Persuasive Writing

From my other blog: 2 June 2015

I'm currently helping Jeanille prepare for some English testing which will help her as she continues to follow her dream. I'm very proud of her for chasing her dream, much as I am proud of anyone who chases their dream (I'm just especially proud of her for the obvious reasons). As part of this English testing she has to learn how to write better persuasive pieces. This is something that I've often worked on with students during my placements and so it's something I wanted to write a blog post about.

Obviously it's important for me to note that there are plenty of other and better resources for you to learn how to write persuasively. I merely want to share my own unique methods of constructing arguments.

1.     The first step for me is to always consider my intended audience. This revolves entirely around the idea of empathy. I want to use empathy to consider how my audience will respond to what I am saying. I would estimate that ninety percent of the time if you hit your audience with the right emotional tugs you can manipulate them to feel the way you want them to. And persuasive writing is essentially that: manipulation of the heartstrings. It's something that the persuasive writer must enjoy and attempt - reading the audience and then working out a series of arguments and counter-arguments that will target them more closely.

2. The second step is to consider what type of style I should adopt. This involves considering the question of whether I am writing a persuasive piece on the internet or for friends, creating a mini-essay, or writing academically. Each of these involves different methods, registers and lexicons that I need to be using in a calculated method (i.e. I would not be as colloquial in an academic essay as in this piece).

3. The third step involves actually writing the persuasive piece once all the thinking about how to respond has been considered. Trust me, however, most writing is all about the thinking and pre-planning. Even something as spontaneous as writing of this sort is the result of half-cooked ideas which have been marinating in the brain until they are baked to perfection.

This is where you structure your piece clearly, working out the techniques that you want to use (I tend to find simile, metaphor, alliteration and allusive, emotive language the best myself) and creating something that flows together neatly. No matter what you are writing about, the best persuasive writing (or any writing) flows in a polished fashion. This is also the reason why it is best to edit your work when you are finished. Even the best authors edit their work thoroughly once finished.


4. In short, persuasive writing is all about appearing as if you have the most reasonable idea to say in any discussion. The question of whether you truly have the most reasonable argument is another issue. It's about bluffing your audience, manipulating them to agree with you and to suspend their cynicism. This of course is why there is one final thing which I must point out to you about persuasive writing. The key element of persuasive writing is to be self-aware and self-informed even before you begin writing. You need to understand your own points of view on various issues, and you need to be able to shift that point of view to argue for issues you may not agree with through empathy. Until you understand an issue from both sides you cannot properly argue the issue. And so, as with most writing, it is understanding that plays a key role in the final product.

Challenging the Norm in Writing

From my other blog: 11 June 2015

There's this interesting concept which is all the rage in modern literature: subversion. Essentially it's the idea of challenging the norm (hence the blog title - isn't that obvious!) in writing. You see it in popular fantasy for instance, which is a genre I do read plenty of, whereby new authors attempt to make their work stand out from the mass of 'Tolkien clones' (read: Eragon, The Sword of Shannara, The Wheel of Time etc.) that all follow a kind of Joseph Campbell's 'hero's journey' concept. What I would like to touch on, therefore is that there is this idea that doing the subversive is somehow equivalent to strong writing. And I wish to insist that this is certainly not the case.

It's an amusing concept because every so often there are fantasy books that come out where a whole bunch of readers go 'oh that's new and different' because of one key fantasy trope or archetype that is subverted. For example how Game of Thrones has most of the main characters killed off at different stages or how Prince of Thorns (to use an obscure example) has a villain as the main protagonist. Or again how some authors like China Mieville write fantasy fiction which is just weird. But these subversions do not equal a great novel. If they did then all anyone would need to do to write a great, new, unique novel is research all the common archetypes and simply write a novel that does precisely the opposite. I expect that such a novel would last a mere ten pages before the protagonist falls off a cliff and the dark lord (who was actually the supposed hero) conquers the known world because no prophecy about the chosen one who would stop them by discovering their weakness (and by the way this dark lord has no weakness) came true.

