The Oldest Rule Of Compelling Writing

Aristotle taught it. Hemingway used it. Matthew McConaughey still does.

A man is pacing the front of a room, hands waving as he talks about the art of writing. He’s wearing a toga, fastened at one shoulder. His legs are bare and his sandals are made of leather, tied just above the ankle. It’s not a costume.

His students madly take notes. Pens cut from reeds dip in and out of ink pots, as they scrawl words across papyrus while he talks. Later, those notes will be compiled into a book that will be called Rhetoric, a treatise on the art of persuasion.

We don’t think of writing as persuasion but it is because whether we’re writing truth or fiction, it has to be believable before it can be compelling. In essence, we must persuade the reader to believe.

The teacher’s name was Aristotle and his book was published four hundred years before the birth of Christ. Here’s the biggest point he drilled into his students.

Omne trium perfectum.

Three is perfection.

Ancient Greeks didn’t know why three was such a powerful number, but they recognized that it was. They saw it everywhere and recognized the power of three to move people. It still is everywhere. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

How to save a life? Stop, look and listen. Stop, drop and roll.

The military teaches soldiers that if they’re ever taken prisoner, their directive is simple. Stay together, stay safe, and return.

We stand in court and swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth and our final will and testament says we give, devise and bequeath.

The declaration of independence is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The Gettysburg Address says “of the people, by the people, for the people.”

Apple shot to the top of the tech industry with three word product descriptions.

— Thin. Light. Powerful.
— Reliable. Durable. Quiet
— Fast, convenient, and secure.

Back in the fifteen hundreds, Shakespeare knew it, too.

The opening line of Julius Caesar is “Friends, Romans, Countrymen…”

And Caesar’s famous “Veni, vidi, vici.” (I came, I saw, I conquered.)

And when the witches of Macbeth repeat everything three times.

Omne trium perfectum.

The rule of three is all over the art world, too.

Three primary colors. Red, yellow and blue. With them, we can paint a rainbow, every color seen by the human eye. Every artist and photographer learns the rule of thirds. Draw a grid of nine squares. Three across, three down. The best images will always have the focal point where the lines intersect. Always.

Today we know why the rule of three is so powerful.

The human brain is a pattern seeking machine. Our brain looks for patterns and when it spots a pattern, it pushes all the buttons like lining up the numbers at the casino and having money pour out except it’s a chemical prize we get.

Happy reward chemicals flood our brain every time we spot a pattern. And the smallest and first number the human brain identifies as a pattern—is three.

Omne trium perfectum. Three is perfection.

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When Hemingway published his debut novel in 1926, the world sat up and took notice. He loved to talk about his iceberg theory. He said the majority of a story’s meaning should lie below the surface, hinted at but not explicitly stated.

And he did use the iceberg theory and it’s brilliant because letting the reader figure things out themselves adds tension to writing. Not everything has to be said.

But it was more than that.

What people noticed about his writing was the simplicity and clarity of his prose. It was a stark contrast to the flowery language and complex sentences used by his contemporaries. And if you look at his writing? You’ll see the rule of three.

“The bull charged. The crowd roared. The matador stood still.”
— The Sun Also Rises, Chapter 17

“It was a warm, windy, and quiet night.”
— A Farewell to Arms, Chapter 19

“He was old, he was alone, and he was a fisherman.”
— The Old Man and the Sea, Chapter 1

“The snow is on the mountain, the wind is in the pines, and the stars are in the sky.”
— The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Part 1

He doesn’t overdo it. He uses it selectively for impact. Because seriously, you can’t write a whole book that way. You need the flow that comes from varying sentence length. So he uses the rule of three to set a scene or make visual impact.

But it wasn’t just sentence structure where he employs the rule of three. You’ll see the rule of three play out in his story structure, too.

It’s most obvious in his first novel The Sun Also Rises. Three distinct parts. First is the setup to the story, which takes place in Paris. Next, the fiesta in Spain. And finally, the aftermath, which mostly takes place in Madrid. The rule of three.

He gets more subtle in his successive books, but it’s there if you’re looking.

The story arc of A Farewell To Arms can be summed up into three overarching themes. 1) the war 2) love and 3) loss. It begins with Lieutenant Frederic Henry in the war. Then there’s his time with Catherine. And finally, the loss. Because the three parts don’t have to be equal in length or duration, just intensity and impact.

You’ll see the three act structure again in Old Man and The Sea. The preparation. The struggle with the Marlin. The defeat and return.

Aristotle said a good story has three parts, the beginning, the middle and the end. In 1979, Syd Field modernized Aristotle’s theory for stage and said the strongest plays can be divided into setup, conflict and resolution.

In Hemingway’s case, make that setup, conflict and disillusionment as the resolution because that was his style. But he applied the rule of three brilliantly across both storyline and choice of words. Omne trium perfectum.

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In 2014, Dr. Kurt Carlson of Georgetown U. and Dr. Suzanne Shu, U. of California did a study of marketing pitches to see what it takes to be believable and where skepticism kicks in. The research paper, titled ‘Three Charms but Four Alarms’ said when making a persuasive argument, two claims are not enough to convince anyone, but adding a fourth introduces skepticism. Hence the title. Three charms, four alarms.

The perfect number of points to be convincing is three. Time and technology have changed but the human brain is still wired the same. Three is still perfection.

Later that same year, Matthew McConaughey won the Oscar for Dallas Buyers Club.

He stood at the podium holding the award, tears in his eyes. First thing he said was he wanted to thank his Daddy, who is watching from up in heaven with a big pot of gumbo, a lemon meringue pie and a cold can of Miller Light.

We call him charismatic but if you ever listen, really listen, he uses the rule of three when he is talking more than you’d realize if you weren’t paying attention.

At the end of his speech, he said in life, we all need three things.

Someone to look up to.
Something to look forward to.
And something to chase.

“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man;
true nobility is being superior to your former self.”
― Ernest Hemingway