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.

The Audience Versus George Lucas

All right, I lied yesterday. I'm going to talk about love tomorrow and Friday, but with throwing a whole lot of details about the Author's responsibility to the Audience, and vice versa, I want to go into great detail about a case where both parties failed to live up to their responsibilities. George Lucas, and Star Wars.

I'm not going to pull up any videos of people insulting George Lucas because in my old age of 26 I've taken a step back from my disappointment and actually considered what happened during the production of episodes 1-3. If you want to see some high quality analysis of the problem, I suggest checking out the film The People Vs. George Lucas, which is streaming on Netflix, as well as Red Letter Media, who does some very in depth reviews of the movies. But my goal here isn't to go into whether or not the Star Wars prequels were failures. My goal is to talk about why they were doomed before they were even made.

Star Wars: A New Hope changed everything for Science Fiction, and not just in terms of storytelling. Because storytelling wise most highschoolers these days are going to learn about how the plot of Star Wars is basically the old heroic arch and there's nothing wrong with that. There are no new ideas. But what Star Wars did that had never been done before was that it took the universe out of the movie and brought it into your home.

The amount of action figures, lunch boxes, sheets, buttons, etc. from the first movie alone is daunting. By the time Return of the Jedi hit the market and the ensuing product line followed, there were video games being produced and more actions figures which meant more worlds to imagine. When Lucas began to create The Phantom Menace his universe had been expanded by books to the point where the Galaxy far far away was not a mysterious place filled with an untold promise of worlds, it was a fleshed out and heavily populated mythos which had already told a plethora of stories after and before the happenings of the first three movies.

There's a problem with all of this though.

You cannot create a product line of action figures, scenes, dolls, shirts, videogames, books, all branching out from your created universe and expanding upon it and allowing people to make up their own stories within it and then turn around and try to tell a story about the characters that people themselves have already created stories for. The problem comes not in telling the origins of the characters, the problem comes in the fact that never providing them we, the audience, already made up the origins!

What I'm trying to say here is that by the time Lucas set about creating episodes 1-3, it was too late. The universe was no longer his. This itself could turn into a discussion on fanfiction and the like, but it's not really applicable here. Lucas gave his universe to us. It wasn't in his films that he did this, it was in the excessive at points level of marketing. You cannot give people the tools to create their own stories and then try to insert your own story over it. It just doesn't work. People get upset. And that's what happened.

After almost thirty years of envisioning their own ideas of the hinted at history of Ben Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker in a mysterious period called the Clone Wars, no one needed to hear the story anymore. The Audience had done the work themselves, as they will do with any story that leaves details untold. We fill in the blanks and we're happy to. That is a huge compliment to an artist, in fact, that their work inspires us to create our own details filling in the blanks. If we didn't like it we wouldn't care.

So is the fault all Lucas's? Absolutely not.

I hate Gungans. With a fiery passion. But there's nothing Lucas ever presented me that doesn't leave the possibility for them open. After all, if I could tolerate Ewoks, why not Gungans? There's nothing that says he doesn't have the right to work within his universe even despite all of the arguments I made above. It's his universe, he made it! And there's nothing that says he has to tell the story that his fans wanted to hear. If artists did only what their fans wanted J.K. Rowling would still write Harry Potter books, Metallica would only keep recreating their first album (which some might argue is what Death Magnetic is), and every year we would have sequel upon sequel upon...oh wait...that part is partially true.

But what I'm saying is that Lucas had every right to make those movies how he did. And we as fans must do the following. We must accept the vision, or we must approach it from a completely distant perspective, which is what Red Letter Media does a great job of doing in his review. He talks about the movies as movies, not as movies from the perspective of a fan, but just as they are, movies. We have to do some honest critiquing of them and we have to be willing to admit what is good in them.

However this isn't a critique so I'm once again not going to get into that. Go watch those reviews. Go!

What I'm trying to say is that as an audience we can't have our cake and eat it to. We shouldn't be so upset when an artist does something and we don't love it. It's their right. And maybe, if you don't like it, you have to step back and ask if you're the target audience in the first place. There is a great scene in The People vs. George Lucas where an adamant hater of the prequels discusses how his young son LOVES them. And for all we can detract on the films, if they are meant for kids and not us as adults, should we get so upset or maybe wonder if George Lucas cares about the cliché geek who can recite the names of every Rogue Squadron member?

As this post has hopefully shown, rarely is the question of Artist vs. Audience as simple as my example from Monday with the Joseph Gordon-Levitt quote. It's not always clearly laid out what the artist wants nor what the audience wants. Which is why we have reviewers, why we as an audience are free to decide where to spend our money, and why an artist who has no interest in the ultimate fame doesn't have to include sparkly vampires in order to support themselves.

Now then, tomorrow there will be love, because I promised it. So much love you'll possibly hate it. Muah ha ha ha ha. Take care audience, hopefully you got what you wanted today. And if not...

