What does my reader think?

Complex as much as we feel we are, we supposedly gaze at our screens, stats, viewership, likes, dislikes, comments. We might find it difficult to understand what our viewers and readers like to read. We need to inculcate the value of empathy and acceptance, determination, and tolerance when understanding our readers, coming from different nations, backgrounds, and cultures.

Let’s not forget:

Our readers have feelings, reactions, subjectiveness like we writers! They do understand what we write, make self-judgements, wish the same like we do and come back for more!

Is it necessary to understand what our readers want to read?

Glancing our reader’s profiles, reading their posts, would give us an outline of their preferences to read. Nevertheless, our articles could go an extra mile to provide solutions, answers to their inner questions, create an emotional connection, fueling them with hope and love.

What if we open the worse side of the reader?

Let’s be honest, it is a true story! Our readers do have a life journey, painful memories, dejected moments, unforgettable rejections in career, relationships, submissions, and the like. Like as much we write, intending to communicate with words, statements, and quotes, we do invoke the feelings of our readers!

What if I write, my readers do not like it, what should I do?

Pretty much a normal reaction, we cannot help it but that should not stop us from writing! We must encourage a good change, without making them feel inadequate but inspired to change. Likewise, we need to check on ourselves also to work hard as much as writing to inspire! Some common examples I have faced as a reader and writer alike:

Health: Some stories which pose the side effects of lifestyle choices can invoke feelings of inadequacy to an overweight person or underweight person. They would want to make subsequent changes as a result or choose to bypass another story.

Acceptance to change with determination and mind power brings better lifestyle choices.

Hope: Some of our readers would be on a journey of abandonment, grieving over personal readers, unable to get over from a past, health concerns, overstrained from work schedules, concentrating on achieving goals. They need some boost or rejuvenation. Reading articles, stories, self-improvement tips, work-life balance choices would be a priority, they could have kept pending.

Life and work are both sides of a coin, each side is valuable and equally important.

Anger and Powerlessness: This is a much more frequent reaction of readers, viewers watching the headlines, power-packed news articles, reading breaking news. Yes, most of us react passively and move away from doing other things. At the back of our minds, we have already recorded that news, it keeps moving up and down in our minds. A frequent glance at the same news invokes more feelings of frustration, agitation, and much more powerlessness.

We can change the world one step at a time. Each one of us must try our best!

The Drive to achieving goals: Our readers do work on their goals as much as we do! They feel happy on some days, hard and dry on some days. They do have a varied approach to our writing on some occasions, putting off our writing or reading for another day. We are all so the same! We are in some way or the other, dependent on others for decisions and securing our well-being. However, we, like our readers, make our decisions, responding to our inner world 24x7.

Different Backgrounds: Knowing to an extent of our readers, their background to a slight extent, how they present themselves and their responses, where we come from, forefathers, who have succeeded or failed will enable us to make much more sound decisions. The action: Read and Know. Learn and Implement. Ask and Receive.

So do not think even for a second that your writing or article was not worth it. It will be accepted so let it stay for a week or two. Readers will come back to find more when they need it from us, fiction or non-fiction.

It is important to keep a balance between subjectiveness and prejudice in order to make the reader feel comfortable when reading our articles. We do take time in preparing and writing and it's normal to be accepted and rejected.

While our readers do like articles that help them learn better ways to present their content, there are some readers who are more emotional than rational. Let’s try to accommodate them too.

When the reader feels that the writer understands their feelings, values, requirements for a better life, they would come back to know more about your writing. Keep reading and keep writing!