6.5: Ways to organize- An example of ways to organize a persuasive writing

How about an example? Let’s say you want to discuss the benefits of long-distance running. You might have the following points:

• Increases strength and cardiovascular health
• Encourages weight loss
• Excellent for stress relief
• Creates a state of "flow"
• Promotes self-esteem though setting and achieving goals

How would you organize these points using order of importance? It is, of course, a matter of judgment. Which of these points is most important to you as the writer and, even more importantly, to your audience?

Let’s say your audience is first-year college student women who have never run before and want to avoid the “Freshman Fifteen.” You might want to hit them with the most important points first, to catch their attention, and then move to the other benefits, like this:

• Encourages weight loss
• Increases strength and cardiovascular health
• Excellent for stress relief
• Promotes self-esteem though setting and achieving goals
• Creates a state of "flow"

If your audience is middle-aged people who need to unwind from their days in a healthy way, it might make more sense to start with the less “important,” or more obvious to that audience, points and then build to the more compelling points that will convince them to give it a try:

• Encourages weight loss
• Increases strength and cardiovascular health
• Promotes self-esteem though setting and achieving goals
• Creates a state of "flow"
• Excellent fro stress relief

Audience is critical when deciding on an organizational structure. To look at this topic of running from a slightly different perspective, what if you wanted to write about the reasons why running is difficult? What if your audience included mostly personal trainers? You might organize from the specific ideas to the more general ideas:

Specific ideas:

• The distance aspect is threatening to new runners
• Running as an exercise can be punishing on the body
• Newer runners don't know about training regimens

General idea:

• Create a specific training program that is accessible and easy on the body to help gain strength and endurance

If you happen to be a personal trainer or you know a lot about running and your audience is middle age runners who have started and quit running programs over and over, you might go from the more general ideas to the more specific ideas:

General ideas:

• Safety is key when you begin exercise
• Use a running training program that starts slowly help gain strength and endurance

Specific ideas:

• Newer runners have to build up their distance over time
• Starting slow is important to avoid punishing the body
• There are various training regimens that can work