Persuasive Writing

2

Tools for Persuasive Writing

The first chapter of this book emphasised how important it is to be persuasive and gave you the basic mantra of persuasive writing. This chapter builds on this by giving you some more tools to use in your writing to generate the correct reader response.

This section will cover the following:

• Ethos, Logos, Pathos
• Using emotive language
• You, We, I
• FABU
• Storytelling:
  • the seven basic plots
  • the seven basic needs
• A persuasive writing example.

ETHOS, LOGOS, PATHOS

Despite first impressions, these aren’t anything to do with musketeers. In fact, these are Aristotle’s¹ three modes of persuasion. They break down as follows:

Ethos

This refers to moral competence, expertise and knowledge. In order to be persuasive, ...