Persuasion & Logic

Why This Matters

The evaluator scores your speech on persuasive power as its own category, separate from storytelling. A speech can have a great story and still score poorly here if it never builds an actual case — evidence, reasoning, and a clear ask, laid out in order.

This Week's Exercise

1. Write out your argument as a simple chain: here is the problem, here is why it matters, here is what should be done about it. One sentence per link.
2. For each link in that chain, add one piece of real evidence — a fact, a statistic, a documented example. Not a feeling. A fact.
3. Identify the strongest objection someone could raise against your argument, and address it directly in one sentence, before they can raise it themselves.
4. End with a specific, concrete call to action — not "think about this," but a real, doable next step.