How to Write a Persuasive Essay: A Step-by-Step Guide

September 13, 2022

how to write a persuasive essay explained

In this guide, you’ll learn how to write a persuasive essay step-by-step. By the end of this guide, you’ll know exactly how to persuade others to adopt your viewpoint by making your essay stand out.

Keep in mind that regardless of your level of education, a mastery of words is critical to writing a persuasive essay.

Key Takeaways  

To write a persuasive essay:

  • Identify your position and focus on defending it by giving supporting arguments from the beginning to the end.
  • Ensure there’s a good flow of arguments with the essay. You can start with general points and build towards your strongest defense.
  • Identify the points and language that would make the most impact and use them to your advantage. 
  • Your evidence should not only be clear and specific but also factual to bear up your claims in your persuasive essay.

What is a Persuasive Essay?

A persuasive essay is a stricture assignment written as an expression of opinion on a contentious subject.

For example, the issue on gun rights is quite divisive. If you had to give your opinion for or again the right to own firearms, what would you say?

If you believe that being vegan is the right way to live, or that abortion should be illegal, or that marijuana should be legal, can you convince people to consider your position?

With a well-written persuasive essay, you can change perspectives and bring a change in the world.

To be clear, a persuasive essay isn’t the same as an argumentative essay. The goal of an persuasive essay is to convince readers to adopt a certain idea, which is why it doesn’t present sides for a reader to choose their own.

How to Write a Persuasive Essay Assignment that Easily Moves an Audience 

The approach to writing a persuasive essay is pretty straightforward. Once you understand what is expected of you, there are only a few other things you need to keep in mind:

  • Identify your position from the beginning and focus every effort into defending it. Consistency wins hearts, so maintain it and give supporting arguments to the end.
  • Speaking of which, your arguments should flow within the essay. Start with generalized points that you consider the weaker ones and build up towards your strongest defense.
  • Think about your audience which, in this case, consists of your professor and classmates. Think about what points and what language would impact the most, then use it to your advantage.
  • Use clear, specific, factual evidence to bear up your claims. We will take a better look at how to write a perfectly balanced essay later, but for now, remember to strongly support your arguments. 

With this rough map of what a persuasive essay is all about, you’re now ready to put pen to paper. However, do you know what you are going to write about?

Choosing the Topic

As it usually happens when people have to make a choice, selecting the right topic for a persuasive essay is challenging for most students. This topic should be a well-known subject, have two clear arguments for and against it, and have a lot of evidence and support for either side.

The topic is typically stated in the form of a question. You can find inspiration all around, but we suggest that you write on a topic for which you're very passionate. That way, you will have a rewarding experience researching and writing the essay. For the sake of example here, we might decide to ask, 'Should marijuana be legalized?'

Format of a Persuasive Essay

persuasive essay format

A persuasive essay follows the same basic format as other essays. It has an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. These discrete parts are better subdivided into a few logical sections to help you write each section more easily.

Introduction

The introduction will be a paragraph or two designed to capture the reader’s attention while introducing your subject argument at the same time.

You do this through a ‘hook,’ something that intrigues the reader and encourages them to continue reading. A hook can be a funny anecdote, interesting statistics, a quote, definition, or even a thoughtful question.

After the introductory two or three sentences, give the context of your argument in what is known as the background of the essay.

The context can be historical information, a nod to existing information or research in the subject matter. You can also give a brief preview to some of the conflicting opinions on the topic to show that you gave an all-rounded approach to the topic before you give your opinion.

Even more importantly, the introduction features your thesis statement. A thesis statement is a clear, focused, concise statement of your paper's argument. In it, you state the 'what' and 'how' or the essay. Think about what you are trying to convince the reader to accept and your main strategy of doing that.

A thesis statement should only cover one sentence, but two or three can be used if necessary.

For example: 

  • “Marijuana should be legalized conditionally to allow research and exploitation of its extensive medical benefits, both physiological and therapeutic.”

Body

The body contains the actual development of your paper’s arguments in paragraphs. Each paragraph should describe and support one idea or a few related ideas. 

Your main thesis statements and topic sentences should be enough to construct the entire paper’s outline. In fact, that is a neat way to get started: organize your arguments from start to finish in topic sentences, then flesh out the paragraphs later as you go. It helps you to stay structured and avoid ambiguity.

Some of the strongest arguments you can make are counter-arguments of the opposition's strongest points.

