Writing Focus – Organizing Your Support and Creating an Outline

Persuasion takes planning because you have to explain your position and set up the argument surrounding it. Before beginning work on your outline, you explored rhetorical strategies such as logos, pathos, and ethos from the rhetorical triangle.

You also learned about some logical fallacies that you should avoid in your argument. The outline for a persuasive research paper presented in this topic gives you the basic set-up to catch a reader's attention, explain relevant information, acknowledge the opponent's argument, present arguments that defend the thesis, and wrap up the arguments with an effective conclusion. It also gives you places to expound your opinions and offer credible sources to support your argument. After completing such an outline, you can move forward in writing the first rough draft of your paper.