in Poetics, saying that writers should not be held to the same moral standards as others in the writing of their stories. So that means you have to write the story that needs to be written to depict the story that needs to be told. But if you have depravity or brutality that is in your story, but is not necessary to the story, it’s open for criticism. So it must be necessary to the story you are telling. If it’s there for shock value or what have you, then it’s open for criticism.
Then the last piece is artistic standards. And artistic standards are just breaking the norms, breaking the great, breaking grammatical norms, breaking societal norms. That’s not saying you can’t it’s just saying it’s open for criticism at that point.
And by the way, I love Rule Breakers, and I love people who get risky with style and that are odd and are different and unique, and challenge and push boundaries. But you have to realize is that when you do that, you’re open to criticism, commercially or critically. however, , if you don’t pull it off, or if people don’t think you pull it off, it’s going to be open for criticism. So this is what he means.
And just a note on what you said to open this that question, one of the things that I always try to inspire writers with other writers with and other artists with is that a review, whether it is professional or whether it is on Amazon or Goodreads or that that is more of an indicator of the reviewer than it is of the review. I take my background, my experiences, my worldview, into everything I read, everything I write, everything I watch. That’s me, that’s Kevin. That’s whoever, everybody’s experience, and everybody, the way they come at something is completely different. And so when I say I like this, that’s more of a reflection on my taste than it is a reflection on the author’s ability to craft a story. And so it’s really important, I think, for writers to always remember that a review is more of a reflection on the reviewer than it is on their work. And I don’t think it’s a great idea to look at reviews and all that stuff all the time, although I completely understand and empathize with wanting to know what people think about you and wanting to know, I do the same thing. So I won’t squabble with that, with that idea of don’t look at your stuff, but I realize that that’s not always, don’t look at reviews, but I realize that’s not always practical. I just say: remember that the review is more of a reflection of the reviewer than it is of the actual work that’s being reviewed.
When we were talking about the three questions, I think mode was mode the first one…
No, that was medium.
Medium. It got me thinking about the medium of this book. I’m curious, what’s your academic background? A book about Aristotle… was there ever a consideration to make this an academic piece instead of a commercial piece? Because there’s like that medium choice right there where you really easily could have gone a different direction with the approach to this material. Love to hear a bit about that.
To answer your question squarely, I come at this purely from a practitioner standpoint. I am, depending on who’s listening and depending on who hears what I’m about to say, or, , I’m 100% self-taught. I rely heavily on editor on editors and people that I’ve worked with, books and, , other masters of craft that I’ve read. It was never really even in the cards at all for me to take this in an active to in an academic setting.
The only reason why I wrote it is because this is how I learned, like this is how I learned. And so this was bothering me that this didn’t exist in the marketplace. There were a ton of, you could read tons of craft books. On Writing by Stephen King is a memoir Bird by Bird by Anne Lamar; I mean tons. And then there’s also books like Story by Robert McKee, or Save the Cat is another big one, .
But then when I would dive deeper into the people, like I said at the top of this episode, masters of craft practice, other practitioners who have written on story, David Mamet, Aaron Sorkin, all these, it would all come back to Aristotle. And so then I said, these principles have been utilized forever for dramatic writers. So, even today, this day I see all of these principles in the stories that are on Netflix or on Amazon or on all these, why doesn’t this exist in some capacity for the novelist to help them craft their stories, to help them?
Because that’s how I did it. I didn’t go to an MFA program. I have a business background. Writing is a passion for me, storytelling is a passion for me. And so this is all self-driven. It was never an academic, an academic pursuit for me. And so in my mind, it wasn’t really even an option.
And then I and then, fortunately, I was getting good feedback from a lot of other writers who I know as they read this, and they’re like, dude, you’ve got to, we’ve got to get this out into the world like, this is, it’s powerful, and that was inspiring, and enough for me to, want to get it out there.