I have read novels which subverted common ideas in their genre which were terrible. I have read novels which did the same and were terrific. I have read novels which were mediocre subversions. The one thing which separated these novels regardless of whether they used ideas which were 'the norm' in their genre or not was the quality of the writing and the storytelling. Novels like The Lord of the Rings, Mistborn and The Name of the Wind all follow a kind of 'hero's journey' archetype in a sense and while Mistborn subverts some key fantasy ideas it is still a kind of formulaic plot at its core. What made those novels stand out to me, however, is the fact that they all were beautifully written or told a story in a manner which was so thrilling or enticing. What readers want is not some superficial 'new idea' that will hold them for all of twenty seconds, they want depth to a story, something to hold onto and remember - though I do not like Game of Thrones I will admit that G.R.R Martin has done a great job of holding on to a large audience with some deeper qualities.

I feel that any new or aspiring authors can learn from this and need to know this before they write. Know your target audience and write a good strong, enticing story. If the story cannot be enjoyed by individuals outside of your target audience then it's probably not the greatest story. If your story is too fixated on one particular idea then it's probably not a strong story. However, if your story has heart, soul, a great plot and characters that people will care about then you are onto something,

What Is A Worthy Text?

From my other blog: 13th July 2015

Today in my first week of uni for trimester two, we looked at the English Education VCE text list. One idea that was presented is that texts for selection must be found: 'worthy'. Or else:

"-have literary merit and be worthy of close study
-be an excellent example of form and genre

- sustain intensive study, raising interesting issues and providing challenging ideas 

- be appropriate for both male and female students 

- be appropriate for the age and development of students and, in that context, reflect current community standards and expectations."

I further ran into this Stephen Fry quote on the worth or value of particular texts today: “I will defend the absolute value of Mozart over Miley Cyrus, of course I will, but we should be wary of false dichotomies. You do not have to choose between one or the other. You can have both. The human cultural jungle should be as varied and plural as the Amazonian rainforest. We are all richer for biodiversity. We may decide that a puma is worth more to us than a caterpillar, but surely we can agree that the habitat is all the better for being able to sustain each.”

This is in essence the problem with considering certain texts to be worthy - it inevitably creates a dichotomy in which other texts are not. And texts encompass a whole range of media: invariably anything you can read and analyse with your eyes from recipes, to films, to t-shirts become a text. Who am I as a critic to say that one individual may derive less value from Twilight or a Nickleback t-shirt than I do from Great Expectations and a dinner suit? 

Here we encounter a tricky literary idea. One further expounded upon by a discussion of critical literacy. Critical literacy being the analysis of the ideas that lie behind language and texts. The idea that language works to shape reality and promote particular relations of power. Texts may be constructed (photographs are a great example) as one particular snapshot that the author wishes to convey and so they speak through as much as what is being left out as what is being left in. A film is an edited work with sound (or lack of it), VFX or practical effects, different camera angles and a whole array of directorial decisions in how the scenes are arranged to tell the story. A novel like a poem or short story uses 

So what provides a text worth? What makes it worthy? Here I think you must take into account the cultural and social context in which the text is found. If we talk about clothing as text then it is not appropriate for someone to wear the aforementioned Nickleback tee in a fine dining establishment. Much as it would be odd and jarring for a dinner suit to be worn to a rock concert. But each text in their corresponding environment is worthy. 

This to me is most likely what the VCE guidelines are aiming to establish: the notion of worth across cultures, genres and individuals. And it is here where critics of films and novels must be able to consider whether the text has worth outside of the environment of their own personal preferences. Does the text promote morals which are healthy to a wider audience? Is it a great example of its format? Is it well written? I love The Hunger Games but were I to decide upon a text better exemplifying its themes then I would suggest any of Brave New World, 1984 or Fahrenheit 451. Yet were I to pick out what The Hunger Games is worth I would suggest it is a valuable example of writing with pace, imagination and of giving a form of entertainment which challenges as much as entertains. It may not have the same worth in one context but it may have greater worth in another. 

This to me is what a worthy text should be about: how worthy is a text across multiple contexts? And I believe critics should judge texts on both levels: on worth within its own context (genre etc.) and worth in other contexts. 

Dealing With Worldbuilding

From my other blog: 23rd July 2015

I have been contemplating the following quote recently and come to decide upon my own stance in regards to it which I wish to share with you.

"Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over worldbuilding.

Worldbuilding is dull. Worldbuilding literalises the urge to invent. Worldbuilding gives an unnecessary permission for acts of writing (indeed, for acts of reading). Worldbuilding numbs the reader’s ability to fulfil their part of the bargain, because it believes that it has to do everything around here if anything is going to get done.

