The Rhetoric Lab

Run the drill

1. Speaker begins on any topic and speaks in complete sentences.
2. Director sets hand position before or during speech.
3. Speaker must adjust the next sentence to match the signal. No finishing a long sentence when the hand drops low.
4. Director changes signal every 10-20 seconds, sometimes rapidly, sometimes holding.

Run the drill

1. Speaker begins on a topic and delivers it in their natural diction.
2. When Director signals low, Speaker shifts to Saxon diction as completely as possible. "We need to get rid of the problem" not "We must eliminate the difficulty."
3. When Director signals high, Speaker shifts to Latinate diction. "One might consider the implications of such a determination" not "Think about what that choice means."
4. Director toggles every 15-20 seconds.
5. The content stays the same. Only the vocabulary changes.

Run the drill

1. Director signals Fist. Speaker produces a short base clause: "The city woke up."
2. Director signals forward. Speaker adds a modifying phrase: "...its streets still wet from the night's rain."
3. Director signals forward again. Speaker adds more: "...vendors dragging carts to their stations, steam rising from grates."
4. Director signals down. Speaker completes the sentence at the signal.
5. Repeat. Each sentence starts fresh.

Run the drill

1. Director names a topic or claim.
2. Speaker must deliver that claim as a periodic sentence — subordinate clauses first, main clause last.
3. Speaker should aim for at least three subordinate elements before the main clause.
4. Example: "After years of effort, through setbacks that would have broken lesser teams, against the advice of every expert in the field — they succeeded."
5. Director evaluates and signals. Ten attempts in the round.

Run the drill

1. Speaker begins on a topic.
2. Director holds up a number. Speaker adjusts their sentence pattern to match.
3. Director changes the number every 15-20 seconds.
4. Keep the argument or story connected as you change sentence patterns.

Run the drill

1. Director signals Fist and names an opening phrase (e.g., "There is no..." or "We have..." or "I remember...").
2. Speaker delivers a series of clauses, each beginning with that phrase: "There is no shortcut to mastery. There is no substitute for the work itself. There is no moment when the struggle becomes easy."
3. Each clause after the first must escalate — go further, get more specific, raise the stakes.
4. When Director signals down, Speaker must close the passage with one final, landing sentence that does NOT use the anchor phrase.
5. Three to four runs per round.

Run the drill

1. Director gives a lock-word (e.g., "free," "enough," "home," "time").
2. Speaker must deliver 4-6 sentences in a row, each ending on that word.
3. Develop one topic across the sentences.
4. Keep the word order grammatical while ending each sentence with the lock-word.
5. Director changes the lock-word after each run. Three runs per round.

Run the drill

1. Director signals Fist and gives a starting word or topic.
2. Speaker produces a sentence ending with a significant word.
3. The next sentence must BEGIN with that word (or a close form of it).
4. Continue the chain as long as possible while maintaining coherent, meaningful content.
5. Each link must add a relevant claim or detail.
6. Director counts links. Aim for 8+ in a good run.

Example chain:
"Every great project begins with commitment. Commitment requires sacrifice. Sacrifice is only meaningful when it costs something you actually value. Value is not what you say matters — it's what you do when no one is watching. Watching yourself honestly is the beginning of wisdom."

Run the drill

1. Director gives a one-word prompt: "Leadership."
2. Speaker responds with a tricolon: "Leadership is seeing what others miss, saying what others won't, and doing what others can't."
3. The three elements must be grammatically parallel (same structure) and roughly equal in length.
4. Each tricolon must be about the prompt, not generic filler.
5. Twelve prompts per round.

Run the drill

1. Director names a root word (e.g., "judge").
2. Speaker has 30 seconds to deliver a coherent passage using as many forms of that word as possible: judge, judgment, judging, judged, judicial, judiciary, misjudge, prejudge, adjudicate.
3. Use each form in a complete sentence that develops the argument or story.
4. Score is the number of distinct forms used meaningfully.
5. Six root words per round.

Suggested root words: free, just, power, true, reason, act, human, create, serve, rule, know, right.

Run the drill

1. Director gives a plain statement: "Good leaders listen to their team."
2. Speaker must immediately restate it as an antithesis: "A good leader listens more than they speak; a poor leader speaks more than they listen."
3. The antithesis must have balanced structure — the two halves should mirror each other grammatically.
4. Aim for the antithesis to deepen the original statement, not just negate it.
5. Ten statements per round.

