I think there are many intriguing facets and implications to the concept of reversal in drama (and to the real life it imitates). It certainly entails a dramatic change in circumstance, fortune or relationship. But for Aristotle reversal, peripeteia, also meant a reversal of something else rife with paradox and irony: the reversal of intention. That is, a character acts in order to obtain or effect one result -- and gets the exact opposite. The classic example in Greek tragedy is, once again, Aristotle's model play, "Oedipus the King": the actions Oedipus takes to defeat the prophecy that he would kill his father and marry his mother, guarantee that he will fulfill the prophecy. His best intentions seal his fate. Freud took away from the Oedipus tragedy that murder and incest are universal impulses embedded in the unconscious human psyche --- well for half of humanity, anyway, men. Jung had another takeaway from it and similar myths: "Every psychological extreme secretly contains its own opposite or stands in some sort of intimate and essential relationship to it...the more extreme a position is the more easily we may expect an enantiodromia, a conversion of something into its opposite. The best is most threatened with some devilish perversion just because it has done the most to suppress evil." (Symbols of Transformation) Or as the saying goes: "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

Awesome graphic of the Hero's Journey. And now I'm curious - this translation uses the Latin phrases "propter hoc" and "post hoc" - how close are those to A.'s original Greek wording/concepts here? Movie-wise, for me this somehow brought to mind "For Love of Ivy" (screenplay by Robert Alan Arthur, based on a story by Sidney Poitier, with an Oscar-nominated theme song by Quincy Jones sung by Shirley Horn, rawrr): Ivy's outer goal is to leave her job as a maid to go to secretarial school, setting in motion the exterior plot: the kids of the family for whom she works persuade Poitier's playboy character to woo her, hoping thereby to keep her from leaving (they enlist him by threatening to expose his illegal gambling); their plan is thwarted, however, when he and Ivy fall in love, and their inner goals converge. . .

A modern variant of Aristotle's reversal of intention are movies where a character asserts in the first part of the film that they will NEVER do such and such, are NOT that kind of person. Or will ALWAYS do such and such or be a certain kind of person. And by the end of the story they have had a reversal of that stated intention. The Godfather: In the opening sequence of the wedding, Michael Corleone tells Kate that he's not like the rest of his family. But then... Adaptation: Charlie Kaufman rails against McKee's screenwriting precepts, belittles his twin brother for attending the seminar. But eventually... L.A. Confidential: Sgt Exley swears he would never act the "old school" way, plant evidence,shoot a criminal in the back lest he go free. But when... The Queen: Queen Elizabeth II repeatedly says she has no intention of participating in Diana's funeral. But finally... (IMHO, "The Queen" is an excellent example of a plot very close to Aristotle's original notion of reversal. Because the very actions she takes to uphold the monarchy, adhering to tradition and precedent, are in fact leading to the opposite state off affairs; they are undermining the monarchy. Her epiphany of that Aristotelian reversal of intention leads to the necessary reversal of actions to repair the reputation of the monarchy.)

I see this chapter as really just a prelude to the next chapter where he goes into a deeper discussion of reversal and recognition (discovery). He is saying, "You can follow what I've outlined thus far and create a perfectly adequate 'Simple' plot. But if you want to create something with some degree of complexity, you're going to have to work in an element of reversal and/or recognition. But it won't serve to just have any old reversal or recognition. They must come out of a causal influence from the events leading up to it. There is a big difference between something happening as a result of the preceding event, as opposed to simply happening after it." So he's kind of repeating himself about the importance of cause and effect in a dramatic structure, but he wants to make sure his reader understands that reversal and recognition, the key elements of a "Complex" plot, are also dependent on it before he goes into explaining what they are. So a lot hinges here on his further explication of those terms.

MYTH is the basis for every story. The discovery of self on a hero's journey can be molded into anything you want. First you have to find out what this "self" is, that your character discovers and then the way he discovers it. In this sense, Comedy and tragedy are two specialized forms of mythic journeys. The journey doesn't have to be taken literal. In an action movie it's a battle to be fought, in a detective story a riddle to be solved, and so on and so on. At the core of any good story is the character weakness. It can be either psychological and moral (concerning himself and the way he treats others) or simply psychological (just concerning himself). In a tragedy, for example, a character makes a moral choice in the end, but his self-revelation happens too late, so he is hit by the catastrophe that he himself created. That's the way this story form conveys its meaning to the audience. Without recognition and reversal of fortune, there's no complex plot and no tragedy.

pgronk, question: By reversal of intention, does this mean the RESULT is not what was intended or the actual INTENTION is what is reversed? Or both?

