Who is your audience?

Knowing helps you as a writer

As writers I think it’s foolish for us to think that everything we write has an audience of everyone.

When you choose a topic to write about, I suggest you think about who will relate to it most. Who you see as your audience will set the tone and voice of your writing. It also helps in knowing where to publish it to reach the best audience.

If you’re writing a book review, the audience will be people who like to read. (It’s the same for movie, music, or any other venue reviewed.)

If you’re writing to readers about a book they want to know about the writing, the basic plot (most hate spoilers), the characters, the dialogue, etc., but most importantly they want to know what’s in it for them to read this book.

If you’re writing an essay you are sharing yourself with your audience. You’re going to write on a more personal level in a conversational voice.

The success of an essay, however, is not to just share your story, but to go deeper to reach your audience so they see themselves in the story you shared.

Some will have had a similar experience, or know someone who has gone through it. That’s how you give a more universal message out of your experience.

It’s about you, but if you want people to read it, it’s about them, too, or they won’t read it.

If you’re writing about history here, too, you need to know your audience.

How I wrote as a contributor for an academic book was totally different from how I wrote my book.

In Encyclopedia of the U.S. Government and the Environment [2 volumes]: History, Policy, and Politics one of my 2000-word articles began with this one sentence:

“The United States Department of the Interior a federal executive department of the U.S. government, is responsible for the management and the conservation of federal land and for the administration of programs relating to Native Americans, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiians, and to insular areas of the United States.”

In 17th Century Tottenville History Comes Alive the book begins with these three sentences:

“Did you know? The history of Tottenville begins as all history in the United States begins — with the indigenous people already living here. In Tottenville, that would be the Lenni Lenape.”

Totally different audiences require different word choices, sentence length, and tone.

Hope this helps you.

To see what other writers have to say, here’s three I think you’ll enjoy reading.

Shaunta Grimes discusses the idea of writing for an audience of one.

Linda Caroll discusses writing for the reader or yourself.

Patrick discusses writing a story from the foundation up.

Thanks to these followers for your support in reading my writing.

I invite you to consider writing for the Reciprocal publication started by Sahil Patel if you don’t already.

This publication puts into action writers helping writers.

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