Patterns to use:
- "Not X, but Y"
- "It is X, not Y"
- "Where there is X, there is Y; where there is no X, there is no Y"
- "The wise do X; the foolish do Y"

Run the drill

1. Warm-up (2 minutes). Director gives well-known chiasmi with the second half missing. Speaker completes them.
2. - "It's not the size of the dog in the fight..." → "...it's the size of the fight in the dog."
3. - "You don't write because you have something to say..." → "...you have something to say because you write."
4. Live fire (3 minutes). Director gives any simple statement. Speaker must construct an original chiasmus from it.
5. - Input: "People should work to live." → "We should work to live, not live to work."
6. - Input: "Plans often fail." → "We don't fail to plan — we plan to fail."
7. Explain how reversing the terms changes their relationship.

Run the drill

1. Director states a strong argument for a position: "Remote work clearly reduces collaboration. The best ideas come from hallway conversations."
2. In the first 2–3 sentences, state the part of the opposing point you accept and why.
3. Then the pivot. Speaker uses a transition — "And yet," "But this concedes too much," "What this argument misses is" — and turns to their own position.
4. The pivot must not contradict the concession. Both must remain true simultaneously.
5. Six exchanges per round.

Run the drill

1. Director names a debatable proposition: "Social media has made society worse."
2. Director raises right hand. Speaker argues the affirmative with full conviction for 30 seconds.
3. Director switches to left hand. Speaker immediately — no pause, no "on the other hand" — switches to the opposing position with equal conviction.
4. Director switches back. Speaker returns to the original position, picking up new arguments (not repeating old ones).
5. Three full cycles (six 30-second segments) per topic. Two topics per round.

Run the drill

1. Director names a topic or decision: "Whether to regulate AI."
2. Speaker must frame it as a dilemma with two horns: "If we regulate AI heavily, we strangle innovation and cede leadership to countries that don't. If we don't regulate it, we risk harms we can't predict and can't reverse."
3. Describe a substantial cost for each option.
4. Check whether the two options leave out a relevant alternative.
5. Advanced variant: After constructing the dilemma, Speaker must then escape it — find the narrow path between the horns.
6. Eight topics per round.

Run the drill

1. Director and Speaker agree on a topic: "building a startup."
2. Director calls a domain: "cooking."
3. Speaker must immediately deliver the topic through that metaphor: "A startup is a kitchen in the first hour of dinner service — you're working with raw ingredients, the heat is already too high, and you won't know if the dish works until someone tastes it."
4. Director calls a new domain: "weather." Speaker shifts: "A startup is a storm system forming off the coast — all the conditions are gathering, but no one can tell yet whether it'll be a hurricane or whether it'll dissipate before it makes landfall."
5. No transition sentences. Just cut directly to the new domain.
6. Each metaphor must map at least two features — not just "X is like Y" but showing how specific parts of X correspond to specific parts of Y.

Run the drill

1. Speaker chooses a topic and a metaphorical domain: "The education system is a factory."
2. Speaker must sustain the metaphor for 90 seconds, mapping every element of their argument onto the domain.
3. - Students = raw material on the assembly line.
4. - Teachers = line workers.
5. - Standardized tests = quality control inspection.
6. - Graduation = the finished product rolling off the line.
7. - Etc.
8. No literal language about the topic. Everything must be expressed through the metaphor.
9. No mixing — you can't suddenly introduce a gardening metaphor mid-factory.
10. Director monitors and signals in real time.

Run the drill

1. Director names an abstraction: "Bureaucracy."
2. Speaker must talk about it as if it were a person. What does it want? What does it fear? How does it dress? How does it spend its weekends? What's its relationship to other abstractions?
3. Connect each action or motive to a feature of the concept you want to explain.
4. Speaker should give the character at least: a motive, a behavior pattern, and a relationship to something else.
5. Director names new concepts: "Innovation," "Tradition," "Justice," "Nostalgia," "Ambition."