Above all, worldbuilding is not technically necessary. It is the great clomping foot of nerdism. It is the attempt to exhaustively survey a place that isn’t there. A good writer would never try to do that, even with a place that is there. It isn’t possible, & if it was the results wouldn’t be readable: they would constitute not a book but the biggest library ever built, a hallowed place of dedication & lifelong study. This gives us a clue to the psychological type of the worldbuilder & the worldbuilder’s victim, & makes us very afraid."

- John M Harrison

I am, and have been, a huge fan of the concept of worldbuilding. I like nothing better than to sit down and enjoy a film or a book with a fascinating universe or different world to explore. Works from Tolkien to the Marvel superhero universe to television shows like Doctor Who fascinate me with their expansion and exploration of mythical or fictional places and ideas. So to read from an author who says that worldbuilding is a problem is in itself problematic to me. I feel that he misunderstands the very concept of worldbuilding. Maybe because of the problems listed in the following article: http://io9.com/7-deadly-sins-of-worldbuilding-998817537

The issue is that worldbuilding often becomes an excuse to focus on the setting rather than on the characters, If you went to a stage play and the background was fantastic and the set pieces, lighting and music yelled WOW at you but the acting stunk and the plot was terrible you'd feel rather let down. The same goes for fiction and worldbuilding. It cannot be all about the worldbuilding, but to that matter neither can you just focus on the story in a fictionalised sci-fi/fantasy setting without setting down some kind of worldbuilding rules. It just doesn't make sense if you're mentioning fictional places without explanation or rules etc.

So it's not worldbuilding that is bad but it is how worldbuilding is often used that can be very bad indeed and I fear this is what John M Harrison has encountered as an author. My response is that I think readers (and film viewers) deserve a touch of worldbuilding. What would Lord of the Rings be like without the setting of Middle Earth? What would fans think of Harry Potter without Hogwarts? Or Doctor Who without the various alien races of Daleks, Cybermen, Time Lords etc. What would any fantasy novel be without its magical rules? The problem in dealing with worldbuilding therefore lies in utilising it in moderation. But using anything in moderation, in balance, is in essence the art of quality writing and makes all the difference. Leave your reader wanting more, but not too much.

Magic And Dr Strange: A Review From A Christian Perspective

This time, every year, Christians around the world have to make an interesting choice. To engage, or not to engage, in the costume parties and trick-or-treating of Halloween. For myself I choose not to contribute to the funds of companies which use Halloween as another commercial gimmick. I also recognise that the history of Halloween lies in the Celtic festival of Samhain, during which participants would ward off evil spirits with masks and bonfires. Hence where the traditions of parties and Jack O'Lanterns stem from.

Many modern Christian celebrations have come from festivals appropriated from pagans, however, and Halloween falls around the same time as All Saints Day. Indeed, the word Halloween comes from two words meaning together 'Holy Evening.' In other words, Halloween has roots in both pagan and Christian traditions.

Dia de los Muertos, the day of the dead, further occurs on November 2. This is a day in which many countries remember those who have died, following the events of Halloween and All Saints Day. For many this is also known as All Souls Day.

Why did I include this information? In order to consider the true meaning that is often lost on those who want to enjoy Halloween as a 'fun' time. This has been a time in which traditionally it was believed that the veil between the supernatural world was weak and where ghosts, ghouls, witches, wizards and all kinds of undead beings would walk the Earth. It has also been a time in which people gathered to pray for the Saints and for the souls of all loved ones. It has many deep and spiritual connections and meanings.

I am a mega-fan of fantasy and have been from the moment I first picked up The Chronicles of Narnia, The Hobbit and then The Lord of the Rings. I have devoured hours of time reading widely in this genre and as a result have views that differ from what is widely believed to be the best fantasy. I currently hold the position that Brandon Sanderson is the current king of epic fantasy for instance. It is a genre in which I myself hope to write and publish a novel. Yet, like with Halloween, fantasy is a genre that many believers can become wary about. And like Halloween, I believe it is an area in which we can be redeemers. All of which forms the great prelude into my review of Dr Strange.

