The poet should also, as far as possible, complete the effect by using the gestures. For, if their natural powers are equal, those who are actually in the emotions are the most convincing; he who is agitated blusters and the angry man rages with the maximum of conviction.Sir Joshua Reynolds used thus to simulate emotion before a mirror. In his Preface to the Wordsworth says that the Poet will wish to bring his feelings near to those of the persons whose feelings he describes . . . and even confound and identify his own feelings with theirs. See also Burke, ,4. 4.

And that is why poetry needs either a sympathetic nature or a madman,Genius to madness near allied is the meaning of μανικός as used here. Plato held that the only excuse for a poet was that he couldn’t help it. the former being impressionable and the latter inspired.

The stories, whether they are traditional or whether you make them up yourself, should first be sketched in outline and then expanded by putting in episodes.

I mean that one might look at the general outline, say of the , like this: A certain maiden has been sacrificed, and has disappeared beyond the ken of those who sacrificed her and has been established in another country, where it is a custom to sacrifice strangers to the goddess; and this priesthood she holds. Some time afterwards it happens that the brother of the priestess arrives there—the fact that the god told him to go there, and why, and the object of his journey, lie outside the outline-plot. He arrives, is seized, and is on the point of being sacrificed, when he reveals his identity either by Euripides’ method or according to Polyidos, by making the very natural remark that after all it is not only his sister who was born to be sacrificed but himself too; and thus he is saved.

Not until this has been done should you put in names and insert the episodes;