Run the drill

1. Director names two things that seem unrelated: "a jazz quartet and an emergency room."
2. Speaker has 60 seconds to build a detailed analogy between them.
3. The analogy must identify at least three structural parallels — not surface similarities ("they're both loud") but structural ones ("the lead musician's role maps onto the attending physician's: they set the direction, but the performance depends on everyone improvising competently within their role").
4. Explain what the comparison helps you notice about each subject.
5. Six pairs per round.

Suggested pairs: A library and a marketplace. A river and a conversation. A chess game and a negotiation. A garden and a community. An immune system and a legal system.

Run the drill

1. Director gives a simple factual statement: "The company is growing quickly."
2. Director shows 1. Speaker restates literally: "Revenue has increased 40% year over year."
3. Director shows 2. Dead metaphor: "The company is skyrocketing."
4. Director shows 3. Fresh: "The company is a vine that found sunlight — every branch is reaching in a different direction at once."
5. Director shows 4. Vivid: "The company is a controlled detonation — the blast radius keeps expanding, and the engineers are building the building while the foundation is still shaking."
6. Director shows 5. Wild: the speaker's most daring, original image.
7. Then Director jumps around randomly: "4. 2. 5. 1. 3." Speaker must hit the right level each time.

Run the drill

1. Speaker picks a topic and delivers a passage of at least six clauses with no coordinating conjunctions.
2. Clauses are separated only by pauses (the spoken equivalent of commas or semicolons).
3. "The project failed. The team scattered. The investors called. The board convened. A decision was made. No one was satisfied."
4. Director signals thumbs down whenever a conjunction appears. Speaker must restart the current sentence without the conjunction.
5. Choose content for which you want an abrupt or urgent delivery.
6. Four runs per round.

Run the drill

1. Speaker picks a topic and delivers a passage where every clause is connected by "and," "or," or "but."
2. Every list item also gets a conjunction: "They brought bread and cheese and wine and fruit and cold meats and three kinds of mustard."
3. Aim for at least 8 conjunctions in a 30-second passage.
4. Use each conjunction to add a distinct detail to the growing list.
5. Content should suit the form: lists of evidence, catalogs of damage, inventories of experience.
6. Four runs per round.

Run the drill

1. Speaker begins on a topic.
2. Director signals low. Speaker delivers in asyndeton: "The walls cracked. The ceiling buckled. Plaster fell. Dust filled the air."
3. Director signals high. Speaker shifts to polysyndeton on the same topic: "And the walls cracked and the ceiling buckled and the plaster fell and the dust filled the air and still the building stood."
4. Director toggles every 15-20 seconds.
5. The topic and narrative must remain continuous across toggles.

Run the drill

1. Director holds up a number and names a topic.
2. Speaker must produce that many phrases that are:
3. - Grammatically identical in structure
4. - Approximately equal in syllable count (within 2-3 syllables of each other)
5. - Substantively related (all about the same topic)
6. Example (3 fingers, topic "ambition"): "It drives the young to dream. | It drives the old to remember. | It drives the restless to act."
7. Director evaluates parallelism and signals.
8. Ten prompts per round.

Run the drill

1. Speaker delivers a 30-second passage on any topic.
2. Use the final sentence to complete and emphasize your main point.
3. After each attempt, Director rates it and explains (briefly) what worked or didn't.
4. Speaker tries again on the same topic, aiming for a higher rating.
5. Techniques that help: short sentence after long buildup, tricolon close, periodic sentence, unexpected image, callback to the opening.
6. Six attempts per round.

Run the drill

1. Director states a reasonable-sounding position: "We should always defer to expert opinion."
2. Speaker has 45 seconds to take it to its logical extreme: "If we always defer to expert opinion, then no expert was ever justified in disagreeing with the consensus of their time. Galileo should have stayed quiet. Darwin should have deferred. Every breakthrough in human history began with someone who refused to defer."
3. The extension must be honest — it must genuinely follow from the stated principle. No distortion.
4. Identify the contradiction or unacceptable consequence and explain why it follows.
5. Director evaluates fairness. If the reductio relied on a straw man, it doesn't count.
6. Eight positions per round.

Run the drill

1. Director states a principle: "Preparation matters more than talent."
2. Speaker builds the ladder:
3. - Rung 1 (easiest case): "If preparation matters in a college exam — where the material is well-defined and the format is predictable — "
4. - Rung 2 (harder case): "then how much more does it matter in a startup — where nothing is predictable and the stakes are your livelihood — "
5. - Rung 3 (clinching case): "then how much more still in a crisis — where there is no second attempt, no curve, and the cost of failure is measured in lives?"
6. For each rung, explain why preparation matters more in that case. Higher stakes alone do not establish the comparison.
7. State any assumption needed to carry the conclusion between cases.
8. Six ladders per round.

