Proposing a Solution  
Persuasive paper assignments often ask you to propose solutions to problems. Student Writing Coach's "Proposing a Solution" session is designed to walk you through the process of writing such a paper.  

In this assignment, you will ...
  • · Identify a problem in a community or organization to which you belong.
  • · Brainstorm a list of alternatives for solving the problem.
  • · Evaluate each of those alternatives.
  •  · And then identify the best alternative from your list.  
As you might have noticed, the above process assumes that you're dealing with a difficult situation and you don't already have a solution in mind. That's deliberate: You'll come up with a better solution and a better argument in favor of it if you think about all of the possibilities first, carefully, before picking one of them. Our session is structured so that the process you use to come up with a solution also produces the first draft of your paper.  

Use "Proposing a Solution" if ..
  •  Your assignment prompt tells you to identify a problem and propose a solution to it.
  •  Your assignment refers to, or is based on, the "Proposing a Solution" chapter in the St. Martin's Concise Guide to Writing.
  • Your assignment prompt asks how a group, community, or officeholder should "respond to," "address," "mitigate," "fix," "solve," or "deal with" an "issue," "problem," "situation," or "crisis."  
"Proposing a Solution" can also help you come up with solid arguments for ...
  • Business-class assignments involving case studies. Many case-study assignments are really proposing-a-solution assignments in disguise: The instructor or textbook gives you a description of a scenario (often something that happened once to a real company), and asks you to come up with a plan to deal with that situation. The scenario is the problem, and the plan is the solution.
  • White papers. In a white paper, you identify a problem and argue in favor of a solution to it. If your paper is for a technology-oriented class, "Proposing a Solution" can help you arrive at a solution.
  • Government policy or staff study papers. If you're taking a political science course that calls for you to write a policy paper or "staff study," "Proposing a Solution" can help you come up with most of your material for that paper.  

While you would need to look up how to format and reorganize the paper to meet the expectations for each of the three assignments listed above, the process we give you for coming up with your central argument can work for all of them. 

 Are you already set on a specific solution, and unwilling (or not allowed) to explore other options? If so, you might find "Argument -- College 1st Year" better suited for your needs.