February 11, 2007 17:39
Category: Writing
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For some time, I've been attending to different sorts of high-pitch sales letters, as well as writing some specific posts in my personal blog on Kolkata, the city where I live and work.
Common to both is what I term, 'persuasive writings', which means I've to cater to opinionated writing. Not that it's something new, because targeted writing itself calls for specifics, which at times falls in the category of opinionated writing.
Yet, persuasive writings have their own distinctive features, which may or may not match with other styles of writing, depending on writer and the subject on hand. I've written an article on what normally goes to make persuasive writing different (What is persuasive writing?).
When it needs to convince readers to make them see your point of view, your writing skill will have to rise above presenting simple logic. A more mundane approach will be to just state your points, which the readers will follow to their natural conclusion. That however may lack an underlying tone of conviction on your part, in which case you may not be able to drive your readers to your viewpoint.
In cases such as these, you've to be necessarily opinionated, taking one side or the other. Sales letters fall in the category of persuasive writings, and there the aim is to simply convey to readers the salient features of the item being dealt on.
Whatever the objective of persuasive writings, it perhaps makes sense to have the facts right before embarking on writing the piece. For if just one statement is NOT true, the whole purpose of the writing goes waste. It also speaks bad about the author.
Having facts right means that no part of writing turns out as false statement. It's another matter that you as a writer decide to gloss over lesser-known facts, highlighting instead the more well-known ones. It's also not wrong not to mention the negative aspects of your subject, but it is decidedly wrong to distort a fact or drum up more than what it actually is.
To that extent, persuasive writings are akin to walking on a sharp edge, where on one hand the mandate is to write convincing piece, and on the other, the professional call is to not let in wrong presentation of facts. It is by balancing both and giving the piece the expertise of one's ability to use right words at right places that a persuasive writing glows amid heaps of similar others.
