Who Am I Writing for??
Stop Writing for the Imaginary Mass Audience
Who Are We Writing For?
Who am I writing for?
An audience of one, two, three, hundreds, thousands, millions?
Who is my audience demographic?
What are they like?
What interests them?
Are they cat people or dog people?
Are they right-handed or left-handed?
These kinds of questions can drive writers into madness. So much time is spent strategizing and analyzing metrics to conjure up some magical insight that will give us the knowledge to obtain more readers through the statistical dark arts.
We can all see the metrics for read time and engagement that Medium provides, but beyond that, we don’t know much else. As uninspiring as my advice may be, I suggest spending less time divining the numbers and statistics.
Write for you. You are the audience you should be writing to.
“You are writing for yourself. Don’t try to visualize the great mass audience. There is no such audience—every reader is a different person. Don’t try to guess what sort of thing editors want to publish or what you think the country is in a mood to read. Editors and readers don’t know what they want to read until they read it. Besides, they’re always looking for something new.” (William Zinsser, On Writing Well)
Craft is Key
Before you write a story, ask yourself one question: would you want to read this? If the answer is no, then why publish the story?
The world doesn’t need more half-baked crap. Bring your best.
I think sometimes it isn’t an audience problem. It’s a technical skill problem. If it’s boring to you, it will be boring to your audience.
Don’t waste your reader’s time. Time is in short supply, and if you want to write something worth reading, make it worth it. The audience most of us are writing to are people who have short bursts of time dispersed throughout the day to read our stories. They may be at work, eating lunch, riding the subway, or waiting for an appointment. They are most likely not dedicating hours of that day to reading stories on Medium — 30 seconds to two minutes max. You need to bring your “A” game as a writer. This is an opportunity to hone your craft.
Be efficient in the words you use in every sentence. Kill those worthless filler words we all know that we use.
Be real and raw. Grip your readers so tightly that they can’t turn away so that they stay for three, maybe four minutes. If you can make them late for their next appointment, you won!
Relax and Make Sure You Are on the Page
“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.” -William Wordsworth
Relax and spend some time thinking before you write. What are you trying to say? Does that sentence speak to you?
If you write something, it better be done with your voice, personality, and heart.
If you can’t find yourself, we must remove the clutter to get to you. It’s you we are after! You are the audience, and we need to know whether we are connecting with you or not.
The world needs to hear your voice. You need to hear your voice! Your voice was given to you for a reason, and your audience wants and deserves to hear that authentic voice. So get in the zone, relax, and craft each sentence into an image that reflects your heart.
Let’s write! ✍️
