How to Write a Persuasive Essay

When writing a persuasive essay, your purpose is to convince your audience to embrace your idea or point of view. Keeping this purpose in mind is the key to writing an effective persuasion.

 

Essential steps for writing a persuasive essay:

1.    Identify your main idea or point of view. Your purpose will be to persuade your audience to accept this idea or point of view.

2.    Identify your audience. To write an effective persuasive essay, try to understand your audience. For example, are your readers undecided about your issue? Or are your readers hostile to your point of view?

3.    Considering your audience, identify the strongest supporting points for your persuasion.

4.    Identify the most significant opposing view. Explaining and then refuting the opposing view strengthens the credibility and scope of your essay.

How to organize your persuasive essay:

Introduction

·         Your introduction should hook your reader's attention and provide background information on your topic or controversy.

·         The paragraph should end with a clear statement of your main idea or point of view.

Body paragraphs

·         Your body paragraphs should present the points in support of your main idea.

·         Each body paragraph should focus on one point.

·         Be sure to provide evidence or examples for each point.

Opposing view

·         After presenting your supporting points, develop one paragraph to accurately explain and then refute the most significant opposing view.

Conclusion

·         Creatively restate your main idea and supporting points.

Try to leave your audience even more connected to your topic and persuaded by your main idea or perspective.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Writing a Conclusion for an Essay

The conclusion is the last paragraph of an essay. Although often brief in comparison with the other paragraphs, the conclusion performs a number of very significant functions.

When writing a conclusion for your essay, it's helpful to keep these basic considerations in mind:

·         Your conclusion is the last paragraph that your reader will encounter.

·         Your conclusion should remind your reader about the most important aspects of your essay.

·         In most essays, therefore, your conclusion should creatively restate the main idea of the essay.

·         Your conclusion should also leave your reader even more interested in your topic and idea.

·         For some essays, especially for persuasive or argumentative essays, it's particularly effective to end your conclusion by directly addressing your reader with a question or call for action.

Be sure to spend a good deal of time planning and writing your conclusion. A strong conclusion can resolve and fulfill your essay as a whole and make a real impact on your reader.

How to Write a Narrative Essay

Writing a Narrative Essay

There's nothing like reading a great narrative. Whether in novel or essay form, a narrative piece of writing transports readers into the time and space of the world portrayed by the writing.

There's also nothing like writing a great narrative. Through reflecting upon an event, and through recreating the experience for other readers, writing a narrative essay can enable you to develop new, subtle, and rewarding perspectives.

Basic qualities of a narrative essay:

·         A narrative essay is a piece of writing that recreates an experience through time.

·         A narrative essay can be based on one of your own experiences, either past or present, or it can be based on the experiences of someone else.

·         In addition to telling a story, a narrative essay also communicates a main idea or a lesson learned.

First steps for writing a narrative essay:

·         Identify the experience that you want to write about.

·         Think about why the experience is significant.

·         Spend a good deal of time drafting your recollections about the details of the experience.

·         Create an outline of the basic parts of your narrative.

Writing about the experience:

·         Using your outline, describe each part of your narrative.

·         Rather than telling your readers what happened, use vivid details and descriptions to actually recreate the experience for your readers.

·         Think like your readers. Try to remember that the information you present is the only information your readers have about the experiences.

·         Always keep in mind that all of the small and seemingly unimportant details known to you are not necessarily known to your readers.

Communicating the significance of the experience:

·         It's often effective to begin your narrative with a paragraph that introduces the experience and communicates the significance. This technique guarantees that your readers will understand the significance of the experience as they progess through the narrative.

·         Another effective technique is to begin the essay by jumping directly into the narrative and then ending the essay with a paragraph communicating the significance of the experience. This approach allows your readers to develop their own understanding of the experience through the body of the essay and then more deeply connect to your expression of the significance at the end.

·         You might also consider introducing the experience in the first paragraph but delaying your expression of the significance of the experience until the end of the essay. This approach heightens your readers' sensitivity to the significance of the narrative.

Revising your narrative essay:

·         After spending time away from the draft of your narrative essay, read through the essay and think about whether the writing effectively recreates the experience for your readers.

·         Ask other people to read through the essay and offer their impressions.

·         Identify where more details and descriptions are needed.

·         Identify and consider removing any information that seems to distract from the focus and main narrative of the essay.

·         Think about whether you've presented information in the most affective order.

Potential prompts for your narrative essay:

If you're having trouble choosing an experience to write about, take a quick glance through these prompts. They might help you remember or identify a particularly interesting or significant experience to focus on.

·         A childhood event. Think of an experience when you learned something for the first time, or when you realized how important someone was for you.

·         Achieving a goal. Think about a particularly meaningful achievement in your life. This could be something as seemingly minor as achieving a good grade on a difficult assignment, or this could be something with more long-lasting effects, like getting the job you desired or getting into the best school to which you applied.

·         A failure. Think about a time when you did not perform as well as you had wanted. Focusing on an experience like this can result in rewarding reflections about the positive emerging from the negative.

·         A good or bad deed. Think about a time when you did or did not stand up for yourself or someone else in the face of adversity or challenge.

·         A change in your life. Think about a time when something significant changed in your life. This could be anything from a move across town to a major change in a relationship to the birth or death of a loved one.

·         A realization. Think about a time when you experienced a realization. This could be anything from understanding a complicated math equation to gaining a deeper understanding of a philosophical issue or life situation.