The path to persuasion often feels like an obstacle course scattered with land mines. An absurd range of factors threaten our attempts to present ideas in a compelling way. A poorly chosen word, a misread statistic, even an reader with upset intestines could derail our best intentions.
Here at Kelli Sallman Writing & Editing, we've set a goal for 2022 to focus on how we as writers and artists engage in our world's tenuous state of discourse. How do we enter conversations effectively, persuasively, and with integrity? How do we avoid the growing number of land mines?
We invite you to join us on our journey, and we encourage you to start with this article by political commentator and former attorney David French. He addresses one of the biggest hurdles to discourse, the association of ideas with identity.
While we've all cracked open a promising book only to find the author's main premise was "You're wrong! Let me tell you why!" I doubt many of us bothered to finish those books. The art of persuasion in every essay, thesis, 500-page treatise, or text message relies on the writer's willingness to value the humanity and rationality of her reader.