At the college essay level, the persuasive essay is used to demonstrate your writing skills and how well you understand a topic.  In the real world, a persuasive essay can be a sales letter, a job application or even a presentation to a group of people.

The persuasive essay is constructed using a title, thesis statement, supporting paragraphs and a conclusion.  Let’s break these down a little further:

1.  Title

The title is straightforward.  What topic are you writing about?  You can be a little descriptive here to give your reader a brief overview of what you are discussing.  For example, your title heading might be “Modern Eco Friendly Housing”.  You haven’t taken a position yet but you are letting your reader know what is to come.

2.  Thesis Statement

This is a statement about what you are trying to convince your readers of.  For example, your thesis statement might be “Housing made from renewable resources have a low carbon footprint compared to traditional construction methods”.  Make your thesis statement a little controversial to emotionally involve your audience.  But only be a little controversial.  If you take the extremist point of view, you risk alienating your readers.

The thesis statement is a bait to hook your readers.  If you need help with how to write your thesis statement, then walk through your local mall or turn on the TV.  You are surrounded by them every day.  Advertising headlines are great examples of thesis statements that capture attention.

3.  Supporting Paragraphs

A persuasive essay will normally have a minimum of three supporting paragraphs.  Start each supporting paragraph with a statement that supports your main thesis.  Back up their statement with facts or testimonials from well known sources.  Facts form the foundation of your argument and allow you to act as an authority on the subject.

The key to your supporting paragraph is to remember that a fact is not debatable.  The statement you make in these paragraphs is an emotional interpretation of these facts to persuade readers.  Marketers know the best way to sell something is to use the Feature-Benefit rule.  First, identify a feature (or a fact) and then draw the reader in with the benefit they will receive by agreeing with you.  Marketers sell the sizzle, not the sausage.

For example, “Good orientation increases the energy efficiency of a home, making it more comfortable to live in and cheaper to run”.  Good orientation and energy efficiency is the feature.  But what does it mean to the house owner?  The benefit to the owner is a house that is comfortable to live in and cheaper to run.

4.  Conclusion

The last part of the persuasive essay is the conclusion.  If you are like most students, you are writing your essay just hours before it is due.  Your writing skills are fading and you just want it done.  Make a mistake here and all your effort is down the drain.  The conclusion is the call to action.  If you are selling something, then this is a real physical action such as clicking on the buy button.  In your essay, the call to action is having your reader agree with you.

Use your conclusion to remind the reader of what your thesis statement is together with your supporting facts.  Next, tell your reader what to.  If you’re selling a product, tell them to buy.  If it’s a job application, ask for the interview.

What happens if your reader does not take action?  It does not mean you have failed, it just means you have not taken into account the objections your readers have.  These are the “No’s” that you must overcome before you can get to a “Yes”.  Persuasive essays use passive argument to overcome objection.  When you first sit down to write, ask yourself what objections will your readers have to your ideas?  Now, what features and benefits can you discuss to overcome these objections?  For example –

Objection: Eco-friendly housing is expensive when compared to other designs.

Feature/Benefit: Savings in heating and cooling will quickly offset the price over just a few years.

In the paragraph above I stated that a persuasive essay uses passive argument.  This is where you focus on the features and benefits of your point of view. You do not actively discuss the opposing view.  If you are in a job interview, you don’t talk about how good the other candidates are for the job, you focus on how you can fill their needs.  If you use an active argument discussing both sides of the topic, then you are writing an argumentative essay.  Both essays are often confused and I will discuss the argumentative essay in my next article.

Looking for something different?  We have over 130 articles and videos of essays on this site.  Use the menu on the right hand side of the page to look for something else that you might be interested in.

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1.  Title
2.  Thesis
3.  Paragraph 1 with supporting facts.
4.  Paragraph 2 with supporting facts.
5.  Paragraph 3 with supporting facts.
6.  Conclusion and summary with call to action.

But try to put this theory into practice and many people stare at a blank page (or computer screen).  How do you get started?  In this article I have a couple of killer tips to write that persuasive essay.

Free Writing

No one expects you to sit down and write perfectly crafted prose on your first attempt.  Putting that expectation on yourself straight up is a sure fire way to bring on writer’s block.  If you are staring at a blank page, try free writing.

Just relax and write.  Write whatever comes into your mind about your chosen topic.  Don’t stop to edit.  Don’t even bother creating whole sentences or separate paragraphs if you don’t want to.  Just keep writing.

