When writing persuasive essays, students often imagine themselves being lawyers defending a case in front of a jury. When you have an assignment to provide a persuasive essay, you need to put forward either a “for” or an “against” argument on the given issue. One of the fundamentals of writing a successful persuasive paper is to choose good persuasive essay topics. It is crucial to write on a topic that is familiar or interesting for you as you will be able to build a stronger and more convincing claim.
One of the basics of persuasive essay format is to persuade your target readers in your point of view by making them accept it. Persuasive papers demand thorough research, in-depth understanding of both aspects of the argument (for and against), and considerations of readers’ prejudices and biases. When writing a persuasive essay for high school, college or university, you need to emphasize on not only why your claim/ argument/ position is correct but also why the contrary argument is incorrect.
Many students find it extremely challenging to persuade through writing. Therefore, in this article, you can find different types of persuasive techniques and triggers for persuasive writing.
Repetition
From a psychological point of view, repetition is critical when you want to draw attention of your readers or audience to some critical aspect of your writing/ speech. Besides, repetition can serve as a means of drawing attention to a specific idea or aspect worth careful consideration. Moreover, it can help interpret some facts in a clearer way, thus make some aspect more understandable for your readers.
Nonetheless, while repetition belongs to one of the core persuasive speech techniques, it can also negatively affect your paper when misused.
Provide reasons why
The word “because” is powerful in persuasive writing because without proper explanation your argumentation will make no sense to your readers. They simply won’t believe in what you are saying. As such, if you want others to be receptive to what you are talking about, provide supporting evidence and explanation of specific phenomena.
Consistency
This technique is recommended for composing a successful persuasive message. Even if you have chosen the best topic from the list of good persuasive essay topics, you need to clearly communicate your message across, and it can be done only if you are logical and consistent in the ideas layout.
Social proof
Searching for guidance and supervision from others belongs to one of the most influential psychological forces in people’s lives. Social proof can assist in determining whether we provide help to a needy person. Another example of social proof refers to referrals, recommendations, and testimonials. What is most important social proof can be used as an evidence in persuasive writing.
Comparison
There are no writing excuses if you cannot effectively relate your argumentation to some fact or phenomenon that your target readers accept as true. With the help of analogies, similes, and metaphors, you can convince others accept your perspective and teach them see the things in your way.
Agitate and solve
This is a strategy that can be effective as a wholesome approach to presenting your case. Initially, you need to determine the issue and inform your audience on its main peculiarities and aspects. Afterwards, you agitate the readers’ irritation or discomfort before putting forward your solution as an outcome that will improve the situation or make it work out well. Here the agitation approach is not about being cruel – it’s about empathizing. In this way, you demonstrate to the reader that you have encountered the problem personally and have dealt with it in your own experience.
Prognosticate
Regardless of the good persuasive essay topics you are given to choose from, you need to realize that you will have to make some prognoses or forecasts regarding the potential situation happening in the future. To do it, you will have to pinpoint to the potential outcomes or results by analyzing the current events. The strategy is constructed on credibility and reliability of facts. If you cannot provide any trustworthy supporting facts or evidence to prove your assumptions, then you will definitely look foolish in your prognostications. Therefore, if you feel that you cannot cope with this task, feel free to seek help from custom writing companies.
Unify
Selective unification will help you influence your target audience in a more effective way. Despite the fact that many people claim to be unique beings that do not want to depend on social groups, they find this social belonging as a very important factor. Therefore, give them a chance to become members of a social group they want to be in (the wealthy, the intelligent, the vegetarians, etc.). When you unify them into a specific group, they will more easily accept your viewpoint and jump on board.
Focus on objections
Imagine a situation: you are delivering your persuasive speech and everything is going on well, but suddenly you hear some contemplation from the audience: “Yeah, but…” This “but” will ruin everything you have previously talked about. Therefore, be ready to focus on the opposing viewpoints as well. When writing persuasive papers, make sure to address all potential objections to your standpoint. You need to demonstrate that you are aware of them and also refute them by making your argument even stronger.
Storytelling
Storytelling is a universal technique that appeals to your target readers. It can be combined with any of the aforementioned nine persuasive strategies. To convince people in your argument, just tell a story (or a presumable story) from your own experience. They will be astonished at how well you have dealt with the situation, so use this as a winning persuasive technique.