Writing to persuade is completely different than writing to inform.
Informative pieces typically use the inverted pyramid, where the most important thing goes first and the longer you read or listen, the less important the information becomes.
The inverted pyramid rules journalism. If you pick up the newspaper or watch the TV news, they give you what happened right away: Wildfire Claims 15 Homes.
The inverted pyramid is a great way to give people information quickly. It's a terrible structure if you want to keep the attention of your audience, because it's like a big flashing neon sign that tells the reader that they can stop reading anytime. After you've read the headline or listened to the TV anchor for five seconds, you've got the gist.
The structure of the inverted pyramid guarantees that the story will only get less and less important the longer it goes on. That's the nature and weakness of the inverted pyramid.
The Right Tool For The Job
Now, that's not to say the inverted pyramid is useless. It always has a place. The more important a piece of news is, the quicker you want to get to the point.
If you used a persuasive style of speaking and called your wife at home, telling her you remembered she was wearing a white skirt the day you met, that falling down while ice skating on your second date should have felt embarrassing but didn't, which is when you knew she was the one, that you couldn't imagine living without her, and because the house is on fire, you'd like her to get out -- well, that wouldn't make any sense.
You'd get right to the point, inverted-pyramid style, and say "The house is on fire!"
There's also a basic difference in who's talking. Persuasive writing and speaking is first person ("I believe") while informative writing is third person ("Bob Dole says").
That's why, God bless him, U.S. Sen. Bob Dole sounded strange when he talked about himself in the third person. He was mixing informative writing with persuasive, and it made him sound like a press release.
When you're writing to inform, in the third person, you might not use a name at all.
Examples of writing and speaking to inform: fact sheets, press releases, town hall meetings, press conferences or town hall meetings.
Structure Means Everything
But the biggest difference between informing and persuading is structural, in how you write and organize an informative piece compared to a piece built to persuade.
Persuasive writing and speaking is the opposite of the inverted pyramid. The most important part of a speech or a guest column comes at the end. You build to a climax.
Yet it's not a straight path, or a right-side up pyramid of "less important to more important."
Persuasive writing and speaking is more like a roller coaster.
Examples of writing and speaking to persuade: speeches, letters to the editor, guest columns, radio talk show appearances, newspaper editorial board meetings.
The easiest analogy is movies, novels and music. Entertainers are the best persuaders. Most of you wouldn't pay fifty bucks to take your family to a two-hour political speech. But you'd pay that much to buy tickets and popcorn to sit in a dark room, motionless, and watch moving pictures on a screen.
You couldn't pay me enough to read somebody's 100-page dissertation on Immanuel Kant -- and I like Immanuel Kant -- but I'll fork over $30 of my own money to read 400 pages of a novel by Lee Child.
It's because of the structure. The inverted pyramid is good for a short ride, and the shorter the better. For anything of length, the audience wants and needs more variety. They want a roller coaster.
And since there's never been more channels on cable TV and satellite radio, on the web and in print, it's smart to give the audience the most exciting and interesting ride that you can.