You can set a time limit if you want, for example, 10 minutes.  After your initial spurt of activity, read through what you have written for ideas to develop further.  All of the articles I write for this website started out as free writing.   The first few lines of free writing for this post looked like –

Starting to write … daunting process.  Theory is simple.  Title thesis  supporting paragraphs conclusion.  How do you get started … free writing … mind maps …

Your free writing might end up as points to develop further.  It might even be complete paragraphs you can use in your final composition.  If you sit down and free write for just 10 minutes, you will often end up with 300 words of good material.

Mind Maps

The second trip to getting started is a mind map.  This has helped people chunk down their problems (no, that is not a reference to beer and pizza night gone bad) for decades.  Put simply, a mind map is a diagram linking ideas on a piece of paper and is a fantastic brainstorming tool.

To start, grab a scrap piece of paper.  In the centre, write down the idea you are trying to convince your audience about.

What is the main reason they should believe you?  What benefit do you they get from siding with you?  Draw this in a box off the right and link the two.

Now list 2 or 3 facts that support your first reason.  Discuss them with a few bullet points.  Link these back to your First Reason box.  Now come up with your Second Reason and a Third Reason, each with their own supporting facts.

You know have a diagram that looks like a bit of a pyramid.  One goal, three reasons, 2 or 3 facts per reason.  Now stand back and look at what you have just created.  It might not be art, but it is an outline.  What you are trying to convince people of is your thesis statement.  Each of the reasons are the subjects for your supporting paragraphs.  And each supporting paragraph already has some facts you can use to create authority with your readers.

The essay as a whole can be a little daunting.  But break it down into manageable chunks and you are quickly on your way to writing your persuasive essay.

Photo by Umjanedoan

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You may be asking, “What do you mean by the big brother”?  Let me explain with real world examples.  An example of a persuasive essay is a sales letter or job application.  You are using features and benefits to convince the reader to take action.  It is passive persuasion – you don’t mention your competitor’s product when trying to sell your own.

The argumentative essay differs as it actively takes into account both sides of the argument.  A real life example of an argumentative essay is a lawyer defending you in court.  You need to take into account the opposing views in an argumentative essay and actively counter them.   This focus makes the argumentative essay more detailed than the persuasive essay, hence the analogy of the big brother.

As with the persuasive essay, the argumentative essay is supported by facts.  These facts are common to both sides of the argument and are not debatable.  For example, a bloody knife found at a crime scene is a known fact.  Both sides of the argument draw interpretations from these facts.  It is your role in the argumentative essay to counter the opposing argument and draw alternative conclusions that are better supported by the facts.  Lawyers use expert witnesses to give authority to their argument.   You can do the same in your essay by quoting well known sources or using testimonials.

At what audience do you aim your argumentative essay?  If you are in a court of law, you are convincing the judge or jury.  In an essay, the audience is not so well defined.  The first thing to understand is that you will not persuade everyone with your argument.  You will have the extremes in your audience that will agree or disagree with you regardless of what evidence you are presenting.  This is especially the case if you have chosen an emotive topic.    Science versus religion is a good example of this.  It is the bulk of the people in the centre who may have an opinion but are not certain of their conclusions that you are really aiming for.  What objections to your argument are they likely to have?  You need to address these in your essay to persuade them of your ideas.

In summary, the argumentative essay is the big brother of the persuasive essay as it actively focuses on both sides of the argument.  Instead of simply relying on features and benefits as with the persuasive essay, the argumentative essay is more weighted towards authority and how you can draw more supportive conclusions from the facts.

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3. Argumentative Essay (Video) Part 2

In this first article, I am going to talk about Marketing.  As it’s the 21st century, lets talk specifically about internet marketing -

When you hear the term “internet marketing”, what do you think of?

For many, that term conjures thoughts of websites or spamming or search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. For others, it’s all about graphical design, writing fancy code or even affiliate programs. All of those answers correct, but the essence of internet marketing is much simpler.

At its core, internet marketing is about these things:

• Understanding the target market to which the product/service/cause you’re marketing will appeal
• Determining exactly how your target market interacts with the internet
• Positioning your content on the internet to attract the attention of your target market
• Collecting information about your target market (also known as “leads”) for follow-up and conversion into sales
• Design of offers or incentives to induce the desired actions from your leads

Since there is insufficient space in this article to give all of these topics adequate attention, let’s focus on just one specific topic with the realm of internet marketing: Email Marketing.