The Author's Responsibility to the Audience

Yesterday I pretty beligerantly told you that you as an audience have a responsibility to the people who make the things you love. Now for the flip side of the argument. The responsibility that the people who make the things you love have to you. A lot of you might assume I'm going to take this time to rant about George Lucas but I won't. The problems I have with Star Wars have been addressed in so many other places that I want to take some time later on in this blog to go into them. But not now. For now I'm going to stick to the point at hand.

What does an artist owe their audience?

When you think about it, a lot. Your audience are the people who actually spend time on what you have created. They are the people who will give life to your characters, who will tell other people about the good time they had with them, and let's just be flat out honest here, they are the people who might even pay you for what you've done. But we'll get to that detail later. What I'm driving at here is that your audience is not a thing that you can piss all over and expect to get away with it.

As an audience we all have expectations. If I pick up a science fiction book, I have different expectations than I would have from a drama. If I watch a movie, I expect different things than from TV. Reading my blog you have different expectations than other blogs. Because I'm witty and more handsome than those other bloggers.

My point is that audiences have expectations and one of the responsibilities an artist has to their audience is to satisfy those expectations unless I have a really really really really good reason to do otherwise. I'll get into those reasons in a moment. First some example rants. I'm going to steer away from movies on this one because there tend to be more hands in the pot than can manage a good product.

First an example of a failure to meet an expectation.

Have you ever given up reading a book because you just lost interest? Ever walked out of a movie (ok, I can't avoid the movies). Quit a video game halfway through? When you did, was it because you had initially set out to experience something bad, or was it because the product was no longer satisfying you?

I'm willing to bet the second.

Whatever it is we give up on, it is because the product has generally forgotten its responsibility to the audience. To entertain us. I will eventually have a huge rant on how post-modern art in general has done this to its audience. There are long debates which can be held on whether the artist needs to entertain their audience and to those who oppose I say start an argument in the comments section otherwise I win.

Any media/art I consume must entertain me in some way. And let me clarify something here. I am entertained by thinking. I am entertained by asking questions. I am entertained by emotional responses to things and I am entertained by things which simply entertain me. Sometimes I demand knowledge of what I'm getting into up front, and sometimes I enjoy being surprised by what I've gotten. But something has to be delivered to me.

Media for medias sake sucks. It is simply words, or sounds, or vision swhich enters and exits a brain without delivering anything. And this almost always happens when the thing is created without an audience in mind. Creating something without a target audience is as useless as creating food with no flavor. It occupies a space, but it doesn't do anything.

Now, let's look at a different example of failing the audience. I'd like to talk about the videogame Braid.

First off, I love this game. It has a beautiful atmosphere, it's challenging, it has an interesting mechanic, and it is deeper than most other video games I've ever encountered. I'm going to provide a clip from a fantastic movie that I recommend you check out, which is free to download. In the movie, Braid creator Jonathan Blow is discussed, including his habit of going onto the blogs of people who reviewed his games and correcting him.

If you didn't watch the movie, what the creator is essentially doing is complaining that his audience did not understand his vision. That they got something different out of the experience then he intended. This seems like a perfect example of what I discussed yesterday right? That the audience has a responsibility to the artist to understand his intent?

Not to the point that you can go around trying to explain to people what you didn't make obvious in your work.

There is a trend in media now to make things unclear for the sake of being unclear. This happened in Lost most predominantly, but is a large tool in media of all types today. And it's fun to not know things but you also have to understand that the audience will then insert its own meaning. Braid never explains the plot beyond the fact that you are pursuing the princess of sorts. There are some vague texts and some pictures that are assembled, and apparently (though I haven't actually done this) a collection of ridiculous hidden items that unlocks a special reward. But some of those hidden items require extremely convuluted lengths to get there.

In creating something so complicated, you as the artist can celebrate when members of the audience get the whole picture, but you can't be mad if someone focuses on the dog in the corner. This is evident in the visual art world as well, where I have a bad habit of focusing on details in the margins as opposed to the main point up front. If you gave me something to look at, don't get mad if I focus on that instead of what you wanted me to focus on.

So basically what I'm saying in this second example is, don't get mad when your audience doesn't focus on exactly what you wanted them to focus on. Braid had a fascinating gameplay element and if you get upset that people are focused on this rather than your complicated plot, well then you're kind of being a jerk.

However, if you had simply explained your plot out either in the story or on some sort of blog which I hear all the best writers are maintaining these days, maybe there's some wiggle room.

This post has already reached a considerable length, so I'm going to wait to go into ways you can break expectation for another day. I hope you've enjoyed this rant. Come back tomorrow for some more when I decide to tackle one of the main issues addressed in the Joseph Gordon-Levitt quote from yesterday. That's right, I'm going to talk about Love.

The Responsibility of the Reader

How did you all enjoy Chapterella 2? Hopefully as much as I enjoyed writing it. But that's a story for another day. Today I have important things to begin discussing.

