Who disagrees with me on the issues?
Who might I influence?
How might I influence them?
Persuasive details should be arranged carefully so as to achieve the desired effect.
One way
of doing this is to arrange points in order of forcefulness. Persuasive essays may incorporate
narration, description, illustrations, comparison and contrast, definition and explanation.
Persuasive writers can speculate what would happen if their views are not adopted.
Objections to a point of view in a persuasive essay should be raised and countered.
Descriptive Essays
Effective descriptive essays create word pictures of objects, persons, scenes, events or
situations. In creating images it is important to create sensory impression. These are created
by use of words that appeal to our sense of sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste. Descriptive
writing in general can appear on its own or as part of some other form of writing, for
instance, in writing history, biography, fiction, advertisement, etc. Effective descriptive
writing should:
Employ precise sensory impression, which captures the features that they
describe, with appropriate words by likening the objects they describe with
images and things that the reader can easily recognize.
Take a vantage point i.e. they do not present every detail observed, but select
what details to include or exclude. They also describe the objects starting from
44

COMS 101 Class Notes
one point to the other e.g. from bottom up, left to right and vice versa, front to
back, general to specific, inside out, etc.
Narrative Essays
Narration is a process of relating events that occurred, and where they occurred, when they
occurred and who was involved and why. It involves answering the 5 wh- and how reporters’
questions: what, who, where, when, why and how.
Characteristics of effective narration
a)
It selects and relates significant events of what happened. The significance events are
determined by purpose of narrative. The purpose of your narrative may lead to the
decision as to which of the questions above would be major and which will be minor
in your narration.
b)
Does not bring up unrelated events because narration is discriminative
c)
Follows logical and understandable time sequence. Basically there are three
sequences that you can follow:
i.
Chronological sequence, which starts at the beginning of events and follows
events as they progress to the end.
ii.
Starting from the end and then flash back to the first event, then proceed
chronologically.
iii.
Start in the middle of the story then go to the beginning and then proceed
chronologically to the end.
d)
Good narration usually has a point that can be drawn from the story. The point might
be sharing experiences in order to teach a moral or just to amuse.
e)
Conversation can be important in advancement of a narrative by adding impact to it.


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