My best payoff has always come by focusing on permission-based email marketing. Permission-based email marketing refers to the practice of collecting information (including email addresses) from website visitors and communicating with them via e-mail with their direct consent. The “permission” aspect of permission-based email marketing is what separates legitimate email marketers from the spammers that everyone despises.

My love of email marketing is strong for one reason: It works very well.  Email marketing has been much like a never-ending goldmine.   It enables us to produce income on demand simply by sending a good offer to our client base.  When you have thousands of loyal subscribers  and you put a compelling offer in front of them, income becomes nearly automatic.

However, the key to successful email marketing is the development of a legitimate trust relationship with your subscribers.  If you opt to send your subscribers a request for purchases every single day, they will likely tire of your badgering and cease reading your emails altogether.

Alternatively, if you take the time to provide good content to your readers on a regular basis, you’ll discover that your readers take all of your emails far more seriously.  This means emails will be opened, read and acted upon with greater frequency. Essentially, email marketing is an exercise in trust and relationship building.

Image by Fletcher Prince

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Listen closely.  You’re going to have to come closer than that. Closer … Shhh, can you do me a favour and keep a secret?  Don’t tell anyone but I am about to reveal how pro-bloggers never run out of writing ideas!.  How they are constantly overflowing with fresh ideas and stay on the cutting edge.

Okay, enough of the theatrics (hey, I was bored …) – time to get straight to the point..  My top tip for keeping a constant flow of writing ideas for your persuasive essay to is to use Google News and Blogs.

For this exercise, head on over to google.com.  Across the top left hand side of the page you will see a menu.  I can see Web, Images, Maps, News, Video, Gmail and More.  Click on News.

If you have never been here before, this is Google’s news page.  This page will be full of news headlines and is fully customizable.  If you are looking for general writing ideas, this page is packed full of goodies.  But for this exercise I am going to assume you have a rough idea on what you want to write about.  My topic will be solar power.

Enter your chosen topic into the Google search bar and hit Search News.

The page that loads will now have a series of news articles from around the world that relate to your phrase.  By default, the articles are sorted by relevance.  You can sort by date using the choices at the top right of the page.

Scroll down the results.  Do you see anything interesting for your research?  In my results, the first 4 are –

Solar panels – beware of counterfeits (Energy Matters – Australia)
LG announces solar powered mobile (Techradar – UK)
Bharat hot on solar cookers, new energy (Times of India – India)
Dow at work on solar power shingles (Toronto Star – Canada)

It would not take you long to amass several articles that will give you some great ideas.

Another hot source of writing ideas on this page is the Google Blog search.  In the left hand side menu you will find the menu heading Blogs.  Click on this.

The Blog search is similar to the News search, but this shows recent blog entries from the web.  I can see blog entries on DIY solar and cutting coal use with solar power.  News will give you some good factual information while blogs can be more opinionated.  Both are great places to start your search.

Warning – News feeds and blogs are great places to do research.  Don’t copy what you find here as your own work.  Duplicate content filters will spot that in the blink of an eye.  What you can do is use the research as guidance.  What is your opinion on what you have read?  Write about that instead.

Photo by Terje Skjerdal

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How do you use a quote?  That’s the easy part.  Pick a line from below you like.  Perhaps it has made you think.  Perhaps it made you laugh.  Now what do you have to write about.  Can you make a connection between the two?  Let’s take a quote from John Mendoza – “You know you’re getting old when you can pinch an inch on your forehead”.  There is  world of scope just from these 14 words.  How about society’s attitude to beauty as we age?  Or the physical effects of ageing?  What else can you think of?  Here are a few quotes to give you some inspiration.

“A stockbroker urged me to buy a stock that would triple its value every year. I told him, ‘At my age, I don’t even buy green bananas’.” Claude D. Pepper

“Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been. ” Mark Twain

“An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets, the more interested he is in her. ” Agatha Christie

How about some funny life quotes -

“My husband and I didn’t sign a pre-nuptial agreement. We signed a mutual suicide pact.” Roseanne Barr

“If variety is the spice of life, marriage is the big can of leftover Spam.” Johnny Carson

“In my house I’m the boss, my wife is just the decision maker.” Woody Allen

“In many instances, marriage vows would be more accurate if the phrase were changed to ‘Until debt do us part’. Sam Ewing

“Marriage is give and take. You’d better give it to her or she’ll take it anyway.” Joey Adams

