Rhetoric in Practice Essay

Rhetoric in Practice Essay

In this project, I concentrated on a screenplay to remind the audience of the importance of critical thinking. The setting of the script is based on the appearance of coronavirus, which makes the society nervous and causes rush decisions. It reveals the dire need and the ability to analyze and evaluate information objectively before making a judgment (Cadman, 2015). The intention of the directive taken in handling the project is to inform the audience about the importance of critical thinking. Lack of reasoning skills is most likely to cause disappointments, regrets, and more problems within society.

The play follows the Freytag’s model for writing a dramatic screenplay. Its pyramid consists of exposition, inciting incident, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution, and an ending (Elizabeth, 2019). According to Freytag’s pyramid, the narrator sets the scene by introducing the characters and their backgrounds. Secondly, the character reacts to an occurrence that is followed by a series of reaction events. Thirdly, the story is built, and often there is a complication. The problem that the character attempts to solve gets worse and more complicated (Cadman, 2015). The climax is seen when there was the most significant tension between the darkness and light of the matter. After that, we see the character reveal their change in behaviors, perceptions, and reactions, which marks a falling action in the play (Elizabeth, 2019). Conclusively, we see a resolution at the end, where character solves the existing conflict revealed through the climax. The play ends in a tragic mood.

The project was done in sequential steps, including the writing of the plot, scenery, actions, and eventually, the screenplay. I learned the conventions of developing a dramatic screenplay from the model text “Getting Gone” by Tenara Calem. I acquired information on developing formats like “font should be 12 Courier” and “fade out” at the bottom right at the end of a scene. I also learned that it is appropriate to specify time and locations at the beginning of the screenplay. Moreover, I understood that the character’s actions in their speech should be depicted to make it more vivid and convey emotions to the audience more precisely. I learned more conventions from David Mamet’s “Approach to Dialogue,” where he explains that there should be domination of intrigues and dialogues when the script is meant for the screenplay (Kane, Leslie, David, 2001). Mamet also states that characters should be incorporated in dialogue and should be simple, straightforward, and pressing need to, as shown in the scene, which should advance the plot (Ken, 2018).

The exposition in the script begins with the appearance of coronavirus in China. Three significant characters are Yao (the grandpa), Jackal, who was the 35-year-old son, and Patrick, who serves as a pharmacist. The inciting incident involves the breakout of coronavirus that spreads as fast as a bush fire. Although people are advised to wear masks, grandpa argues that people will laugh at him. The story rises when grandpa saw a piece of information from the internet that said “…Experts found that Shuang Huang Lian oral liquid has an inhibitory effect on the coronavirus in patients, but it is still at the experimental stage.”  He quickly believed this information and assured himself of getting the liquid. His son Jackal rose to antagonize his quick decision. Nevertheless, he quickly went to the pharmacy to buy the mixture. Unfortunately, he found that the product was over. Patrick, the pharmacist, directed him to return the following day.

The climax of the play transpired when he decided to sneak through the window. Unfortunately, the old rails could not carry him up, and he ended up falling. Just before he went into a coma, he cried out, “shoot! How can I get my medicine?” The next scene unfolds when Yao is in the hospital. He woke up and sat next to his bed, really disappointed to the extent of calling the rails “stupid.” When he watched the television, he saw news reports that the mixture did not have practical impacts on the coronavirus. He stared at the television in distrust of the news information. He was trembling in anger at this time. The story came to an end when Yao fainted at the point that he discovered the truth.

Conducting a rhetorical analysis and reading through “the Never-ending Story,” led me to the finding that there exist some meanings and messages that authors would convey to the audience. These messages are usually complex and profound. In this case, I intended to inform my audience about the importance of critical thinking through having an intensive analysis of the information. The target audience for my script includes individuals who lack critical thinking, especially older generations. Therefore, the main character in the script was Yao, who was 65 years old. I chose to use the elderly generation because reasoning skills tend to become poorer as people become of age. Hence, using the elderly generation would bring out the importance of critical thinking more clearly and naturally. I used the coronavirus case in the text because it is a current world issue that is affecting people globally. Using it to convey my message would easily attract the attention of the audience and most probably take the message seriously. Lack of critical thinking can best be observed during desperate moments, like in the case of coronavirus.

The script consistently pushes Yao at the front of the scene while unveiling his lack of critical thinking. The background that I revealed concerning him was able to make the audience the problem in him. In the first case, he refused to wear the mask, yet everyone does. Secondly, he discovers a piece of information from the internet, and hurriedly believed it. He did not even pay attention to the whole message since the last part said, “…it is still in the experimental stage.” I used Yao to represent other people who make quick decisions without critically analyzing the information at hand. To bring out the importance of critical thinking, I plotted the scene in which Yao fell and collapsed when he tried to sneak through the window. Jackal comes into the scene to inform my audience that stubbornness is not necessary. We ought to consider other people’s opinions as a component of critical thinking.

I struggled to come up with the script because I was doing it for the first time. I did not know how to incorporate language features such as action verbs in a script. I had to learn these concepts while at the same time implementing them. Writing an analysis paper, which is a different format of writing from the common ones, was additionally challenging because I was encountering it for the first time. However, I learned how to write in a completely different form in the end. I understood how to write a play script using the action verbs and different conventions of writing a script.

Works cited:

1. Simon Abrams (2019). Dying To Survive. Retrieved At Https://Www.Rogerebert.Com/Reviews/Dying-To-Survive-2019
2. Cadman, S. (2015). The Basic Of Plot Structure: Freytag’s Pyramid In Fiction.
3. Elizabeth Chey (2019) Learning Freytag’s Pyramid: 5 Cool Examples Of How To Use It In Marketing. Retrieved At Https://Www.Clearvoice.Com/Blog/What-Is-Freytags-Pyramid-Dramatic-Structure/
4. Kane, L., & Mamet, D. (2001). David Mamet in Conversation. University of Michigan Press.
5. Albanese, Joseph, and James Patras. “The importance of critical thinking skills in disaster management.” Journal of business continuity & emergency planning 11.4 (2018): 326-334.
6. Ken Miyamoto (2018). Nine brilliant lessons from David Mamet’s Writing Staff. Retrieved

at: https://screencraft.org/2018/03/21/nine-brilliant-lessons-from-david-mamets-writing-staff-memo/

7. MasterClass (2019). How to Write a Dramatic Screenplay: Drama Script Writing Tips. Retrieved at: https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-write-a-dramatic-screenplay#what-is-a-drama-screenplay.