Sometimes when you're thinking about a subject that you might want to write about -- or even form an opinion about -- you don't know quite where to start or how to proceed.
In rhetorical theory, this stage in the process of developing an argument -- coming up with ideas, thinking of something to say -- is called invention (inventio).
One useful tactic is to approach your writing task as if it were a narrative or a drama. There are a number of ways to do this, but one set of guidelines that many writers have found useful is Burke's pentad, also called the dramatistic pentad, created by the philosopher of rhetoric Kenneth Burke (1897-1993). Burke believed "that most social interaction and communication can be approached as a form of drama whose outcomes are determined by ratios between . . . five . . . elements" (Wikipedia): act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose.
To use Burke's pentad as an invention device, ask yourself the following questions:
- What action is occurring? (act)
- What are the surroundings ? (scene)
- Who is involved in or affected by the action?(agent)
- How does the action occur?(agency)
- Why does the action occur? (purpose)
At this point, the Burkean pentad is basically the same as the simple journalistic formula of who, what, when, where, why, and how. The dramatistic method takes this one step further, however. Once you have answered these questions in depth, you need to analyze the relationships (what Burke called the ratios) between them. This juxtaposition creates what writing theorists call friction, and friction leads to creativity.
If you look at Delacroix's Hamlet, pictured above, and identify the act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose, you will come up with a good summary of the famous graveyard scene, but you will only begin to develop your ideas about it when you start to look at the relationships between act and agent, act and agency, agent and purpose, etc. At that point, you begin to ask yourself how Hamlet is affected by the presence of the other people in the scene, how he is affected by the environment, why he asks to hold the skull, and for what purpose another, unseen agent -- Shakespeare -- sets this scene with these agents in this way.
