Your Ancient Greek Cheat Sheet
Can classical tools help the modern writer?
The word ‘rhetoric’ has a bad reputation.
Think about the last time you heard it used. Was it someone complaining about politicians and their empty promises? Was it a discussion about trickery and deception through slippery words? For many of us writers, ‘rhetoric’ feels like an insult.
This is a real shame, because rhetoric as a discipline can teach us better tools for connecting with our audience and refining our style to suit our topic. It has helped some of the finest writers, from lawyers to poets. So let’s turn back to the origins of the word and demystify some of its bad press.
Where did rhetoric come from?
No, rhetoric isn’t the invention of used car salesman or your local mayor. It’s an ancient Greek art, which draws heavily from the work of Aristotle. His 350BCE text titled Rhetoric is a great place to get started with this maligned discipline. In this three-part book, Aristotle examines the art of persuasion. He was the first philosopher to break down argumentation into its essential parts so that important relationships can be observed. Basically — once we understand who we are as an author, who we are aiming to address, and the nuances of our topic — we can motivate other people to act or feel a certain way.
For example, you might be writing an exposé on factory farming in order to convince people to sign your petition about more humane slaughter practices.
If your primary audience are meat-eaters, you would emphasise different outcomes than you would if you were trying to persuade a majority vegan crowd. If you were attempting to reach out to farmers, you would need to keep in mind that their priorities will be different to those of the people who consume their products. For some readers, your most persuasive skill might be your use of vivid, emotive language. Others will value facts and figures. Some will want to know who you are and why they should trust your opinions. If you have an unsophisticated or haphazard approach to these various needs, then your argument will be far less powerful and less likely to motivate others.
If you want your writing to be as persuasive as possible, rhetoric forms the key to understanding these fundamental elements of the writing process, and anticipating the best and most persuasive choices in order to get the result you want.
The Rhetorical Situation for Writers
So how can you get started and apply the discipline of rhetoric to your next writing project?
A great entry point is the ‘rhetorical situation’. This is a modern rhetorical tool, developed in 1968 by a Professor of Speech called Lloyd Bitzer. Since then, his idea has been challenged and developed by a range of rhetorical scholars. You’ll find multiple versions of the rhetorical situation, but below I will take you through the fundamentals in order to get you started with applying these tools to your own compositions.
The basic idea behind the rhetorical situation is that no text exists in a vacuum. Every text is part of a complex relationship between author and audience, mediated by subject and context. If you consider each of these elements carefully, including their relationships with each other, you will be able to write the best piece of work possible.
Ideally, you should plot out these details during the early stages of your project. You can write them on a sheet of paper and pin them to your notice board. You can jot them down in a Word document. You can record them as a voice memo. It’s up to you. Just take the time to really think about the elements of your writing and how they interact to make the best composition possible.
Text
What are you writing? Let’s get started by carefully considering the kind of text you are trying to compose.
For many of you, the text you’re aiming for is a clear, punchy, persuasive article for Medium. Medium measures its articles in minutes of reading time, so you’d want to think through your length. Too short, and you may fail to make a point. Too long, and your audience will lose focus. What creative commons image should you use to grab the attention of your reader? Will you use subheadings? Will you open with a personal narrative? What choices have your favourite Medium authors made in order to create texts that appeal to you?
Obviously, those of you aiming to write a novel or a longer piece of non-fiction will have very different constraints and aims. Same goes for the planning and composition of an essay for school or a report for work. Whatever text you’re writing, take the time to note down the fundamental features of the genre — even if they seem obvious.
Subject
What are you writing about? Next, it’s time to really consider your subject.
Chances are, you want to discuss a subject that’s close to your heart. It might be an issue that stirs you, or an experience that shaped you. Maybe you want to bring an uncommon topic to life, or change the way we view an everyday idea.
Whatever you choose, it’s important to really ponder your subject area so that you’re certain about what you’re discussing and can allow your reader to know what they should expect. A good piece of writing stays focussed on its subject matter, and doesn’t change half way through. While this may seem obvious, achieving focus takes careful planning and practice.