Run the drill

1. Director states a precedent case and applies it: "We banned lead paint because it was dangerous. AI is dangerous too, so we should ban AI."
2. Speaker has 30 seconds to identify and articulate the distinctions — the specific features that make this case different from the precedent.
3. The distinctions must be relevant — they must explain why the difference matters, not just that a difference exists.
4. Speaker should aim for at least two substantive distinctions per precedent.
5. Eight precedents per round.

Run the drill

1. Director names a position the Speaker disagrees with: "Colleges should eliminate standardized testing."
2. Phase 1 — Steelman (30 seconds). Speaker constructs the strongest, most persuasive version of this argument. Must include the best evidence, the strongest reasoning, and the most sympathetic framing.
3. Director evaluates: would a genuine proponent accept this as a fair (even generous) version of their argument?
4. Phase 2 — Demolition (30 seconds). Speaker dismantles the argument they just built. The demolition must address the strong version — not slide back to attacking a weaker one.
5. Four positions per round.

Run the drill

1. Director adopts a role and makes an accusation: "Your company talks about sustainability but still uses plastic packaging."
2. Speaker has 20 seconds to flip it: "The very industry making this accusation produces ten times the plastic waste we do. If this standard applies to us, it applies to you first."
3. The tu quoque must be fair — the equivalence must be genuine, not manufactured.
4. Advanced variant: after the flip, the Speaker must then rise above it — "But let's not argue about who's worse. Let's talk about what we're both going to do about it."
5. Eight accusations per round.

Run the drill

1. Speaker begins on a topic.
2. Director sets hand position. Speaker adjusts register to match.
3. The content and argument stay the same. Only the register changes.
4. Director changes position every 15 seconds. Sometimes jumps from high to low with no middle stop.
5. The transitions should not be announced ("Now I'll be more formal"). They should just happen.

Run the drill

1. Director and Speaker agree on a topic: "Why discipline matters."
2. Director calls a role. Speaker delivers the topic in that voice.
3. The information is the same, but the delivery, vocabulary, sentence patterns, and attitude shift completely.
4. - Professor: "Research consistently demonstrates that disciplined practice, rather than innate ability, is the primary predictor of expertise."
5. - Coach: "You think talent's gonna save you? Talent's worthless without the reps. Every. Single. Day."
6. - Grandmother: "Let me tell you something, sweetheart. The people who make it aren't the smartest ones. They're the ones who kept showing up."
7. The role should be recognizable within the first sentence.
8. Use the role’s characteristic wording and pacing without exaggerating them into a caricature.

Run the drill

1. Speaker delivers a passage of factual content: statistics, a news summary, a process description. Something dry.
2. Director signals an emotion. Speaker must deliver the same facts through that emotional lens.
3. The facts cannot change. No adding information that fits the emotion. The same facts must simply feel different.
4. Director shifts emotion every 20 seconds.
5. The speaker's vocal tone, pacing, emphasis, and word choice (within the constraint of the same facts) must shift to match.

Run the drill

1. Speaker discusses a topic that can support both modes (e.g., failure, ambition, justice).
2. Director signals close. Speaker shifts to personal, intimate mode: "I remember the first time I failed at something that mattered. The feeling wasn't what I expected..."
3. Director signals far. Speaker shifts to analytical: "Failure, viewed structurally, serves a corrective function in complex adaptive systems..."
4. Director toggles every 20 seconds.
5. The transitions must be smooth — no "Anyway, speaking analytically..." Just shift.

Run the drill

1. Speaker is developing an argument on any topic.
2. Director names a figure: "Churchill."
3. Speaker must continue the argument in Churchill's style: long periodic sentences, concrete imagery, antithesis, emotional crescendo, the rhythm of parliamentary oration.
4. Director names another: "Hemingway." Speaker shifts: short sentences, understated, concrete nouns, distrust of adjectives, the content implicit.
5. Borrow sentence structures and recurring techniques; you do not need to imitate the person’s accent or voice.
6. Suggested figures: Churchill, MLK, Lincoln, Obama, Hemingway, Hitchens, Austen, Orwell. Or: "a TED talk speaker," "a sports commentator," "a nature documentary narrator."

