Laura Saetveit Miles

In his 3rd and least-read book of Rhetoric, Aristotle lays out his 4 steps for persuasive communication: 1. Exordium 2. Narratio 3. Confirmatio 4. Peroratio What blows my mind is he wrote it 2,400 years ago. Yet the structure still sets the foundation for modern-day logic, debate, and persuasion. 1. Exordium (“Beginning”) Aristotle says a good intro should do two things: • Capture the audience’s attention • Establish the speaker’s credibility He goes on to suggest four ways to create a great exordium: • Use vivid language • Ask rhetorical questions • Tell a story (knew I liked him) • Establish common ground with your audience The beginning “sets the stage” for the rest of the work. 2. Narratio (“Narrative”) Aristotle is referring to backstory, to additional context. He says backstory should accomplish three goals: • Further establish credibility • Create a sense of need to hear the argument • Provide just enough info the audience knows what’s going on Notice how the backstory comes after the hook. Plus, he suggests using as little as possible. 3. Confirmatio (“Establish”) Aristotle argues your intro and backstory should naturally lead to your solution. Then you use a combo of Pathos, Ethos, and Logos to persuade your audience. But while schools like to display Aristotle’s famous three as an equilateral triangle, he doesn’t recommend using them in equal weight. Quite the opposite. Instead, he suggests finding the one that connects most to your audience and solely focusing on that. “Rhetoric then may be defined as the faculty of discovering the possible means of persuasion in reference to any subject whatever.” 4. Peroratio (“Closing”) Aristotle says your conclusion should inspire a specific action. You weren’t talking just to talk – you want them to move, to decide, to laugh, to share, to vote, to do whatever it is you want them to do. You have to ask for that thing. Nobody can read your mind. Make the ask. Point 1: Aristotle believes the ultimate goal of communication is to persuade others to take a specific action. The term he used was “Teleology.” In Rhetoric it meant knowing the end goal first to craft the beginning and middle of your argument. Authors like Toni Morrison and Neil Gaiman start with the end, then write the rest of their books to get there. Same idea. Point 2: AIDA (Attention-Interest-Desire-Action) may be the most widely used copywriting framework in the world. But it’s literally this idea from Aristotle re-worded. In another of his less-read books, Poetics, Aristotle lays out his 6 key points for storytelling. Those same points get re-worded in The Hero’s Journey, 3-Act Structure, and many other “modern” storytelling frameworks. It’s been 2,400 years but Aristotle’s ideas are still everywhere around us. *** “Naturalness is persuasive, artifice just the reverse.” – Aristotle Follow me @nathanbaugh27 for more writing like this!