The things we don’t have to agree on — Nahrizul Adib Kadri

On November 2, the author found themselves in a classroom at Universiti Malaya, attending a session of their MA in Publishing Studies. The topic at hand was persuasive writing, an area that initially seemed unappealing to them, as they valued the freedom to tell stories and make sense of ordinary experiences over constructing arguments to convince others.

However, their reluctance went deeper than just the nature of persuasive writing itself. They had always been uncomfortable with the idea of imposing their beliefs or convictions upon others, as they believed that people arrived at their understanding of the world through different experiences and were not entitled to tell others how they should interpret theirs.

To them, persuasion often implied an attempt to make another person agree with something they might otherwise have thought differently about, and they associated it with manipulation.

Despite their initial reservations, the author paid attention to the lesson and discovered that the subject was more familiar than they had initially thought. As the lecturer explained the anatomy of persuasive writing, the author began recognising similarities with the marketing principle AIDA (attention, interest, desire, and action).

The author appreciated the logic behind arranging information in a particular sequence, realizing that the techniques themselves were not necessarily manipulative. It depended on how they were used, and more importantly, why. This realization made them reconsider their own writing practices and how they approached storytelling. When they wrote, they rarely began with a conclusion they wanted readers to accept, but rather with a memory or ordinary incident that had stayed with them.

They allowed the story to unfold and the meaning to emerge organically. Even when they made choices about how to structure a story, they did so with the intention of conveying a particular experience without trying to persuade readers to agree with their interpretation. The author realized that writing could influence someone's understanding of an experience without requiring them to agree with the writer's perspective.

As they contemplated the topic further, the author began to wonder how often our associations with particular words shape our expectations in other aspects of life. For example, hearing that someone is ambitious might lead one to imagine a person who prioritizes career advancement above everything else, while describing something as traditional might instantly evoke feelings of reassurance or an unwillingness to change.

These impressions are often based on experiences or things we have seen, but they can also prevent us from noticing other possibilities. The author had made a similar mistake with persuasive writing before the lesson, deciding beforehand that the subject represented something they disliked simply because of the word itself. By the end of the class, they found themselves interested in a topic they had initially anticipated to dislike.

Their original conviction about respecting other people's freedom to think differently remained intact, but their understanding of the techniques writers might use when communicating with readers had changed.

As they reflected on the lesson, the author wrote in their notebook about how certain words acquire particular meanings in our minds and how strongly those meanings can influence our impressions of something we have yet to understand properly. They ended their entry with "C'est la vie!" which seemed an appropriate response to spending an evening enjoying a lesson they had quietly decided, before it began, that they probably wouldn't like.