What Is “Audience”
To most people, the word audience just means a person or group of persons that are there to read, watch, enjoy, listen to, or otherwise experience something someone else is putting forward. But what is “audience”, really?
The definition of “audience” in Merriam-Webster is: a reading, viewing, or listening public. So most peoples’ initial reaction to the word is well founded. But I think there’s something more to it.
In The Writer’s Audience Is Always a Fiction by Walter J. Ong, the audience is something that has to be made up, or “fictionalized”. As a wannabe fiction writer, I can attest to that. It is literally impossible to imagine thousands of individual people, each with their own quirks and personalities. I have to take some creative liberties about the audience that I am writing for. Take this blog, for example. I have no idea who’s actually reading this, but I can assume that you want to now more about writing and defining terms (in my own words).
So for a writer, the audience is something that will almost never be completely seen. The writer, after all, is the recluse in their room or office, purposefully spending time away from others. As I like to think — as a writer myself — that as a writer, you are writing in the past, for the present you, to be read by future people. But what about other “audiences”?
For music, the audience is the group of people (or singular person) that listens to that specific musician’s music. But unlike writers, musicians get to play for entire audiences, although that reclusive aspect is still there.
For actors, their audience is the group watching them perform. There is still yet less time to be alone, but more time actually in front of the audience (at least, for classical actors. Modern day actors spend all their time “behind” a screen, so they can be seen as more reclusive than the musician).
But one thing they all have in common is: the fact that their audiences are all fictionalized. The actor may have a specific “role” that they always play and the musician may be known for their own genre, but they still don’t know their audiences personally. I think that most artists get to spend more time with their audiences than writers get to, though. After all, if a writer spends his/her entire day outside and away, they’ll never sit down and get their words on paper for their own audiences, whoever they may be.
So what is an “audience”? For me, I think of an audience as unknowns and uncertainties. I have no idea how many people will read this, but I’m still writing for you, the reader. I may not know you, but this reader-writer relationship will always be there. For me, an “audience” is that intrinsic relationship. I don’t know you, you don’t know me, but we understand what the other wants.
