You’ve Got to Do This!

(Passion Argument)

If we’re lucky, at some point we’re entirely captured by something new—an idea, an activity, a person, an experience. In fact, we’re so excited by it, we can’t help but try to spread the word, an evangelist for this new thing we love.

Passion and enthusiasm can be very persuasive. Excitement can be contagious; if you can convey your excitement to your audience, they may give your passion a try. It may not stick, but at least you’ve got a potential convert.

In the last month, I’ve had people attempt to convince me to try the following: yoga, cooking with an instant pot, CrossFit, and going vegetarian.

Thus far, none of them have succeeded, because while I believed they believed they benefitted from whatever they were trying to get me to do, their arguments were too vague, like, “It’s just awesome” (an instant pot) or “It gives me energy” (both yoga and CrossFit).

No one was able to tell me why I should do it, how I would benefit from embracing their passion.

Your goal in this experience is to induce your audience to want to try your passion by showing them how they would benefit.

AUDIENCE

Your audience is curious and open to new experiences, but they aren’t going to say yes to something new just because you mentioned its existence. They need convincing.

Facts and figures may be useful, but ultimately this audience is going to respond to how well you target their needs with a strong and persuasive emotional appeal built on your passion.

PROCESS

1. Identify your passion.

What’s the thing you keep saying people need to do? Like, I’ve got these running shoes called Newtons that changed my life because a woman at the shoe store who specializes in matching people to the right running shoe watched me run and said I should try them. I was instantly faster (not fast, but faster), and what had been occasional knee tendinitis disappeared completely.

For a while, I evangelized for Newtons, but then I realized I’d made a mistake, because Newtons are not meant for everyone’s feet and running stride, and started evangelizing for people to go to shoe stores that have experts who can match you with the right shoe.

What are you convinced everyone else must at least try?

2. Consider your passion.

Why are you passionate about your passion? How do you benefit? How is your life enhanced? One way of assessing this is to consider your life before and after your passion. In the early days of digital video recorders, I was a hard-core TiVo evangelist, explaining to people that my existence could be measured in terms of BTiVo versus ATiVo (before and after TiVo). Being able to call up whatever show I wanted and skip through commercials? Old hat now, but incredible in the early 2000s.

Be as concrete and specific about how your passion enhances your life as possible. Don’t even think about your audience yet; concentrate on your own experience.

3. Write your down draft.

This is one of those pieces where there’s no definite model or template you can find and copy. You’ll have to build your own structure as you go. This means first getting as much material as you can down on the page.

You know it’s an argument, and you’re trying to be persuasive, so you want to muster as many possible bits of persuasion as possible. You’ll sort through them later, keeping and honing the best ones.

4. Figure out what you’ve done.

Now that you’ve unleashed your passion on the page, it’s time to think about how to translate it for your audience. You’ve captured how your passion feels to you. How do you now translate this to your audience? What are their needs? What will they know about your passion? What attitudes do they have regarding your passion?

Who is a good target audience for your passion? Identify them and any relevant traits or attitudes they hold, and write to them directly.

5. Write a complete draft.

Considering what you’ve written and what you’ve discovered about your audience, shape the down draft into a more focused and structured argument that communicates your passion in a way that induces your audience to give it a try.

6. Test your draft.

Find someone who is either in your target audience or willing to temporarily adopt the attitudes and viewpoints of your target audience to read your draft and give it a rating on a ten-point scale where one means they’d rather listen to ABBA’s greatest hits as sung by a murder of shrieking crows than give your passion a try, and ten means they’re starting a new religion in order to worship your passion.

Ask them what they find most and least persuasive about your argument.

7. Revise, edit, polish.

Based on your audience’s feedback, improve your argument. Edit and polish the manuscript because of what you’ll be doing in step 9.

8. Title.

Finding a title that illuminates your subject and conveys the depths of your passion (without overselling by too much) should cap off the effort.

9. Share your passion with the world.

Find an outlet where you can share your passion. If it’s a product, this might be a review where the product is sold. Or you could do it via social media. I’ve heard tales of people actually making money peddling stuff on this thing called Instagram, whatever that is.

REFLECT

How does the fact of your passion affect your argument? On the one hand, our passions can drive us to become more knowledgeable about what we’re advocating. On the other hand, our passions can also blind us to information that challenges our passions. In this case, passion isn’t a big problem because the point of the argument is to be passionate, but there may be other occasions where it proves more persuasive to appear dispassionate.

Can you think of writing you’ve done where dispassion was the right choice?

REMIX

Find or take a single picture that you feel captures your passion in all its intensity. Add some kind of slogan, and you’ve got yourself a print advertisement. Try it.