XplanaZine

Let your emotions guide you.
A persuasive essay is difficult to write if you don’t care about your topic. Of course, this doesn’t mean that you have to become a passionate advocate, organize campaigns, lead rallies, or anything extreme. However, it does mean that you have to do enough thinking about the subject matter to start to feel an interest in not only the obvious points, but also the deeper issues.

Begin to explore the topic. Start not only with a search on google.com, but move to the more interesting meta-search engines such as http://www.dogpile.com and http://www.looksmart.com. For recent articles in Time, People, and other wide-circulation journals, you may wish to search http://www.pathfinder.com

Find an issue with two clearly-defined sides.
It’s much easier to take a position if the issue is a controversial one which has two clearly defined sides. If not, your arguments are likely to be fairly muddy. Further, it will be more difficult to acknowledge the counter-argument to your thesis statement (the “anti-thesis”).

Granted, by breaking down an argument into two simple sides, you reduce the possibilities of subtlety and complexity. However, it makes it easier to write. You can always put in the caveats and provisos later.

Find expert opinions.
While you’re still researching your topic, start collecting expert opinions. These will help you support your case. Even better, they’ll give you new ideas about your topic, and will facilitate brainstorming.

Not surprisingly, good place for “expert opinions” is your friendly neighborhood virtual library. If you are a university student, check out FirstSearch, which you may access through your library’s portal. For online journals, try the Internet Public Library at http://www.ipl.org/div/serials/

Find examples or case studies.
Everyone likes to read a story. If you use examples and case studies, and you’re willing to present an in-depth view of it, you may be amazed at how your paper comes alive. You will not have to rely on impassioned speeches, high hysteria, or other easily ignored (and overwhelmingly discredited) approaches. Appeal to the voyeur in your audience – let them peek into real lives and real stories!

Pathfinder.com is a good way to search the Time-Warner family of magazines, which includes the online versions of People, Time, babytalk, Southern Living, Parenting, InStyle, The Progressive Farmer, cnnMoney, Fortune, Entertainment Weekly, and more. Depending on your subject, you may need to go to an online magazine that contains articles that pertain to your investigation. You may need to research online journals for more scientific or research-oriented articles. The Internet Public Library’s “Reading Room” http://www.ipl.org/div/serials gives you access to journals, many of whom provide articles as pdf files.

For business case studies, Forbes.com http://www.forbes.com offers an excellent search engine, along with full-text articles and maps. These are free, although there are some annoying pop-up ads and potentially system-freezing applets and javascript.

Magatopia.com http://www.magatopia.com provides links to online magazines, grouped by category. The breadth and scope of the online magazines are excellent, although the magatopia.com search engine seems to be less effective than others. The Forbes.com search engine, in contrast, is one of the best I’ve seen.

What do you want to achieve with your essay? Think beyond the requirements of a class.
Nothing is more tedious than reading someone’s “canned” essay. This is not to say that it was plagiarized, although heaven knows there are plenty of opportunities to grab a paper at such heinous sites as termpaper.com. In theory, those sites are grand – they allow nice “A” students to “share” their wealth of knowledge by posting papers and giving a boost to struggling students who will simply use their papers as a point of departure.

My personal feeling is that this is cheating – not only in the legal sense, but in a “human dignity” sense. You’re cheating yourself of an opportunity to write about something you care about. Moreover, people who plagiarize are reinforcing a sense of themselves, by saying (implicitly if nothing else) that their words are not as good as the words of others. This is not true! Everyone’s ideas have value. Speak up! Let yourself be heard!