“You can tell German wine from vinegar by the label.” Mark Twain

“I drink too much. The last time I gave a urine sample it had an olive in it.” Rodney Dangerfield

“Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.” Mayor Marion Barry, Washington, DC

“It’s the most important decision I’ve had to make since 1978 when I decided to get a bikini wax.” Arnold Schwarzenegger

“Politicians are wonderful people as long as they stay away from things they don’t understand, such as working for a living.” P. J. O’Rourke

“The political machine triumphs because it is a united minority acting against a divided majority.” Will Durant

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According to Google, people just like you searched for “writing ideas” an incredible 74000 times world wide last month.  That’s a staggering number and means they ended up at Google because they have absolutely no idea what to write about.  Stuck for ideas?  Come on, it’s not that hard.  I am about to share with you my best tip for finding socially interesting topics to write about that will save you hours of agony.

Open your browser and head over to www.digg.com  Now, if you are under 30 and know how to turn a computer on, then there is a good chance you don’t need me to explain what social bookmarking is.  So just slip on the ipod headphones for a minute while I give a short and simple definition for the rest of my readers.

For everyone else, www.digg.com is what we call a social bookmarking site.  Have you ever found a site that interests you and added it to your favorites in Internet Explorer?*  It makes it easy to come back to because you like the site.

Well, the internet is a global community.  If you like the site, then do you think other people might want to know about it too? Instead of adding it to your favorites on your computer, you can do it on a social bookmarking site so other people can see it.  If they agree and like it too, they can vote on the article.  Go to www.digg.com and you can see the most popular stories at the moment.

Just about any article on the front page is a good place to start your search for writing ideas.  Scroll down and see what interests you.  At the time of writing, I can see –

Samsung launches solar-powered phone.
Man gets 20 weeks in jail for whistling.
Casinos on alert for card counters using iPhones
NASA’s 10 greatest achievements

If you are free to write about anything, then it will only take a few seconds for some great ideas.  If you have a range of topics to keep to, use the search function at the top of the page.

Want some extra credit?  Remember it is the controversial topics that get attention.  Scroll down the front page articles.  What has the most comments?  If an article has 800 diggs (votes) and 30 comments, then it may be a little conservative.  If it has 600 diggs and 400 comments, then that is a hot topic to write about.

* Now don’t send me hate mail because I mentioned Internet Explorer instead of Firefox, Flock etc etc.  If someone does not know what social bookmarking is, then I would bet 99% of the time they are using IE.

Photo by D Sharon Pruitt

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http://www.facebook.com/pages/Persuasive-Essay-Guide/137034543039232

If you find it useful, just hit the Like button to say thanks when you are there.

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A few of the particular expertise mentioned in writing may have you feeling as if there is actually no room for expressing your own persona in your writing. Nonetheless, there may be at all times a misunderstood want for private innovation in storytelling. There will at all times be intriguing stories that defy typical wisdom.

Children’s writer Pamela Jane struggled with the recommendation she was receiving from others within the area of youngsters’s literature. The suggestion was that Pamela should write about the topics she knew. She was suggested to keep away from tales about dolls, fantasy and seasonal titles.

As it seems, Pamela had just written a story a few doll she had owned as a child and the imagination she used to convey a fantasy Christmas story.

Pamela angrily accepted the advise of her writing buddies and set the story aside. Nonetheless, one other buddy encouraged her to no less than discover the potential for publishing the story.

“I made a decision to ship it to an obscure regional writer who may not have heard that seasonal doll fantasies were passé,” says Pamela. However, before the work might be reviewed Pamela was inspired to ship it to a major publishing house.

Pamela didn’t observe the normal pattern for children’s literature and she or he didn’t observe the accepted pattern for cover letters.

The question simply learn, “It is a Christmas fantasy about a little girl and a ballet doll.” Pamela assumed it will to be an automatic refusal so she did not try and put her finest foot forward.

The editor that checked out her sparse cover letter responded with four phrases that defied the odds, “Please ship your story.”

That story, “Noelle of the Nutcracker”, became the primary of more than twenty children’s books for Pamela Jane. Whereas she has had extra conventional books, her first was one that helped Pamela see that typically writing doesn’t must comply with a prescribed system to attach with a reader.

There aren’t any guarantees in writing, nevertheless in case you have one thing that you simply actually imagine in follow by way of with it even when the specialists insist you might have it wrong. Accept their advice and then do what you are feeling you need to do. You might simply have a hit hiding away on a shelf somewhere.

