Sara Dailey #005: Rhetorical questions and contrast

          I know what you’re thinking…POWER PUNCH? For a rhetorical question? Are you kidding me?

          But rhetorical questions are powerful because they automatically imply a CONTRAST and contrast is what makes writing interesting. What I mean is that there are usually two opposite ways of answering a question, so conflict is naturally indicated this way.

          Let’s look at a rhetorical question used by Sara Dailey in “The Memory Train”:

Why does the brain choose to remember some things and abandon others?

Try this:

Begin a paragraph by copying Dailey’s rhetorical question. Now think of a memory that a person has repressed, something very traumatic he or she would rather not think about. Then, later in life, some object or some event brings back that memory in a powerful way.

          Now let’s look at a second rhetorical question that appears later in Dailey’s article:

. . . I find that I am interested in whether or not this can work in reverse. Will it be possible someday to stimulate the hippocampus region into overdrive by altering other proteins, so that memories, like those I have of my brother, might not be lost?

Try this:

Imagine a person who is experiencing the worst effects of old age–memory loss, dementia, Alzheimer’s. Family and friends were EVERYTHING to this person, and now, they’re fading from memory…. Write a scene that shows the struggle.

Coming tomorrow: Day six of Dailey: FOILS!