If the subject you wish to explore seems too vast, then it’s a good idea to break it down into a more digestible topic. For example, ‘climate change’ is a subject. ‘Arguments against fossil fuel as a power source’ is a topic. ‘The internet’ is a subject, while ‘getting the most out of Facebook’ is a topic. Can you see the difference between the two? Consideration of the scope of your text and the nature of your audience can help you change a vague subject into an engaging and meaningful topic for your writing.
Audience
Who are you writing for? A core part of the rhetorical situation is your relationship to your audience.
A good writer is someone who takes careful note of their intended audience, and thoughtfully considers their interests, beliefs, and needs.
For this reason, it’s good to have a general idea of the reader you wish to attract. While you may want to appeal to as many people as possible, ‘everybody!’ isn’t a useful audience to aim for. Instead, be a little more particular and a tad more realistic. Are you giving your audience very new information? Or do you expect that they already know the fundamentals of your topic? Do they have the same passions as you? The same life experiences? What details might you need to bridge their knowledge to your argument? Do they understand the industry phrases you are using, or will they dismiss these words as jargon? Are they casual readers dipping into your ideas on a bus trip, or are you writing for a board of directors who are paid to listen to your detailed report?
Your audience should also dictate your style. As I mentioned above, a clever author considers the attention span of their reader. If you want to attract Medium readers scrolling through their phone on a coffee break, your work should be simple, brief, and thought-provoking. Conversely, an academic essay needs to be complex, well-researched, and formal in tone.
Remember, you can always share the same core information or argument with very different audiences by writing more than one text. If you are passionate about a message like ‘iPhones are great’, no one is stopping you from writing a detailed report for a tech blog, plus a simple ‘how to’ guide aimed at people purchasing their first smartphone. That would be a more sensible approach than treating your audience as an undifferentiated monolith of ‘readers’.
Author
Who are you as a writer? You should also carefully assess yourself and your role in the texts you compose.
How would you like to be received by your readers? What are your strengths and weaknesses? What connects you to your chosen topic area? Why should we trust or listen to you?
You might be confident in your skills and know that you’re the best person to write on your selected topic, but that doesn’t mean that an audience of strangers will necessarily agree. A good author is someone who considers their own ability to be persuasive and builds this i to their writing. For example, you might be writing a ‘how-to’ guide for new puppy owners. Letting your audience know you’ve been a professional dog trainer for the past five years will lend authority to your recommendations. The same goes for more emotional and subjective topic areas. You’re allowed to let your audience know that your advice about chemo comes from your own cancer journey, or that you learned about wedding etiquette the hard way. We trust writers when we believe that they know what they are talking about. Be that knowledgeable author!
Purpose
What are you trying to achieve? Finally, note down the ultimate aim you wish to achieve via this piece of writing.
Maybe you have been through a traumatic experience like divorce or death of a loved one and wish to write for a sense of catharsis. You might like to be a supportive voice for people in need. Or perhaps you have some unusual or unexpected advice that could be the key to their recovery.
Maybe you want to establish yourself as an expert in your field? Do you want to be the ‘go to guy’ for cryptocurrency? Or do you want to make money by helping people organise their homes? Maybe you want to be known as a gluten-free cooking expert? Whatever your purpose is, think carefully about whether or not your text is actually achieving your core aims.
Don’t forget to be realistic and to view your text as one part of a bigger project. None of us writers become successful overnight, and you’re not going to make a fortune off a single Medium article. Rather, you will become a professional writer slowly, or change people’s minds one at a time, by writing multiple pieces that slowly build your reputation.
Instead of saying ‘the purpose of my text is to make my gluten-free recipes a household name’, try to aim for something smaller and more focussed. Think more along the lines of ‘this recipe for gluten free cookies will really help parents make lunchbox snacks’ or ‘I can appeal to an even broader market by sharing this vegetarian gluten-free recipe’. Don’t muddy your aims by assuming that every piece of writing will achieve every goal you have in life. Be specific and have an individual plan for each text you compose.
Putting It All Together
Hopefully the advice above has started you on the path of using rhetoric as a planning tool for your writing, and as a means of understanding all the elements that go in to building a successful text.
While it may seem like a lot of extra work, this is the kind of constructive effort that will get you results and move you towards the next stage of your writing journey — whatever that might be.
Dr Zoe Alderton is a lecturer specialising in Communications for the School of Economics at the University of Sydney. She is the author of two academic books.
