This article argues that the intersection of invention and style is a rich site for rhetorical study, for amplification, and for critical-creative tinkering, a process of writing new versions of an old text. At this intersection, writers can tinker to amplify an existing text and thus work to continue or begin anew the inventive process. To illustrate these outcomes, I recover two exemplary exercises from nineteenth-century textbooks, where exercises in tinkering find many promising precursors. Revealing such precursors in the nineteenth century furthers work by scholars, such as Lucille M. Schultz, who have discovered innovation in instructional materials of this period. After analyzing exercises by R. G. Parker and Virginia Waddy, I extend my lens beyond the Western rhetorical tradition and forge connections between tinkering and African American and Indigenous rhetorical traditions. I then highlight an exercise in tinkering from my first year writing classroom in which students amplified a passage from Walker Percy's "The Loss of the Creature." Upon sharing and analyzing examples of student tinkering, I conclude by weighing the benefits and drawbacks of teaching amplification, reasoning that in pedagogical rather than performative contexts, amplification can reaffirm invention.