About this article's tags: you want dark_arts, judging by the tags in the sidebar. The 'arts' tag links to posts about fiction, etc.

ObDarkArts101: Here's a course that could actually have been titled that:

Writing Persuasion (Spring 2011) A course in persuasive techniques that do not rely on overt arguments. It would not be entirely inaccurate to call this a course in the theory, practice, and critique of sophistry. We will explore how putatively neutral narratives may be inflected to advance a (sometimes unstated) position; how writing can exploit readers' cognitive biases; how a writer's persona on the page -- what Aristotle might call her ethos -- may be constructed to influence her readers.