On Knowing Your Audience

5 Tips: Know Your Audience

After this year’s winter Olympics in Vancouver, I thought it would be fun to examine the role of the audience in your writing style. After all, for writers, the audience is more like the anonymous faces in the crowd of Ezra Pound’s famous haiku, not like the cheering and visible fans at the Olympics.  Several readers wrote to say that they felt this was one of the most important tips of all, but was not included in the 10 Tips for Writing last month.  One professor emeritus wrote to say that “you must imagine your reader as concretely as possible.  The better you know [the reader] the better you get [as a writer].” Consider this:

• Are you writing to a reviewer, a funder or a wider popular audience?  Different audiences will affect your style and choice of words.
• Imagine your ideal reader.  Is he a leisure reader sitting in an armchair with a cup of coffee and books all around?  Is she a high-powered executive working on a laptop on an airplane on her way to an important meeting? Be concrete!
• What does your audience already know about your subject?  How much background do you really need to give them? That reader doesn’t want their intelligence insulted.
• How can the information you are trying to convey be made more interesting? More relevant? More useful to the reader?
• Readers are people with other obligations, and may be tired, irritable, rushed and wanting to be doing something other than reading your material.  What is compelling about your story that will grab them by the throat from the opening sentence?  Remember the aerial skiers at the Olympics?  They’ve got you hooked on the opening jump.

Need help imagining your audience or any other coaching around your writing style?  Please contact me at: CoachHillary@TransitioningYourLife.com to set up a 15 minute complimentary coaching session.