Within the span of 49 days this class has redefined the way I compose. Words like rhetoric and audience, people like Bitzer and Bizzel, all come together and shape the way I write. Over the last few weeks I’ve exited the cave and realized that rhetoric surrounds, remediation is everywhere, and writing always has a purpose. The 3 following words are what I found are the most important in rhetoric. 
The AUDIENCE is any person “capable of serving as the mediator of the change which the discourse functions to produce” (Bitzer). The audience is something that a composer must connect with, or else risk the possibility his or her message may be misinterpreted and misunderstood. For me, the audience is very important. To be honest, the audience is always the first thing I think about when writing a story. Before I open up a notebook or a Word document, I always know whom I’m going to be writing for and talking to.
After knowing my audience, the next thing I progress towards is how am I going to keep my audience hooked to my story? How do I keep them reading? Me being me, I never found out there was a word for this type of existence. EXIGENCE is a word that can be loosely defined with another word, imperfection. “Imperfection marked by urgency, something wanting to be done.” (Bitzer.) The first time I learned what Exigence was, I shuffled through my head and tried to find an exception to the definition. I couldn’t. Every movie I’ve seen, every book I’ve read, with the exception of textbooks, always had some sort of situation that needed attention. So first, I think of my audience, then I must fully realize what my message is, and after that I must create or find a situation (Exigence) to keep my audience hooked.
The next step is to make my message believable. I have an audience; I have a situation, now I have to create a world. I do this through STYLE. With the right language, and the correct usage of verbiage, I can build a new galaxy or destroy a whole empire, and make my audience believe it. Was able to convince you what style is? Maybe? Well don’t take my word for it, here’s what Bizzel and Herzberg say, “The use of correct, appropriate, and striking language throughout the speech” Believe me now?
What I like about writing is that it gives you power. Power to captivate the minds of others, power to make anything happen. What I like even more about writing is that it isn’t easy—making a new world or having the prince fall in love with a cow doesn’t just happen when you write it down on a page, there are steps that one must follow. These steps are outlined by the rhetoric key terms, the key terms for composition. The funny thing is that you can’t compose something with only a few of the key words; you have to have all of them. They all must work together to truly make a captivating piece of work. You can’t have style without thinking of your audience, and you can’t have exigence without knowing your audience. It all goes together. That’s why key terms overlap.
After all is said and done, after your piece is complete, one of the final steps that I learned to take was to reflect on that piece. The purpose of REFLECTION in composing is to help the writer develop his or her own method of writing. By thinking back and recalling all the steps that one has made while creating a piece, it helps the writer realize what he needs to do, and need to improve on next time. According to Yancy, it’s a way to “go[ing] beyond the text,” a way to take your experiences and learn from them. Every author should always reflect on his or her experiences when writing a piece. One of the best ways to learn is to learn from your mistakes, and by reflecting you can point out moments in your writing where things weren’t going so well. I know I do.
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