“I have a dream.”

We bet you can name the speaker whose world-famous speech began with these words.

What’s the secret of its power? What elements and writing tricks make this speech of MLK so persuasive and memorable? Can you craft texts of the same level of influence to convince your audience to agree with your point of view or to do something?

We hear you.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to write a persuasive speech, including tips on structuring it, elements to add, and the principles of persuasion to consider using for a better effect. We’ll also mention how to write a persuasive speech for students, as its specifics are critical for argumentation and presentation in academic writing.

What Is a Persuasive Speech?

A persuasive speech is a type of speech you write to convince the audience to believe or do something. The instruments to use to make your speech persuasive are logic, arguments, solid evidence, and appeal to emotions.

Persuasive speeches are for more than just students in school. Experts use them in many fields including election debates, PowerPoint presentations, sales pitches, public talks, and legal proceedings.

Please note:

Persuasive speeches are about more than sharing information. They build credibility, appeal to logic, and stir emotions. Their purpose is to make the audience trust you and agree with what you’re telling them.

Let’s move to the instruments savvy speechwriters use to achieve that.

3 Basic Principles of Persuasion

1. Ethos
2. Pathos
3. Logos

Persuasion is about including the proper combination of the rational and emotional in your message. Great speakers follow Aristotle’s rhetorical triangle of persuasion:

✅ Ethos appeals to the speaker’s character. You prove that you’re an expert on the topic and, thus, you deserve the audience’s attention.

How do you know if you or another writer/speaker are using ethos? There are a few questions to answer:

• What are the speaker’s qualifications? How are they connected to the topic being discussed?
• Does the speaker demonstrate respect for opposing viewpoints?
• Is their tone suitable for the audience?
• Does the speaker present their argument in a polished and professional manner?
• Are the sources they use credible?

✅ Pathos appeals to emotions. You use feelings, values, and beliefs to build emotional connections with the audience and convince them of your claim.

How do you know if you or another writer/speaker are using pathos? The questions to answer are as follows:

• Does the speaker use details, stories, and images to engage the audience?
• Do they appeal to the values and beliefs of the audience?

✅ Logos appeals to reason. You use arguments, supporting evidence, and examples to prove to the audience why your thesis is valid.

How do you know if you or another writer/speaker are using logos? These are the questions to answer:

• Is their thesis clear and specific?
• Do they support it with reasons and credible evidence?
• Are their arguments logical and well-arranged?

So, you can persuade the audience through your credibility as a speaker/writer, their emotions, or logic and arguments. Aristotle taught us to balance and appeal to all three within a speech or text. However, depending on the audience or purpose, you may favor one or two in your writing.

5 Elements of Persuasion in a Speech

When you are learning how to write a persuasive speech, start by memorizing the following five elements. For your speech or essay to persuade the audience, it should have these inside:

1. A short and clear thesis communicating your position on the topic
2. Writing fluency. Hook the audience from the start, use straightforward yet compelling language, bring value, and don’t manipulate your listeners.
3. A solid argument. Address the interests and pain points of those you want to persuade, and make your argument logical and consistent. Use facts, research, statistics, expert quotes, relevant emotional appeals, and examples to illustrate your point of view.
4. Clear structure. Organize your speech so that every argument relates to your thesis. Start with the weakest point and move to the strongest, most persuasive one so that the audience remembers the most convincing debate.
5. A strong conclusion. Restate your thesis in the final paragraph, add a call to action, and leave the audience with food for thought.

How to Write a Persuasive Speech for Students

Given that students are usually more focused on figuring out how to write an essay, speechwriting may seem irrelevant or redundant to them. However, the characteristics of persuasive speeches are typical of academic writing in general:

Their elements can be used as a template for students to build and present a thesis statement or argue a specific idea or intention in a research paper.

Mastering the art of persuasive speech will help you cultivate your academic writing skills, state your opinion, and use supporting evidence to prove it. You’ll develop critical thinking, analytical, and problem-solving skills. Practicing persuasive writing allows you to learn rhetorical devices like analogy, repetition, metaphor, and emotional appeal and incorporate them into your stories to engage the audience and make your arguments more impactful.

Students develop their communication skills by learning how to write a persuasive speech outline and by practicing speechwriting. They learn to articulate their thoughts and eliminate their fear of public speaking, which will help them in college and their future careers.

Good Topics to Choose for Your Persuasive Speech

For your persuasive speech to succeed, its topic should be polemical or debatable rather than expository. Why argue about whether or not “People need air to breathe”? But something like “Marijuana helps people improve their mental health” might work.

In college, educators often assign particular topics for students to speak about. When no topic is assigned, they want you to choose it yourself, thus assessing your critical thinking and analytical skills. How do you know which one is good enough to cover?