Obviously, there’s lots of different types of learners, but have you heard the story where they’re like, if a toaster breaks, there’s kind of two types of people: One person will take the toaster apart and figure out what’s wrong, put it back together, and then there’s the other people who will, like, go hire a technician to fix it. I feel like you and I are those two, you would go in there and just figure out how to fix it, whereas I would go take a course on Aristotle. It’s like, you were like, “Oh, obviously Aristotle’s starting point. I’m just gonna go read this myself,” whereas I would instantly need to go find an expert on Aristotle and get them to teach it to me. It’s interesting, the different ways of coming at education and problem-solving and all of that.
100% I don’t think that there’s any wrong way to do it. The one, the one thing that I will say is that, and I’m a staunch believer in this, and it’s applied itself in other aspects of my life too, and it’s another thing that I’ve observed in a lot of other practitioners in a lot of different sub-specialties of life, and that is, interest is the driving force behind learning.
You sit two people down and force one of them to read Poetics, or you sit down somebody who wants to dissect it and break it down because they’re interested. I’m gonna bet on the interested person all day than the person who has 17 degrees all kinds and all kinds of letters affixed to the end of their name, who are forced to sit down there and read it, they’re not going to read it the same way. They’re not going to articulate it the same way. And it all comes down to interest.
We talked about hack, we talked about hockey before this started. I heard Wayne Gretzky one time, say, in a documentary called In Search of Greatness, they asked him, What does it take for a hockey player to be great? And or they said, “Well, what made you great?” And he said, “When I was a kid, I would sit out in the backyard, and I would shoot pucks into the back into a net for three, four hours, and while kids were down, playing basketball and riding their bikes, I was doing that, and it wasn’t because I someone told me to do it, it was because that’s just what I wanted to do.”
And so if you don’t want to do the thing that you’re doing, you’re never gonna have a shot at being great at that thing, like it’s interest-driven. You have to want to go in the backyard and shoot pucks for three to four hours.
Now, I know that this is sounding completely egotistical because it’s painting me in the light. I’m super interested in this subject matter, and I don’t mean it in that way at all. I’m just trying to draw the correlation of how much interest actually affects the understanding and the importance of learning something and then ultimately being able to apply that thing.
I think that one of the things that writers get tripped up on a lot is that we have workshops and we have critiques, and we have all these voices of people telling us, this is how you should do it. But in this book, I talk about how there’s a difference between writing and story, and writing is a lot more subjective than story is story. Story there’s a lot more objectivity.
Like I said, go read any story. There’s going to be a protagonist. They’re going to want something, and they’re either going to overcome or succumb to those obstacles. That could be Vladimir Nabokov, that could be Doug Vigliotti, that could be Kevin Johns. It doesn’t matter now. Vladimir Nabokov is going to write like the one of the best stylists I’ve ever seen, grace of page. That’s entirely different. That’s the writing piece.
And the thing is with the writing, writing is so much about rhythm and so much about voice and so much about there’s so much art in it that it’s very subjective, and it’s very hard for me to confidently tell any writer that they’re not writing well, but I tell somebody I don’t think that story works, because to me, there’s just a lot more objectivity to it.
And I would say to any writer with especially with writing specifically only allow the voices of people who understand what you are trying to do to talk to you about your work. Everybody else doesn’t matter.
I’m not a workshop person. I’m a one-on-one person. I need to know that you understand the vision that I have for what I’m trying to do. Not just like, where does the comma go? Where does the period go? You can condense this.
I offer a lot of shorthand questions in Aristotle for novelists that one can ask themselves about style, because Aristotle has a lot of points that he makes on style, but perhaps there is none that is, then just being you on the page, allowing you to come through. Your voice is the only thing you truly have. And people.
I’ve found it’s hard to be unique, because people want duplication. They see uniqueness as a weakness, not as a strength. Especially in the publishing industry, they want books that are written like other books, because they think they could sell them. They don’t want a book that is is unique. They want it unique, they say that, but really what they want is duplication, because they want to be able to sell that book. They want to be able to position that book.