Melanie, I'm wondering if, per pgronk's comment, this is a reflection of a character starting out with a Conscious Goal, but then over time as their Need emerges, that translates into an Unconscious Goal that redirects their original intention. I mean, how many times have we seen movies in which a character is obsessed with a business deal, promotion, landing a gig, etc, but their values and perception of life changes as they get in touch with their feelings, and what they end up accomplishing or achieving is something more reflective of their emotional life. So perhaps that's one way of looking at this type of reversal, the shift from the original Conscious Goal to the emergence of an empowering Unconscious Goal. Fits with the concept of metamorphosis that lies at the base of character-based screenwriting...

pgronk, well, there you go, pretty much what I was thinking [see my comments above]. And thinking psychologically, might not that public assertion -- I WON'T do that -- is actually a 'cry' from the character's subconscious that in point of fact, that is precisely what they NEED to do.

Yes, Jennine, thanks for putting the chapter in the broader context, how it really ought to be read in conjunction with Part 11. That causality is key to developing a sense of narrative drive, it seems to me, as opposed to stories which suffer from what I call The Dreaded Episodic Curse.

Sven, your comments really crystallize how critical these two aspects -- Recognition and Reversal -- are. And once again, I'm pleased to see how infused what we would call 'character,' as in 'personal agents,' is with plot. For it's is SOMEONE who does the recognizing and it's to SOMEONE the reversal of fortune happens. And this would seem to dovetail directly into the dynamic of metamorphosis or transformation. So I'm wondering if another way to distinguish between a simple plot and complex plot is the former may not have a character who goes through a metamorphosis while the latter MUST have them do so. Indeed, might the causality derive FROM that metamorphosis, that the very nature of a character's transformation, stage by stage [as with the idea of 'Passages'] is what CREATES at least part of that sense of causality.

Scott: By reversal of intention, I think Aristotle meant the RESULT was the opposite of what the character originally intended. In tragedy, it would be too little, too late to switch goals, intend to do something else and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. In other genres in modern drama, one can switch goals and methods and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. The 2006 movie, "The Queen", as I indicated, is a good example of doing just that.

Scott: RE: >>> a ‘cry’ from the character’s subconscious that in point of fact, that is precisely what they NEED to do. I think that depends. What happens in the "abyss, death and rebirth" phase of the Hero's journey? Joseph Campbell wrote, "The Hero...discovers and assimilates his opposite (his own unsuspected self) either by swallowing or being swallowed." (The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Chapter 11) What is that opposite, the unsuspected self encountered? "He must put aside his pride, his virtue, his beauty, and life and bow or submit to the absolutely intolerable," says Campbell. That doesn't seem to me to be a frolic in the park. Rather it seems like a life-or-death encounter with the shadow, what Jung called the "moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality." Does Michael Corleone do what his subconscious is crying out for him to do? Or does the reversal of his character arc in the Godfather amount to succumbing to his shadow instead of constructively integrating it? In contrast, would a Jung-Campell spin on L.A. Confidential be that officer Edmund Exley must partner up with his shadow -- and with the projection of his shadow, Sgt. Bud White -- to defeat the villain? And then there's Rick Blaine in "Casablanca". His character arc would seem to fit the paradigm of a reversal arising from a subconscious cri de cœur , cry of the heart. Initially he asserts that he sticks his neck out for no body. But eventually for sake of his lover Ilsa Lund and her husband, he reverses himself and sticks his neck out far indeed and in the process rediscovers his idealism. It all depends. I think that reversals are not just an integral part of a complex plot, but also complex processes themselves.

In directing actors, I really learned what the difference between internal and external means. Most directors are obsessed with framing and camera movement and care little about the actors, when it's essential to know how to give organic directions to create a compelling performance. If you give your actors a direction based on the results you want to see, their performance can have a mechanic quality. If you give them action verbs instead, they are able to do their job and act. If these verbs are coming directly from their characters (motivation, intention and desire), their performance will feel organic and real. Of course, great actors are aware of this problem and know how to translates result directions into actions, but so should the director. I guess it's the same with screenwriting - some writers will always be obsessed with fireworks and actually get away with it ...

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