A great persuasive speech topic contains these four components:

1. Relevance. Think of contemporary issues that are meaningful to the audience.
2. Complexity. Consider controversial topics or those with some gray areas to encourage critical thinking and discussion.
3. Evidence. Talk or write on topics you can back up with reliable and up-to-date evidence from reputable sources.
4. Personal connection. Choose topics that matter to you personally and that you feel passionate about. You’ll sound more persuasive when speaking about something you care about; your audience will see that.

The best issues to cover in your persuasive speech are politics (voting), culture, gender issues, climate change, and religion. You might also consider controversial topics like animal rights, racism, marriage rights, or gun control — they are debatable and meaningful to most.

Also, you can check our massive list of persuasive speech topics for college students for inspiration and ideas.

💡 Still wondering how to write a persuasive speech topic? Try our free essay title generator and prompt generator to fuel your thought flow and get fresh, captivating ideas for future speeches, essays, and other academic papers.

How to Write a Persuasive Speech: Steps to Follow

Below is a sequence of seven steps on how to write a persuasive speech you can use to master the process. Start with identifying your audience and position on the issue, and then structure your speech with relevant hooks and emotional appeals to grab the audience’s attention from the start.

Here are the details:

1. Know Your Audience

Who are the people to whom you’ll be speaking? What are their values, concerns, and cultural backgrounds? How much do they know about the topic you’re going to present?

All this information will determine your approach to writing your speech. You’ll need to decide which arguments will sound more compelling to those people. Depending on the audience, you’ll also tailor the structure, length, and language patterns of your speech.

2. Choose Your Position on the Topic

Your purpose is to convince the audience of your point of view on the topic. What does that mean?

It means that the issue you present should be polemical, and that you can either agree with or argue against it.

Let’s say you’ll speak about climate change, but you believe that it’s not a global problem as many describe it. This is your position on the topic, so build your speech around a corresponding thesis using related arguments.

How to write a thesis for a persuasive speech:

A thesis consists of 1-2 sentences summarising the central idea and purpose of your speech. It should be concise, specific, and debatable. Tell the audience what you’ll discuss, why it matters, and how you’ll support your claim.

Avoid generalizations and truisms in your thesis. It should also reflect your position and tone: Will you focus more on informing, entertaining, or strictly persuading the audience?

❗ Important!

For your speech to be persuasive, ensure that you have evidence to support your thesis. You’ll need credible arguments and examples based on solid research for the audience to accept your claims.

3. Research and Gather Evidence

Research your topic inside and out and gather credible sources to support the arguments in your speech. Students who know how to write a research paper understand the importance of this step:

To sound professional and for the listeners to believe you, you’ll need to provide statistics, expert quotes, examples, and anecdotes to strengthen your claims and make your information more relatable to your target audience.

How do you know if you can refer to a particular source in your speech?

Use the CRAAP method:

1. Currency (When was the information published? Is it still up-to-date?)
2. Relevance (Does the information relate to your topic? Who is its target audience? Will it be appropriate to yours?)
3. Accuracy (Where does the info come from? Can you verify it via alternative sources?)
4. Authority (Who is the author? Do they have any credentials and contacts you could use to reach them?)
5. Purpose (Is the information fact-based or just an opinion? Is its purpose to educate or to promote something?)

4. Structure Your Persuasive Speech

Now that you have the topic, thesis, arguments, and supporting evidence, it’s time to start writing your persuasive speech. Structure matters:

The success of your speech depends on how you arrange the principles and elements of persuasion in the body of the speech and what emotional appeals, language patterns, and tone of voice you use to attract the audience’s attention.

Write a plan, aka an outline, for your future speech. It will help you organize the points, hooks, and evidence to make sure you get everything.

How to write a persuasive speech outline:

Given the time you will have to speak, sketch out what you will say at the following points (all are key components for a good speech to have):

1. Introduction
2. Arguments
3. Evidence
4. Counterarguments
5. Persuasive techniques
6. Emotional appeal
7. Call to action

Set the stage and grab your listeners’ attention in the introduction. Present your topic and thesis to the audience. Do you remember how to write a thesis statement for a persuasive speech?

• Four steps: identify the topic, narrow your focus, state your position, and provide reasons.
• Four C’s: clarity, coherence, consistency, and credibility.

In the body, present your arguments and evidence. Use persuasive techniques to convince the audience, and think of how you’ll engage them so they won’t get bored listening to you. Consider your listeners’ objections: Prepare rebuttals to address those opposing viewpoints and strengthen your position that way.