Run the drill

1. Director gives a topic or story prompt: "The founding of a company."
2. Speaker must begin with the most dramatic, vivid, or tense moment: "The phone rang at 3 AM, and I knew before I answered it that we were out of money."
3. After the opening moment (2-3 sentences), Speaker loops back to provide context: who, what, where, how we got here.
4. The opening must be specific and concrete — not abstract ("Sometimes companies struggle").
5. Eight prompts per round.

Run the drill

1. Speaker begins developing an argument or telling a story.
2. Director signals outward. Speaker must depart from the main thread into a digression — an anecdote, a parallel, a tangential observation.
3. Director signals inward. Speaker must return to the exact point where they left off — not to a new point, not to a summary of what came before, but to the precise place in the argument.
4. Use the digression to add an example or connection relevant to the main point.
5. Advanced variant: Director signals outward during a digression. Speaker must nest a digression within a digression, then return through both levels.
6. Four digressions per round.

Run the drill

1. Director gives a prompt every 90 seconds: "Why reading matters," "The problem with social media," "What travel teaches you."
2. Speaker delivers a response in three clear movements:
3. - Movement 1 (Setup): Establish the terrain. What are we talking about? What's the conventional view? (~20 seconds)
4. - Movement 2 (Development): Complicate it. Add tension, contradiction, nuance, evidence. (~40 seconds)
5. - Movement 3 (Payoff): Resolve it. Deliver the insight, the turn, the reframe, the conclusion. (~30 seconds)
6. Make the setup, complication, and response distinguishable to a listener.
7. The payoff must respond to the complication introduced in movement 2. It can't just be a conclusion to movement 1.

Run the drill

1. Speaker opens with a vivid image, phrase, or idea: "The door was red."
2. Speaker develops an argument, story, or exploration for roughly 70 seconds.
3. Speaker returns to the opening element in the final sentence: "And when I came back, the door was still red — but I was no longer the person who had first walked through it."
4. The return must be transformed by the middle. The same words carry new weight.
5. Director explains what the repeated opening means differently at the end.
6. Four passages per round.

Run the drill

1. Speaker begins telling a story or developing a chronological argument.
2. Director signals forward: story advances.
3. Director signals backward: speaker must reach back to an earlier moment that provides context, irony, or contrast.
4. Director signals freeze: speaker must stop advancing time and zoom into the current moment — sensory detail, internal experience, the weight of the instant.
5. Director changes signals every 15-20 seconds.
6. The narrative must remain coherent despite the temporal jumps — the audience should always know where they are.

Run the drill

1. Director gives a topic. Speaker delivers the argument in 60 seconds.
2. Director says "Half." Speaker presents the same claim and its essential support in 30 seconds.
3. "Half." 15 seconds. Keep the central claim and the reason that most directly supports it.
4. "Half." 7 seconds. State the central point in one or two sentences.
5. Return to 60 seconds. Rebuild the argument around the point you retained in the shortest version.
6. Three topics per round.

Run the drill

1. Speaker delivers a 3-4 sentence passage on any topic.
2. Director identifies a word or phrase to cut: "Remove all instances of 'is' and 'are.'"
3. Rebuild the passage without those words while retaining its meaning and necessary qualifications.
4. Director cuts another element. Speaker rebuilds again.
5. After 3–4 cuts, compare the versions for length and clarity. Restore any words needed to prevent ambiguity.
6. Three passages per round.

Elements to cut: forms of "to be," hedging language ("I think," "sort of," "basically"), subordinating conjunctions, adjectives, adverbs.

Run the drill

1. Director gives a complex topic or argument: "The relationship between expertise and overconfidence."
2. Speaker has 20 seconds to compress it into a single sentence of no more than 15 words.
3. The sentence must be specific (not "things are complicated"), memorable (it has a hook — rhythm, contrast, image), and true (it captures a genuine insight, not a cliche).
4. If the first attempt gets flat hand or thumbs down, Speaker tries again with a completely different formulation. Up to three attempts per topic.
5. Eight topics per round.

Techniques that help: antithesis ("Not X but Y"), paradox ("The more you Z, the less you Z"), concrete image, surprising juxtaposition.

