Audience Appeal

[polymath]

As NaNoWriMo winds to a close, as we work exhasutively on our projects in progress, as we grow as writers and as persons, I wonder do we think about our audiences? And if we do, when in our writing processes do we consider them? How carefully do we define our audiences?

I'm beginning, after lengthy, broad, and deep investigations, to appreciate what it means writing to appeal to an audience. On one hand, writing is about writing what we want to write. On the other hand, writing for publication is about writing for an audience. Writing for the public; that's what publication means, no matter how small or large the targeted audience niche is.

I've learned, kicking and screaming and flailing all the while, where audience fits in the larger scheme of writing things. In the first instance, audience is the chokepoint screening reader who rejects or accepts a narrative. Final, unequivocal, irrevocable rejection or reluctantly approving, tentatively considering, permissably promoting to a higher approval tier for, perhaps, publication acceptance. Then there's an editor gatekeeper. Maybe several editors. Then there's consumers, so to speak, readers. Audience hurdles. Publication hurdles.

Knowing a target audience seems problematic and complicated at first glance. How can we know what some many elses want to read, though they are fickle and don't know it until they see it? We do share a degree of taste and sensibility similarity with our target audience. We are human, after all. We have feelings that are easily stimulated, easily interested by concern, and easily aroused by curiosity, rapport, in other words, and just as easily offended, overlooked, put off, bored.

High concept premises (primal surface tier emotional, logical, and credibility, and decorum and kairos appeals) appeal broadly because they're widely accessible. Low concept premises (complex emotional, logical, and credibility, and decorum and kairos appeals) appeal narrowly because they appeal only to readers who share the circumstances and find them somewhat easily accessible. High concept premises appeal to surface levels of audience interests. Yet low concept premises are the artful substance readers desire. In other words, subtext.

What does a motif mean? Is it important, does it have meaning that a man or woman is condemned to an eternal, pointless, miserable task? It is because we all feel, at times, especially struggling writers, as though our lives are that Sisyphean burden. Sisyphus is the mortal king Zeus condemned to an eternity of rolling a heavy boulder up a hil in Tartarus--a part of Hades--Hell. Reaching the top, resting for a moment, the boulder rolls back downhill. Sisyphus commited the fatal vanity of hubris for daring to presume he was cleverer than Zeus. Obviously, Sisyphus desires an end to his miseries. He's only able to slow the torments compelling his labors, though, not end the larger mockery and torture of eternally rolling that motherloving boulder up the hill. Theme: an individual's relations with the gods: government, society, life, writing, whatever. "The gods are jealous of and constantly thwart human aspiration to power and knowledge" (Patten).

That is motif's power, connected to theme, connected to dramatic conflict, connected to plot, character, event, setting, and discourse, connected to subtext, extended and situational subext.

Subtext that's accessible appeals to audiences. Inaccessible subtext or subtext lacking entirely doesn't appeal or puts off an audience. Audiences like to feel smart, as smart as or smarter than what they read, and like to feel stimulated. That's why we readers don't like weak plots, two-dimensional characters, settings, events, and inaccessible ideas (themes), because we wonder if we missed something or if a writer is having a practical joke at our expense.

So NaNoWriMo is at a close. Those great global fifty-thousand word masterpieces are at their draft writing zeniths now. Now comes the hard part, though for me, the fun part, hard work is the easy way and its own reward: rewriting, revising, reinventing, reimagining for their intended audiences. Is that not what NaNo is about?

Patten. "Theme." San José State University. http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/patten/theme.html

[Mira]

Interesting thoughts, Polymath.

I'll share my process, although it's likely that you and I have a different process when we write. For me, I always think about the reader when I write. It's like I feel the reader reading what I write and I respond to that. It's sort of like talking to someone, feeling them listening, and shaping what I say to communicate well.

So, I'm never alone when I write. I always feel the reader "listening" to me.

Then, when I edit, I try to become the reader. I read until something doesn't make sense, my trance gets broken, something feels off, and then I edit.

So, that's my process.

I don't know if that's helpful for you, since I think we have different writing styles, - but I thought I'd mention it, in case it sparks something.

Congrats on finishing NaNo, that's an accomplishment!

