What Makes Good Persuasive Essay Topics: Free Tutorial

What makes a successful persuasive essay topic? Well, firstly, that would be how persuasive it is. . .

Seriously, the most obvious mark of a good persuasive essay is how much it affects your reader. One of the highest compliments you can pay any writer is to tell them, “I thought about your writing and what you said yesterday, or later, or the other day.”

This means something that you said echoed not only in the mind of your reader but in their ear as well. In fact, one of the best professors I ever had taught me to teach MY future students that the last line of any good essay will affect the reader/listener like the tolling of a bell. It will ring within their ears, mind, and soul.

Choosing Your Focus: A Narrow Focus is Essential for a Good Topic

A very narrow focus is always best in essay writing. Why? Well think of how little you could say about all polar wildlife in a four to seven page paper. You could not say enough about each animal or sea creature, the affect of global warming and the melting of the glaciers upon each in such a short essay. Focusing upon one animal and possible current years and the worsening of their situation at the poles in order to create a really successfully.

The Goal of the Persuasive Essay

There are several types of persuasive essays.

The basic persuasive essay— Its aim is to persuade your reader to come over to your way of thinking. Pick something you feel vehemently about—say global warming and its affect upon polar bears. That would be a great, narrow focus for a paper.

The Call to Action Essay—also persuasive, this essay builds to a climax of “so, we must act now on this issue” stance—which then gives very clear examples of what your reader can do to change the situation.

The argumentative essay—An argumentative essay, unlike the persuasive essay, is structured much like you would a political debate or debate team speech. If you’ll notice, all political opponents not only present their views on something, they also acknowledge what their opponent stands for and then debunk it (say why they’re wrong on this issue immediately). Then the essay moves to a close where the writer restates their stance on the subject.

Ultimately, whatever your topic, a good topic will move your reader to reconsider their thinking or think more in depth about their viewpoints given what you have written.