Run the drill

1. Director names a verb: "broke."
2. Speaker constructs a zeugma: "He broke the window and the silence."
3. The two objects must be from different domains — one literal, one figurative, or both figurative but from different categories.
4. The zeugma should create surprise, humor, or insight — not just grammatical correctness.
5. Twelve verbs per round.

Suggested verbs: lost, caught, dropped, held, raised, left, opened, carried, burned, struck, ran, drew.

Run the drill

1. Director names an abstract concept: "Courage."
2. Speaker defines it through negation: "Courage is not the absence of fear. It is not recklessness. It is not bravado. It is not the loudest voice in the room. It is not the willingness to fight — sometimes it is the willingness not to."
3. Each negation must rule out a plausible misunderstanding — not straw men.
4. After 4-6 negations, the Speaker must deliver a single affirmative sentence that says what it is. Use the distinctions established by the negations to make the definition precise.
5. Six concepts per round.

Suggested concepts: justice, intelligence, leadership, beauty, freedom, maturity, integrity, wisdom.

Run the drill

1. Speaker begins on any topic.
2. Director calls: "Anaphora." Speaker must immediately deploy anaphora — starting successive clauses with the same phrase.
3. Director calls: "Chiasmus." Speaker must produce a chiasmus.
4. Director calls: "Asyndeton." Speaker drops all conjunctions.
5. The topic remains continuous — each technique must serve the argument, not interrupt it.
6. Ten techniques per round.

Technique menu: anaphora, epistrophe, anadiplosis, tricolon, antithesis, chiasmus, asyndeton, polysyndeton, reductio, a fortiori, concession-pivot, metaphor, personification, periodic sentence, cumulative sentence, via negativa, zeugma.

Run the drill

1. Director names three techniques: "Antithesis + tricolon + metaphor."
2. Speaker has 60 seconds to deliver a passage on any topic that deploys all three.
3. Example: "A nation is a garden. You can plant it in hope and harvest it in despair; you can water it with attention and starve it with neglect; you can grow it for a generation or destroy it in a season." (Metaphor: garden. Antithesis: each tricolon element contains an opposition. Tricolon: three parallel clauses.)
4. Keep one clear point throughout. Each technique must help express that point.
5. Director scores. Six combinations per round.

Suggested combinations:
- Anaphora + metaphor + periodic sentence
- Concession + antithesis + short sentence close
- Polysyndeton + personification + a fortiori
- Chiasmus + cumulative sentence + emotional coloring

Run the drill

1. Speaker begins on a topic using any technique.
2. Director signals a new technique. Speaker must transition to it within one sentence. No pausing, no "okay, now..."
3. Keep the next sentence connected to the previous one as the technique changes.
4. If the Speaker has to stop and restart, the attempt doesn't count.
5. Eight transitions per round.

Advanced variant. Director signals at increasing speed — eventually one technique every 5 seconds.

Run the drill

1. Director gives a prompt: "Your opponent says technology makes us less human."
2. Speaker has 30 seconds to respond using whatever technique they think is most effective. They do not announce the technique.
3. After the response, Director identifies the technique and evaluates: Was it the right tool? Was it well-executed?
4. Score on two dimensions: Selection (1-5: was this the best technique for this prompt?) and Execution (1-5: was it well-done?).
5. Ten prompts per round.

Suggested prompt types: a strong opposing argument (steelman + demolish), an absurd claim (reductio), a complex abstraction (metaphor), an emotional appeal that needs countering (concession + pivot), a request to explain something simply (analogy), a need for decisive closing (tricolon + short sentence).

Run the drill

1. Director gives a topic. Speaker has 10 seconds to think.
2. Speaker delivers 60 seconds of uninterrupted speech.
3. No constraints, no signals, no required techniques. The speaker deploys whatever serves the topic and the moment.
4. After the minute, Director identifies every technique used and rates the overall passage.
5. Scoring:
6. - Technique count — how many distinct techniques were deployed
7. - Coherence (1-5) — did it hold together as a single argument/narrative?
8. - Impact (1-5) — how clearly did the wording emphasize the main point?
9. - Naturalness (1-5) — did the wording stay fluent as techniques changed?
10. Three topics per round. Aim for improvement across the three.