I look at it from the artist standpoint. I don’t look at it from the commercial standpoint. And I say, embrace your uniqueness. That is the strength, right? This is a topic that I’m incredibly, incredibly passionate about, because I feel like there’s a lot of advice givers, and I am using air quotes when I say advice givers that confuse story and writing all the time.
I think giving advice on writing is tricky. Giving advice on story is also tricky, but it’s not as tricky because there’s so much similarity between stories. For me, I’ve always said the thing that a writer needs is confidence. So whatever you have to do to give a writer confidence, that’s it. Everything else we can handle at another time, we just got to give that writer confidence. That’s it.
So true.
As an editor I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve said to a client “What you mean by this?” and they’ll go, “I don’t know.” If they’re not confident of what they’re trying to communicate, it’s 100% obvious to me as a reader, , like so often, if they’re a little confused about the story, or they’re a little confused about how to describe something or the importance of something, it’s like, I see it instantly. You could feel the confidence versus the ambiguity right there on the page.
Aristotle is very specific when he talks about confidence, actually he talks about courage, and he talks about the necessity of courage. And this isn’t in Poetics; this is in Nicomachean Ethics. He talks about the nature of the virtue of courage, and he says fear is expected. Well, I’m paraphrasing him, but it’s fear is expected. Confidence is required, and courage lies in the middle.
You have to expect that there’s going to be fear. You need the confidence to have courage. And in my book, in Aristotle for Novelist, the 15th principle, which is not actually in the subtitle the book talks about courage and the necessity for writers to have courage. It’s impossible to create good work if you are not courageous enough. And I specifically reference a quote by Alejandro González Iñárritu, the director. He says, “Have the courage to be disliked.” That to me, it’s so hard to do, but man, is it such good advice. Man, it’s such good advice. Pulling in Aristotle; it’s like having the courage to be disliked. Fear is expected, but confidence is required. It’s the table stakes.
The book is Aristotle for Novelists, it comes out at the end of November. Where can folks go to learn more about you in the book?
The easiest place for people to go check out more about the book is aristotlefornovists.com there’ll be more about the book. There’ll be links on where they can pick it up. There’s also a fun little 10 question assessment that one can download to know if they have a working story based on Aristotelian principles. And all of that is aristotlefornovelists.com and of course, for me, they can just go to my website https://douglasvigliotti.com/
One last question for you, Douglas, obviously, Aristotle wasn’t writing a writer’s craft book. He was writing a book for everyone. So just to wrap things up, can you tell me a little bit about how studying Aristotle has impacted not your writing, but your life?
So dramatically. I’ll try to keep this short, and I will tie it back to something that I started with: all stories are recognized, Doug Vigliotti, who wants something, publish this book, and there are obstacles standing in his way: External friends, noise critics, Instagram And internal obstacles: my neurotic brain, my, all kinds of things, right? I’ve got to overcome those obstacles to get what I want. Will it be a tragedy or will it be a comedy? I don’t want things to turn out to be a tragedy. I really want them to be a comedy.
And so when I look at this material, I can fit it into life stories just as much as I could fit it into stories on the page or on the screen, and I think that’s what makes it so philosophical and so interesting. And in another book, perhaps somewhere down the line, I may take the same material and form it for the individual in their life.
How true is the character? Are you being truthful? There’s all of these principles. If you place yourself in the shoes of the protagonist, it’s life. It’s what life is.
Going back to what Aristotle said, one of the two reasons why storytelling existed was imitation, or mimesis, as he calls it. And so this, it all jives together. There’s it ends up being, wow, there are no holes here. Like this really does all fit together when you look, when you start looking at it through this lens.
And so, to answer your question, literally, the whole entire thing has informed my the way that I look at life, and the way that I look at stories. And stories are life, right?
I’ll end it with a quote that Joan Didion wrote in one of her essays, and it was, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”
Doug, thanks so much for being on the show today.
I appreciate it. Kevin, it was a pleasure being here. Thanks for having me.
