: Re: Convincing argument about something I don't agree with In my dystopian novel, Day, the son of a fascist dictator, is trying to convince Analise, a young genetic mutant oppressed under said fascist

@Yeniel532

Vote Up Vote Down

It's possible that you have 2 problems here.

The first is that you're trying to find convincing arguments in support of someone who rules through fear, power and intimidation. Generally, these types of classic villain don't need a more convincing argument for people to follow them than "I will kill you if you don't". Sauron never needed people to listen to his arguments for why he would be the best ruler, he simply killed anyone who stood in his way.

The second is that you're asking the Turkey to vote for Thanksgiving/ Christmas. It's not possible to reasonably convince a genetic mutant that the oppression and imprisonment of genetic mutants is a good thing. Even if the argument is that it might be better for the population at large, it still isn't the best thing for her personally.

There are many solutions to these problems, but I'll give a couple of suggestions.

To fix the first, you could give the antagonist's belief system some positive qualities. There are already many suggestions that others have offered, but fundamentally if you're taking away people's freedoms, you need to give something back. Maybe people aren't allowed to criticize the dictatorship, but the trains always run on time and no one ever goes hungry. Even if people can't move up in society, make sure that they either have no reason to, or that they believe they do not deserve to.

For the second problem, you only need to look at politics as it works now, and has worked for a long time for a solution. You might blame all of society's problems on a minority, but in order to convince people in an oppressed minority to support you, find a sub-minority within that group to blame their problems on. Have him tell her that sure, people look down on genetic mutants, but within the mutant society there are people who are so mutated that they can't help but be violent, and really they are the ones causing the problems. He can try to convince her that if there were no uber-mutants, then society wouldn't look down on mutants in general.

This then causes a potential problem that you don't want the readers to actually support the villain's version of the truth, so you need to hinge the whole argument around an inalienable truth. Maybe Day meets one of these uber-mutants and realizes they're not so bad, so comes to the conclusion that he's being lied to by his father about their threat to society. Maybe the costs of the fascist society are more than he ever realized, and because there is no freedom of speech these costs are never realized to the people. It could even be that the dictator is himself creating the mutants to give people something to hate, all so he can stay in power.

Overall, to think of a convincing argument for something you don't agree with, try to think of how someone might actually try to convince you to support the argument. I tend to follow this simple rule: If there aren't enough reasons to convince you that a character should follow a certain belief, the reader won't be convinced they should either. If you need to introduce more positive reasons that a character should believe the argument then that is fine, so long as there is one central idea that separates right from wrong, and allows the character and thus the readers to know which is which.

(0)

Login to post a comment!