[polymath]

Ahh the spark. The spark that lights the tinder that lights the kindling that lights the bonfire that lights the wildfire that lights the world on fire.

Actually, Mira, I believe our writing processes are similar in several regards. I keep audience in mind at all times. One difference is the sorts of real and imagined audiences' appeals I consider as I go along. My favorite real audience is a live one. So my writing tends to have a strong oral storyteller quality, or that's what I strive for anyway. My preferred imangined audience is also live in the sense it's who I'm writing to within the context of a narrative's persons, settings, and attitudes. Not the great wide world, but a narrative's secondary world.

[Mira]

My preferred imangined audience is also live in the sense it's who I'm writing to within the context of a narrative's persons, settings, and attitudes. Not the great wide world, but a narrative's secondary world.

Hey Polymath - not sure what you mean here....?

[polymath]

A theoretical or imagined audience is one a writer uses to help with writing. Types of imagined audiences: Self as audience is a self-deliberative reflexive audience generally seeking meaning for the self and to share with other audiences. Universal audience is appealing to as broad a theoritical audience base as possible through considering a wide variety of reader archetypes. ideal audience is appealing to a specfic selected theoretical target niche audience. Implied audience is a select audience niche that can be inferred from reading a text, and may not of neccesity appeal to a reader's specific sensibilities ("Audience").

I consider ramifications of all the above and also real audiences, the actual intended reader consumers of a given text, be they expectant audiences anticipating a particular product or grazers seeking a fulfilling reading experience.

In order to establish a close narrative distance between a text and readers, I prefer to consider both real and imagined audiences as participants or bystanders from within the text's setting rather than, per se, outside of the text's setting. I prefer not to write to Suzy Q homemaker or wrench jockey Beau Paul or myopic Dr. Dubioux Hedgeworthington, or whatever. I write as though readers are actively present within the imagined world. That way I can also mitigate and avoid the problematic attachments of author surrogacy, lecturing, and preaching.

In other words, stay in the scene, keeping my mediating narrator's ego out of the mix. Though the reverse is also appealing to audiences when the reader surrogate and attitude holder is the narrator, so readers have closest narrative access to the narrator, though that method is lately out of fashion unless the narrator is a real-world celebrity.

"Audience," Wikipedia. Online.

[Mira]

"In other words, stay in the scene, keeping my mediating narrator's ego out of the mix".

Okay, I get it. Yes. I do the same thing, I think. Try to keep my critical mind out of the mix and have an experiential dialogue between me and the reader.

You know, I said in the above post that the reader is always "listening" when I write. I think the reverse is even more true, and I'd bet you have the same experience. I'm always "listening" to the reader when I write.

I think there is value, though, in picking a particular audience, the one that is closest to your heart, the one you truly want to communicate with. It may depend upon your goal. If your goal is to make money, then you probably want to design your work for the broadest appeal possible, but if your goal is to.....allow your creativity to express itself and be heard by people who will connect with it, then speaking to that audience may be the most effective.

So, I think WHO you want to reach with your work is a big part of this equation.

[polymath]

Yep, who's the audience is a gold standard question wanting answers. I have a few in mind. I've lost one or two audience followings over the years too.

[Mira]

I don't know if I'd worry about losing audiences. If you lost them because you made some missteps, that's okay, it was a good learning lesson, and they may return as you grow.

But I think sometimes we change audiences because we change or we head in a different direction. Like friends. I think that might be a good example, because maybe there is a real similarity between readers and friends. Readers who like your work "get" what you're trying to say, and they want to hear it. You 'click' with them.

I really think, in some ways, the gold standard question is why are you writing. With that, the audience question can become clear.

Sometimes, I write because I want to share my mind, heart and soul with people through the medium of written words. So, the audience I'm searching for is one that will resonate with what I have to say.

Sometimes, I write to convince. So, the audience I'm writing for is one that doesn't yet agree with me, and I'll choose my words in a way I hope will persuade them.

Just a couple of examples....

[polymath]

The audiences I've lost got away because circumstances changed: moved, a serial publication folded, moved, a serial publication folded, moved. They're still out there longing for my work, I hope. Curious what's happened since, at least.

[Mira]

They're still out there longing for my work, I hope.

I have no doubt!