Empathy, rhetoric and dramatic speech writing

In this chapter, a number of tiered creative speech writing exercises will be introduced that will help participants refine their empathy and storytelling abilities by imitating some of their favourite fictional characters. By drawing on the tradition of oral storytelling as an audience-centred practice, and taking examples from students’ creative speeches, the presentation will demonstrate how this implied two-way communication process may motivate students to craft empathic responses using established rhetorical and persuasive speech writing techniques, whilst drawing from popular fictional universes as diverse as those of The Hunger Games, Disney Princess movies, and the works of Shakespeare.