This method is called refutation, and it involves being aware of what the most powerful arguments against you are and using them to your advantage. Thus, your body should also anticipate the major questions and arguments likely to be used against you.

There is a common acronym used to help students remember how to properly structure a body paragraph, known simply as TEEL:

  • Topic sentence - Central point
  • Explain - Elaborate on this point
  • Evidence - Build on it, giving statistical and textual evidence to corroborate it.
  • Link - link the final sentence to the topic sentence as well as to the rest of the essay. Everything should flow cohesively and fluidly.

As suggested above, a persuasive essay should have a gradual progression from the weaker arguments building up to the strongest ones. This is a form of writing called kairos, meaning well-timed. There are other devices used to enhance the power of your argument, but first, let us look into the conclusion.

Conclusion

A conclusion should be a summary of your main message, the strongest supporting arguments, and a take-home message for the reader. You can restate your thesis statement here and show how well you supported it.

One way to enhance the validity of your paper is to show its real-world applications and importance. Hint at some of the questions it raises and give the reader something to think about as they close wind up reading the paper.

Persuasive Techniques to Use in Your Essay

These are techniques that have been proven to improve the ‘X’ factor of your writing and help persuade even the2.  strongest opposers.

1. Ethos, Pathos, and Logos

This power trio is composed of various of modes of persuasion that must appear in every persuasive essay. A few others such as kairos and stasis also exist, but they work better for other types of essays.

Ethos 

The word ‘ethos’ means credibility or moral authority in literature. It refers to the author’s credibility as related to the subject, that is, how qualified are they to write on the topic? Here, you will seek to prove to your reader that you know what you are talking about.

Show your connection to the subject matter: is it something you have personal experience with? Be careful with this approach though, because it can make you seem biased.

A better way is to show that you have put in the hours to study and research every possible alternate viewpoint.

Pathos

From the same word that gives us 'pathetic,' pathos is a Greek word that means emotional appeal. People are intrinsically emotional creatures, so you can appeal to them emotionally but hardly with hard facts. In political speeches, you don't hear a lot of objective writing.

Rather, they try to influence the reader with relevant emotions by appealing to anger, sorrow, fear, joy, love among others.

In a persuasive essay, you need to use pathos responsibly. Too much of it and the work will seem more passionate than evidence-based. Strive to achieve a balance between pathos and our next factor, logos.

Logos

Logos means ‘word.’ In this case, it refers to the appeal to logic, reason, and intellect. This is done through citing facts, giving evidence, and drawing logical links to show the readers what you mean.

You can give your essay logos by using advanced language, lots of facts, historical data, scientific data, literal analogies, and abstract language. The same reasoning that appeals to you will likely appeal to someone else, but you will have to give it lots of evidential support.

Too much logos will make your essay dry and unpalatable, so remember to sprinkle in a bit of emotion and storytelling, as you will see next.

2. Storytelling

Storytelling establishes two-way communication between you and the reader. It is a powerful way to show them the connection between themselves and the subject matter.

Storytelling is often praised as a universal link to humanity and the oldest of the arts that everybody can identify with. Add a bit of storytelling to your essay to bring this connection, but not too much that you deny it the element of academic seriousness.

3. Repetition/Consistency

We have already mentioned consistency, but we will do it again because, consistency!

Usually achieved through repetition, consistency helps to reinforce the validity and importance of the ideas you are supporting.

Do it by saying the same thing differently so that the reader understands, especially for difficult points.

4. Refutation

We have also already mentioned refutation. It is a way of dealing with dissent, anticipating opposition, and giving arguments against it to show the other camp(s) that their argument is weak and that yours is better.

5. Call to Action (CTA)

CTAs also work on the principle that people like being told what to do.

Now that you have proven your argument is better, what do you want your audience to do? Stop taking drugs? Start attending church? Pick up their trash? 

Your argument will only have real power if it results in real, tangible results.

Help With Persuasive Essay Writing 

Persuasion runs the world, otherwise, no business deals, peace treaties, elections, or any other major action would take place.

In class, you have to show your persuasiveness by writing an excellent persuasive essay.

If you find that hard to do, how about we give you more hands-on help? The essay writing experts at Help for Assessment have years of experience and stellar academic qualifications to make sure you ace that assignment.  

About the author 

Antony W is a professional writer and coach at Help for Assessment. He spends countless hours every day researching and writing great content filled with expert advice on how to write engaging essays, research papers, and assignments.

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