This next series, that's right, series of posts are all inspired by a Facebook conversation I had with a friend on there/devoted fan. One of those two pieces are a lie, but part of this conversation did happen on Facebook. First, the back story.

For those who have never seen (500) Days of Summer I present the following trailer. I also recommend seeing the movie, but it isn't necessary to understand the conversation. I'll go into some non-spoiler details.

An important aspect of this movie is that it is a story about love, "but it's not a love story." I use quotations here for a very important reason. It is explicitly stated at the beginning of this movie that it is not a love story. I will repeat that, because it will make my unintelligible ranting further on better. It is explicitly stated at the beginning of this movie that it is not a love story.

Some fans are apparently still calling this a love story.

Ub-bu-whah? How? The movie tells them not to! Why?!

Levitt himself confirms what the movie he starred in is not a love story, in a recent interview in Playboy. Note, the link is surprisingly mostly safe for work, and contains nothing you wouldn't see on late night television. That's a discussion all its own, so I'll stay on point. The quote I want to hone in on is the following.

"The (500) Days of Summer attitude of “He wants you so bad” seems attractive to some women and men, especially younger ones, but I would encourage anyone who has a crush on my character to watch it again and examine how selfish he is. He develops a mildly delusional obsession over a girl onto whom he projects all these fantasies. He thinks she’ll give his life meaning because he doesn’t care about much else going on in his life. A lot of boys and girls think their lives will have meaning if they find a partner who wants nothing else in life but them. That’s not healthy. That’s falling in love with the idea of a person, not the actual person." JGL

So in a story that's not a love story, we have a character played by Levitt who is not meant to be a love icon, and Levitt himself is telling us not to idolize this behavior. And yet people still are.

So on to the first part of my series, where I'm going to talk about the responsibility of the reader/viewer/audience when it comes to their ingestion of media. Media being in this case art, since I consider this art, but I could go on and on about other media as well. I won't today. Must stay focused.

What responsibility does the audience have when they consume their chosen media? When I legally purchase a movie like (500) Days of Summer who says I have to read into it what the writers, directors, actors, production itself is trying to sell me? I paid for it, shouldn't I be allowed to interpret this film anyway that I please?

I'm going to shock you all and give you the answer you can probably guess I was going to give. No. You may not interpret it as you please.

Now don't jump down my throat because I also don't believe there is only one way to interpret something. One of my film buff friends and myself had a good conversation about whether the end conversation between Levitt's character and Zooey Deschanel's character actually have their final conversation, or if it's just in Levitt's head. This is fun to discuss, but in the end it doesn't change what the movie is trying to give us. A not love story.

While the audience should be, and in my mind is allowed certain interpretive rights, they also  have a responsibility to take what is presented to them as what it is. What I mean by this is that when an apple is put in front of you, you don't talk about it as if it's a car. The apple is an apple, barring symbolism which I hate anyways.

When a movie tells you that it is not a love story, it is setting the stage for you. A play which does this is Romeo and Juliet. Note that Romeo and Juliet begins by talking about the two houses, Capulet and Montague. This is the important part of the play. What is happening between these two houses and what it leads to. The love story is secondary. It's the story of a 14 year old and a 17 year old killing themselves over tragic circumstances. This play is not Shakespeare telling us this is what true love means, it is him telling of the tragedies which befall two families when they pointlessly war with each other forcing their two children to go to extreme lengths for stupid reasons. Part of that is my interpretation, but it is an interpretation justified by facts I believe I found. At no point does Shakespeare come out and contradict this interpretation. And if he does then congratulations, the zombie apocalypse is upon us.

By ignoring what the author is telling you, as an audience, what you essentially tell the author is that you don't care what they intend. What you are essentially doing is trying to take ownership for something you had no hand in. That might seem extreme since the culture is still arguing over what Shakespeare intended in plays like hamlet, and a lot of fun can be had debating why things happen and what ifs and...all that, but there is a difference between acknowledging what is there, and what is not, and discussing what is not, as opposed to flat out ignoring what is right in front of you.

As a writer who writes particularly strange fiction, I want my audience to be entertained. I want to give them the liberty to imagine my characters in strange circumstances or carry on the story without me. It's no different than fan-fiction or cosplay. People should be allowed to enjoy my stuff outside of the world I put it! But it's one thing to take things out of the world I create, and an entirely different thing to essentially tell me what I created when I explicitly told you what it wasn't. If someone tries to tell me that my work is a scathing social commentary I will become furious unless they present me millions of dollars to support the idea, in which case I'm listening. But seriously, it's not a social commentary except where it is. But I tend to be pretty explicit with these things.

So am I saying you as the audience must interpret something one way? No. Any author worth their salt leaves you some room to spice up the work how you please. But are you allowed to get anything and everything from my work? Also no. You have to work with what I give you.

Don't think it's all on the audience though. Tomorrow I'm going to discuss the responsibilities of an author both to their craft and to their audience. Until then, have a great day.