Finding your ideal reader
or on how to create one
In a crowded sphere like the blogosphere, there will be many readers in the audience. But one must not write for everybody out there. Instead, one should write for someone specific. Like in a photograph, we need to focus on one person in the scene.
There will be many readers of your work, but you create with one specific person on your mind. This is called tailoring your content towards a particular reader, your ideal reader. If your ideal reader likes your content, then it becomes possible that others will follow. So who will this one person be? You can either find them from the people you know, or you can create one.
This article is based on my own personal experiences about how to find the ideal reader. I have been writing on Medium for eight months (at the time of writing this article), and I have sensed that it helps to know your reader before beginning to write. The ideas mentioned here are applicable to writing even outside of Medium, like your blog, essay, or even a book.
There are various possibilities as to who your ideal reader could be. It could be a muse, you yourself, and even an editor of a publication that you are thinking of sending your articles to, a fan, a follower, etc. The most important thing in this is to be aware of oneself, or to know oneself. This is not an easy task, and I see it more as a journey than a destination, because I think that it is not possible to know oneself wholly, and that we can only get better at it in the process of it, without really reaching a final end.
Below are possible candidates who could become your ideal reader, and I hope this helps you in your writing journey and your journey of self-discovery, as it helps mine. I have tried all of them, and writing for a muse is what works best for me. But this need not necessarily be the case for you.
These candidates mentioned below could be real people, or they could be fictional, completely fabricated by you in the process of coming up with the idea of your ideal reader.
Muse
Your muse is the person who inspires you to write. Your writing naturally flows when you write with them on your mind. For example, write for a loved one. For me, this works best for the romantic kind of love, although there are many kinds of love in this world.
The classical poets used to invoke a God or a Goddess as their muse, before they undertook the task of writing their poems, or epics. They prayed that their muse help them produce an artwork of significance.
Yourself
You write for yourself. This process is one of detachment from the self. When you can imagine yourself as a person who has a set of defined tastes, choices, idea, thoughts, preferences, then you can draw up a picture of yourself that makes it possible for you to write for them.
For example, you may say that “I am an avid reader of technology who prefers quality content on the latest news about software.” Are you this person? The more you define yourself precisely, the better you can draw a picture of yourself, and the easier it becomes to write for that person.
This is part fiction, part reality. It is quite possible that in the process of creating a character sketch of yourself, you end up creating a completely imaginary persona. But as long as it works, its fine. That it, as long as it helps you write quality stuff, this is fine, as long as you can remember that the persona you created is fiction. Why it is important to remember that can be the subject of another article.
An Editor
You write for an editor of a publication that you are thinking of sending your article to. This is almost like appearing for an examination, because after submission we wait for the response of the editor — to know whether or not they liked it. The ability to write for an editor comes after having interacted with them for a while, be it online or offline. We begin to understand their tastes and preferences, and we tailor our work towards that. We come to know these things because they let us know via their feedbacks and comments.
A Fan
You write for a specific fan out there who habitually claps, comments, or interacts with you on the work that you publish. Their engagement with your work, them reaching out to you to let you know that they like your work, encourages you to do better work, and also helps you feel good about yourself. Conceited it may sound, but it is encouraging when someone makes you feel good about yourself. We all need that encouragement, as long as it is genuine and comes from the heart. Will you be able to tell when it comes from the heart?
A Follower
You write for one follower of yours who you yourself are a fan of. You like their content. You like how they think and although unlikely that you could ever know how they work, but you can tell much about somebody from the way they think, and you could take a guess at how they probably work. This helps you to create content guided by their personality.
Someone you follow
This might be a person whom you follow. You might choose this person for their tastes, and for what and how they write, and you would like to put content out there that might catch their eye and thoughts.
A Writer
You could write for an established author, who has published many books and you like to read their books. This also might be an academic whose essays and papers you like to read, because either they fill your gaps in knowledge, or they bring in new possibilities for you. It is quite possible that they will not come across your writing, but you will have had a concrete image of an ideal reader for whom you could write. An established writer’s image can come close to a concrete image because generally these authors would have written so much that one almost tell about the person from the things they write.