Aside from fantasy I also love science-fiction and superheroes, so today Jeanille and I went to watch the latest Marvel film Dr Strange. Unlike the other films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Dr Strange is the first to feature proper magic, albeit with an interesting and mysterious explanation due to the entire theoretical idea of multiverses.

It is a film which begins much like Iron Man: the reader witnesses an arrogant and brilliant individual caught up in an incident which leads them on the path to becoming a hero. Unlike Iron Man, the film utilises set pieces which belong in Inception, with the worlds twisting and turning around the characters. The music was likewise incredible and the entire cast added to the feel of what is perhaps the best standalone Marvel film outside of The Guardians of the Galaxy (and with far superior visuals).

Yet, it was the message of the film which touched me the most. I am always looking at films for the positive message, in particular for the ever permeating truth of the gospel. I was reminded last night of the truth that the gospel never changes, try as people have across centuries to change and dilute its message. Interestingly, I found a highly powerful thread of the gospel contained inside the film. Which is explained in this other and better review HERE.

At one key point in the film, the teaching character turns to Strange and tells him that the real lesson to learn is that 'it's not about you.' At which point it clicked for me about the beauty of the way in which the film was presenting the gospel. It was explaining the supernatural through this prism of multiverses and magic and showing that essentially the struggle against evil is not about us. It doesn't take a degree to work out that it really is about God.

After the film I asked Jeanille if she enjoyed it and she said that she did. She then turned to me and said, "You know I believe that there is such a thing as sorcerers." To which I replied: "So do I." And I do, because they're mentioned in the Bible. Look up Simon the Sorcerer for an example. Or look up the story in Acts 16 about Paul with the demon-possessed slave girl with 'magical powers.'

The demons in these Biblical stories gave people the power to do some simple tricks. Yet read the story in full and you immediately see the greater power of the gospel - the power of God and his Holy Spirit in us to cast out demons and heal the sick. Read Ephesians 6:10-20 and you will see how the Bible clearly reminds us that there is a spiritual dimension in which angels and demons war for souls. A dimension in which, though we live in the natural, we are conquerors because of the gospel of grace - not because of us, but because of God. It is this element of the supernatural and gospel which I found Dr Strange conveyed in a fascinating way.

When it comes to magic, I fully agree that there are individuals out there who practice the occult and dabble in real and truthful magic. However, in media (books, films etc.) the idea of magic has become so synonymous with the ability to do the unusual that I do not take it to necessarily have the same connotation. C.S. Lewis used the concept of magic (good magic and bad) to explain the two sides of the supernatural. J.R.R. Tolkien also wrote similarly (without necessarily calling it magic) and both men were strong and influential believers. I believe the idea of magic when taken and used to describe impossible powers is a great metaphor for the two sides of the supernatural (good and evil).

As Paul said in 1 Corinthians 9:  "19 Though I am free of obligation to anyone, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. 20 To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the Law I became like one under the Law (though I myself am not under the Law), to win those under the Law. 21 To those without the Law I became like one without the Law (though I am not outside the law of God but am under the law of Christ), to win those without the Law. 22 To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men, so that by all possible means I might save some of them. 23 I do all this for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings." I see this in the same way in fantasy - that there is an excellent metaphor that can be used to spread the message of the gospel to those who might otherwise not encounter it.

So should you watch Dr Strange? As an individual who enjoys fantasy and science fiction as art forms and vehicles with the capacity to carry the truth of the gospel I fully recommend it. However, if you have doubts in your faith I also would not recommend something that would potentially weaken that faith. The same thing goes for Halloween. Participate in it if you feel you have a reason, but do not expect others to see it the same way. All have differing levels of faith for such occasions.

Paul also writes in 1 Corinthians 10: 23 '“Everything is permissible,” but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is permissible,” but not everything is edifying. 24 No one should seek his own good, but the good of others.' The context of this passage is highly important. Paul was telling believers not to eat food sacrificed to idols if it would affect other people's faith. He stated that there was nothing in eating food sacrificed to idols - it is after all still just food - but that the real importance is in what it does to people's faith. In the same way, whatever you choose to do my encouragement would be: 1. to look for the ways in which you can spread the power of the gospel in whatever you are doing. 2. to not participate in watching or doing something if it negatively affects your faith. 3. to look for the gospel in everyday situations - you might just be able to learn something to grow other's faith.