Originality

Being original is a very hard trait to maintain. Weather in life or when it is in writing, It is hard in both because there are so many driving forces behind what happens. When in life, people and the media drive us to do certain things. But in writing we follow others writing in all stages for we learned to write from reading from others.

 As a group writers have worked together to make more exciting and quality pieces of writing. They do this by picking up from what other writers have written and the conventions that they use. This is called intertextuality and as James Porter argues is behind every piece of text. I believe it is possible to have some sort of originality when writing but it is never truly just your own.  For you learned from others writing to build your own. Also nearly every writing style has been done by someone because writing has been around a long time and hardly anyone gets published. So calling yourself original is basically being like Zoolander.

To me intertextuality reminds me a lot of one of my two majors, that major is film. Film and cinema has been around  over over 100 years. People like to think that certain directors are completely original and have these methods are super new. Just as in writing nearly everything isn't just your own. For the conventions of cinema much like writing have been honed over the years. But unlike writing new film techniques will arise more often then in writing. a technique in film that was pretty original at the time was bullet time the slow-motion technique used in the movie The Matrix. After this movie many movies copied this technique and perfected it. All in all artistic work in literature and all types of creative media is a group effort that has spanned through the medians existence which results in taking and reusing other peoples techniques and methods which will change through time.

Fighting With Your Pen

Being able to effectively argue someone is a great skill to have under your belt. Some people are born with the skill of arguing and some people work very hard to achieve it. Having greater skill in making a better argument than your opponent is like being faster in a race or stronger in a fight. In writing it is much more difficult because your words are concrete and is impossible to backtrack on your argument. When entering an argument Stuart Greene has a few points you should cover. The most important of all of them is “identifying an issue” for if you enter upon an argument and have no idea what the issue is it will look like the video above. People when taking up arms in an argument have a certain bias and background knowledge that supports this “bias”. When joining an argument you must figure out what the bias is of the people you are arguing. So with this knowledge you will be able to more accurately argue your point.

            Greene also said that when coming up with an argument for your paper you must first ask a question. Greene says there are certain criteria for asking a question. One is that you can answer it  because if the question you ask isn't able to be answered then you have to do extra research. This makes sense because if you aren't able to make a valid argument you will sound like your just spouting out nonsense just like the babies from the video above. An argument in writing is just looking for how others have defined problems and then using their words to predict possible counter arguments they may have. A quality argument is like a game of chess; those best at arguing will be two moves ahead of their opponent. But those that are better at arguing aren't guaranteed to win they first must frame their argument and if the argument they chose to frame is a bad one your argument may be dead before you even started it. When you frame  your argument Greene says you get numerous benefits but what I felt like was the most important was that framing helps organize your thoughts and the points you will be making. For without organization in your argument your opponent could have a checkmate within seconds.

Saying Vs. Negotiating

If I was to try to get my point across to my audience by negotiating I would have to delicately prepare my plan of attack. I would first get them engaged into the subject with stases slowly easing them into the conversation by giving them the information needed to know and to progress the audience through the information I was to give them. I would convey the exigence in a way that would make them want to fix that issue at hand. They would feel as if their one goal in life was to back my argument.

  Getting your point across to your reader isn't always just telling them information. depending on your message you must use different techniques to display your information.  As a writer you must understand how to get your point across to the reader. You can take two approaches to conveying your message. You can tell the reader by just relaying your message unbiased and factual, or you can rhetorically negotiate your message by persuading the reader. In example, when talking about animal cruelty you could tell the reader straight facts and leave it at that or go the extra mile like Sarah McLachlan. Sarah McLachlan uses videos (like this one here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gspElv1yvc) of beaten and starved dogs to get her point across. As you can tell Sarah wasn't just letting the dogs be a distant idea she brought them up close and personal for the audience convincing them. For if she would have been less convincing she may not have gotten her point across as well and when making her points she wouldn't have been able to convince as many people to join her cause.

 Without deliberate rhetorical communication of your points you may not be able to convince your audience. For they wont just agree with whatever you write they need something to ease them into their future standing on the subject. Its not as if everything you say becomes fact immediately.