(blank) Change my mind, a saying popularized by an alt-right YouTuber, and also the idea behind our latest project. That project being a persuasive writing meant to convince someone of your choosing on a point of your choosing. This topic raised a few important questions, the most important of which was, “What am I going to convince someone on?” To assist us in answering this question we were assigned some brainstorming.
However, we first needed to create a “Writing Record” also known as a pages document shared with our teachers so they could have a live view of our brainstorming. I found this to be quite helpful as it meant that we Didn’t have to submit a new version to Showbie every time that we updated it.
My brainstorming went in a lot of different directions, which ended up making it hard to choose. This difficulty was only exacerbated when we were introduced to the second part of our brainstorming. That part is our audience, also known as the person we are trying to persuade. However, eventually, I was able to conclude and settled on NFTs more specifically why NFTs are a poor long-term investment. The main idea behind my writing was that because of the unoriginality and over-saturation in the market, nfts are a bubble that is doomed to pop. This leads straight into my thesis statement “Oversaturated, unoriginal and overhyped, the NFT marketplace is a bubble that is doomed to pop”. I chose this as my thesis as I felt it encapsulated all of my ideas in a concise short sentence.
The writing and research portion of this project for me at least kinda went hand and hand as I did most of my research as I was writing. Looking back on this workflow it did end up presenting some big issues. The biggest of which being that as I did more research the structure of my writing kept changing. This could have been easily avoided if I had just done more research before I started writing. Another issue that arose with my writing was how long it took me to write because I didn’t have a finished draft when we did peer review I wasn’t able to participate meaning I missed out on valuable feedback. In future, I feel I need to be more on top of due dates to not miss out on future opportunities for improvement. However, despite these issues my writing process still allowed me to deliver a product I’m satisfied with.
Next, I came across an issue when it comes to what it would take to convince my audience and what my audience would be willing to read. Given the stereotypical NFT crowd, a basic list of trite arguments won’t work. To be more convincing I would require a lot more detail. This however is hindered by the amount my audience has the attention span to read. This left me with the dilemma of what to sacrifice to keep the length shorter. In the end, I decided to instead of having many short sections settle for a smaller number of well-researched sections. I feel like this worked better as it allowed for more new evidence to be presented instead of a ton of buzz words and trite anecdotes.
The final step for me was to format it. Initially, I was planning on formatting it as an anti-stock pitch until I realized that stock pitches generally assume you do not know the stock in question which would not work in my case. Instead, I decided on just basic formatting as I felt it was the best way to present my information without distracting too much. This decision is to blame as well on the fact that I was running out of time so take that as you will.
Finally, I had to send it to my audience, which I did over discord. In the end, the verdict was sadly a no, kinda. They said I had some good points but it wasn’t enough to sway them. I think maybe given more time I could have made something more convincing.
In conclusion despite all the issues and my failure in swaying a friend I am still proud of what I made and think with a bit of polishing it and more time it may have been able to sway him. As always fail is just a first attempt in learning.