Knowing Thine Audience

Earlier I posted about how an author had a responsibility to their audience, but I failed to clarify something when I wrote that article. Mainly, who is the audience?

Well today, audience, I'm here to answer that very question.

An audience is an interesting thing. It is not only the people you mean to write for, but it is also the people you accidentally do. Sometimes the audience you please is the first, and sometimes it is the second. Or sometimes it's neither. But who should we be worried about when we're creating something for an audience? The bigger crowd or the small?

Before I answer that question, I'll ask one of my own. Should I write differently for one audience or another?

Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes.

This is why it is so important to identify the audience that you are creating for. Because who you are creating your content for will dictate what you create!` Some of the art purists will disagree and claim that an artist should create art, but I'm going to be completely upfront and call bullshit on that. But note, as per usual, there is a catch. An artist should not let the will of the larger audience dictate what they've created for a select audience. I'll get more into that towards the end.

If I know I'm writing for a different audience I will absolutely want to write for them, and that's not just placating. Unless your goal is to placate in which case...it is. But you can write to an audience without selling yourself out. You can speak to a specific group without only trying to speak to them. And this will help your audience enjoy what you're doing more than if you just trap them into seeing your work which was meant for someone else!

Writing for a specific audience is like talking to a friend. You talk to each of your friends differently because you know different things about them and you want to convey different things to them. To use my own writing as an example, the audience for Hypothetically Speaking is different in my mind than the audience for my poetry. Which is not to say that I don't want them to be appreciated by the other audience, but if I lose some people between one or the other, that's to be expected. They're not the same.

But then how do I write to a different audience without losing myself? Even if my novel is for a different audience than my poetry, they don't sound so different that they're not still me, right?

Language. Language is key. How you say things is one of the best ways to show what type of an audience you want to address. When I'm serious in my novel, I still do it in a joking voice, because I'm addressing an audience that wants a joke. When I want to make light of something in my poetry, however, I don't crack a joke, I just make a point and if the audience decides it's funny that's up to them. But I'm not addressing them in a manner to draw a laugh from them.

And there's your second key. What are you trying to get from your audience? This is another way I can use my comedic stylings as an example. It's oft been said that the the best comedy is such that if you weren't laughing you'd be crying. And that is a perfect example of catering to an audience. If your work caters to an audience that wants comedy don't tell your jokes such that they cry. If your audience wants to cry, don't make the pain of a character funny.

Is that making sense? Since I assume my audience is the intelligent type I'm going to assume yes. So one last point to make up for not posting yesterday.

Is it all right to offend your not audience? Back to comedy here, you often get an interesting phenomenon with comedy, which is that someone doesn't get the joke. Not only do they not get the joke, they get offended by the joke. Do they have the right to? Do you as an author have to work to not offend people who are not your audience?

If you know me well you should know my answer is hell no. If someone is not the target audience, who are they to get offended by it. But this gets into a problem with art that I have no addressed yet, which is that society as a whole often seeks to set itself up to trump the smaller audience. To quickly bring back the point I mentioned earlier, not selling yourself to the larger societal audience, doing so is bad because it leads to the sort of bland art that populates our movie theaters and the eight p.m. slots of the television. Let alone books... But I'll discuss more about these things tomorrow. For today, I think I've said enough.