Close your speech with a call to action. Inspire the audience and keep them motivated to agree with your viewpoint, come up with a solution, or do something. Use emotional appeals to leave a positive impression and make them consider your perspective.

5. Write Your Speech: Consider the Language

Once the outline is ready, use it to write a draft for your speech. Here’s how to write a persuasive speech:

1. Start from the weakest argument and move to the strongest one.
2. Use persuasive and emotional language to engage the audience and keep them listening to you.
3. Tell stories and jokes (if appropriate, considering the topic and the audience); share personal experience; support each claim with evidence and examples.
4. Consider the nonverbal cues you’ll use to influence the audience while speaking: gestures, tone of voice, confidence, eye contact with listeners, etc.

Speaking of the language:

The lexical items in your speech serve to capture and maintain the interest of your audience. The words you use and the tone you speak with will influence their perception and trust. The English lexicon is rich, so craft your speech with specific vocabulary, word combinations, and visual hooks to get the listeners immersed and willing to respond.

Use clear yet persuasive language that is easy to understand yet triggers a positive emotional response. Power and sensory words will help:

• Power words appeal to emotion and action. They include active verbs (avoid passive voice whenever possible), descriptive adjectives, beneficial adjectives, and strong adverbs (no -ly suffixes or other redundancies).
• Sensory words appeal to our five senses, allowing people to “see,” “smell,” “taste,” and “touch” the text they hear from you. With the help of these words, you paint scenes in listeners’ imagination and make your message stand out. 

Other language tricks to try:

• Rhetorical devices (metaphors, repetitions, similes, analogies, etc.) make arguments more memorable
• Rhetorical questions encourage critical thinking
• Rhythm (Vary sentence length and structure to avoid monotony and create a sense of flow)

Feel free to use our paraphrasing tool online to refine the text of your draft.

6. Proofread and Refine It

Reread your draft several times to polish your speech. It’s not only about spell check and grammatical excellence:

When editing your persuasive speech, you’ll re-check your arguments, ensure that your language and tone are appropriate (say no to pompous and jargonistic phrases), and check that the overall speech is engaging and not too complex for the audience to perceive.

Also, consider using an AI essay checker and a plagiarism checker to confirm that your text is original and sounds authentic, not robotic.

7. Practice Your Speech

Rehearse your persuasive speech multiple times once it’s ready. Practicing it will help you identify its weak points, revise them, and feel more confident and comfortable speaking to the audience.

Tactics to try:

• Practice in front of a mirror for better confidence and an understanding of how long it will take to finish your speech.
• Record yourself on a smartphone to see your gestures and expressions.
• Give the text of your speech to several friends or family members for their feedback and suggestions on making it more persuasive if necessary.

Actionable Tips for Writing a Persuasive Speech

Do you want to make your speech even more powerful? Below are some concise yet actionable tricks to follow.

So, here’s how to write a good persuasive speech, according to a reputable Newsela lesson and the professional speech writers at EssayShark:

• Use storytelling (Compelling stories related to your topic will create visual images in the minds of your audience and help them resonate with your message.)
• Start with a catchy introduction (Grab the audience’s interest from the beginning and help them understand why your speech is worth their time.)

💡 How to write an introduction for a persuasive speech: Get their attention with a hook; identify your topic, indicating its relevance and importance; establish your credibility; provide context and your thesis; preview your speech and transition to the first point.

• Be sincere and passionate about your topic (Authenticity is critical for persuasion. Be genuine about your topic and avoid overly scripted language.)
• Avoid hating or humiliating opposing viewpoints (You won’t convince anyone if you’re attacking and disrespecting the other side.)
• Show confident body language (Non-verbal cues matter, as they also impact how the audience will receive your message. Practice your posture, gestures, and eye contact before you perform your speech.)
• Remember to use facial expressions (They’ll help bring your story to life and build a connection with the audience.)
• Keep it concise and simple (Don’t overcomplicate your speech with tons of information or lengthy descriptions and stories. Otherwise, the audience will get bored or find it hard to process and retain your message.)
• Learn from famous speakers (Get inspired by and analyze talks from Winston Churchill, Barack Obama, and other persuasive speakers. Learn from their style and techniques.)
• Don’t memorize it word-for-word (Otherwise, you’ll sound like a robot reading a script. Remember your key points instead, and be yourself when communicating the information to the audience.)

How to Write a Persuasive Speech With EssayShark

Are you still here?

Great!

Now, you know how to write a persuasive speech and craft compelling and meaningful texts that resonate with your target audience. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to delegate your assignments to EssayShark; professional writers are ready to assist you with a well-structured speech that communicates your message.

Our writing services are cheap yet reliable. Assign a writer to help you with a persuasive speech or any other kind of task today!

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