Tonight's lecture combined my two favorite and strongest subjects: English and History. It was largely Greek and Roman history too, which is my forte. When Dr. Souder started talking about Cicero, I was practically drooling like one of Pavlov's dogs. It's funny how I can hear the same story a million times, but it never gets old. At least when it comes to Ancient Roman history.
I appreciated the lecture because it appealed to my artistic side. I know this class is more oriented towards speaking and scholarly pursuits, but it applies to creative writing as well. I already use the 5 Canons of Classical Rhetoric. First I must invent a problem to build a story around. Then I must decide how to arrange it, i.e. should I write chronologically, or should I start in the middle of the story and work backwards? What Style should I write in? First person, third person? How would the character think and act, and how should my choice of words reflect that? Memory is trickier, I suppose. I must remember the details about each character so I can maintain a certain consistency that readers expect. That is harder than you may think. When it comes to writing, I almost think that Delivery and Arrangement are interchangeable because both really determine how powerful a work can be. How I set up my story and how I present it can pack a mean punch if I do them right. In contrast, if I do it wrong, then the same story becomes weak and meaningless. It's a tightrope walk, and sometimes I have to do it without a safety net.
Of course, the Rhetorical Triangle is something I always must consider as well, although I didn't really have a name for it until tonight. It goes back to what Dr. Souder was saying about genre: an audience of a certain genre has particular expectations, and if you fail to think about your audience, your purpose, and your occasion, and treat the situation accordingly, you're going to fail at your endeavor. Of course, there are times when it's necessary to say "To hell with what people think!" One of the best short stories I've written to date was born out of this attitude. I was so frustrated about the restrictions imposed on me in my English 316 (Creative Writing: Fiction) class that I finally said "Screw it, I'm doing this my way." And what do you know? It was everyone's favorite, including David's, who bless his heart, was impossible to impress. My favorite modern-day writer, Stephen King, suggests in his book On Writing that you pick one person to write for - he writes for his wife - and forget the rest. But even he should agree that his target audience is going to be mighty pissed off if he writes a tacky romance novel when they're expecting horror. As for me, I've yet to figure out who I should write for. Maybe that's half the battle.
The link that you have created between creative and rhetorical writing is very interesting. Personally, I tend to separate them and approach each type of writing differently. To me, rhetoric seems more practical. When I begin a paper, I have a focus or a specific goal to accomplish. I know where I want to begin, where I want to conclude, and how I want to get there. When writing creatively, I don't use the same level of advanced planning. An image or even phrase will spark my interest, and I will work outwards from there creating a beginning and an end around it. Unfortunately, that process does not take into account the fact that creative writing, at least good creative writing, often contains elements of persuasion on a thematic level, but this is usually expressed in much subtler manner. Overall, I can see where you are coming from in applying rhetorical structures to creative writing, but, in my mind at least, the two forms come from different places, with rhetorical writing representing a much more structured form of thought.
ReplyDeleteThe way I write is by planning out what I want to say first in the form of an outline. This is true for both scholarly and creative works. But I was amazed to discover a few years ago that this was exactly how my favorite classical writer, Edgar Allan Poe, wrote. I remember him saying something to the effect that you can't take a trip somewhere unless you know where you are going. What he meant was you can't know how to reach your goal without knowing where you're supposed to end up first, i.e., a map. Do you take the scenic route, or go as the crow flies? What should you see along the way? And how does that affect the final destination?
ReplyDeleteRhetorical roads do tend to be more practical and straight to the point. Creative ones tend to point out the more interesting things to see along the way. Even though I agree that rhetorical writing and creative writing are different beasts, you still need to know where you are going before you can begin. The outcomes may be different, but the basic roads are still there.