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First, a little background. I had a job that was driving me crazy. Corporate priorities on the company I labored for modified on a weekly basis. Tasks I managed obtained cancelled midway by development, blew up on the launch pad, or went on indefinitely with none measurement of success. My job had turn into extra about shuffling papers and schedules than creating nice work. I used to be frustrated. My thoughts turned to that novel I’d never managed to write.

But how was I going to jot down it? I by no means had time. After I received home from work day by day, it was late. I used to be tired and cranky, unable to do a lot but eat dinner and go to sleep. Weekends were crammed with taking good care of the home, doing laundry, seeing family. I wanted to give you some sort of plan if I used to be going to get anything done. I began by promising myself I’d take a half-hour break every day at work, pick up a notepad and pencil and write down whatever came into my head.

Some days I went out for lunch, sat on my own on the juice bar or taco stand and wrote as I ate. On days after I’d brought lunch from residence, I’d drive to a distant parking lot or side road and sit in my automobile, making notes. And on days after I couldn’t get out for lunch, I’d be sure to reserve a non-public half hour slot in the corporate calendar so no one may schedule me for a meeting. On the appointed time, I’d pick up my pocket book, find a cubbyhole in some corner of the constructing where workers rarely went, sit down and begin writing.

At first it was difficult to place apart thoughts of work. However soon enough, by implementing some simple methods, I used to be able to write no less than a few pages each day. Some days I simply scrawled out lists of phrases, adjectives, names and on others I managed a number of paragraphs of tolerable prose. However the extra I did it, the simpler it became. After three months I’d crammed two notebooks with ideas for characters, conditions, locations. My novel had shape. Tough shape, to be sure, however form nonetheless.

There have been other benefits, too, ones I hadn’t expected. Writing in my notebook for half an hour gave me a sense of satisfaction that helped alleviate the stress of my job. My afternoons turned lighter, less dreary. I dare say I developed a spring in my step that hadn’t been there before. It additionally gave me the arrogance to look for a new job, one with less time load, so I could dedicate myself to completing the work.

So if time is an issue for you, here’s ten solutions on tips on how to start a lunch-hour writing routine, together with some tips to maintain you on track.

1. Character sketches
Decide a personality you’ve thought about. Or invent a brand new one on the spot. Begin with a name. Is the character male or feminine? How previous? Single, attached or married? What shade eyes? What colour hair? What do they do for a living? The place do they reside? Start with the city or town, then add details. What does their house or apartment seem like? Details make a difference. Maintain including as many particulars as you can. What kind of automobile does your character drive (if they drive)? What do they eat for breakfast? What kind of garments do they wear?

2. Location sketches
Again, begin from the general and work your method right down to the details. You can start with a real location or imagine one, or begin with a real one and transfer to an imagined one. Is the placement exterior or inside? Who’s there? If it’s outdoors, what sort of crops and animals would possibly there be? Once you’ve come up with the idea, take a tour of the placement in your mind. Walk by way of it, pause, look around. What do you see? Step through your senses as you look around. How does it scent? What does it seem like? What do you hear?

3. Combine it up
Upon getting a dozen characters and places or so, attempt placing them together. What would happen if character A and character D met at location C? Why would they be there? Are they assembly there for the primary time or do they already know one another? How does each respond to the meeting?

4. Schedule your periods
Put it in your calendar system. It’s simpler to make yourself write whenever you treat the method like all of your other business meetings.

5. Get out of the cubicle
There’s too many distractions in your workspace. How are you going to be inventive with all those responsibilities staring you in the face?

6. Turn off your cellular phone
There’s nothing so vital it could’t wait a half hour.

7. Get a pad of paper, and a pencil or pen
Computers are great for making things look nice. They’re not great for brainstorming. A pad of paper means that you can write in the margins, scrawl anywhere.

8. Pause, but don’t cease
Don’t spend twenty minutes deciding if your character prefers donuts to bagels. That may come later. Just pick one and see what happens. Writing issues down, something, pushes you forward.

9. Don’t fear about “writing”
This is not the time to critically assess the standard of your prose. In actual fact, you could not need to “write” at all in this first phase. Make lists of character qualities or location features. Make lists of names for characters. Then again, don’t be afraid to begin writing, either. Go together with whatever feels right that day.

10. Don’t fear, period.
If nothing much occurs at first, don’t fear about it. It’s only a half-hour out of your day. At worst it was a quiet break. And you get to come back again tomorrow.

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