Walter Ong once said that the writer’s audience is always a fiction. And while “always” is a strong word, I tend to agree with him. To whom are we aiming our message? Case in point, as I sit and write this, who is it that I think is going to read it? Well, you, of course. But who are you? The short answer is: I don’t know.
The truth of the matter is that, despite what our English teachers told us in high school, there is no actual audience for our writing. We can conjure up all sorts of generic readers—a teacher, a parent, a student, whatever—but those readers don’t actually exist. They’re just creations of our own thinking, creations that are born from a combination of many people we’ve encountered (and some we’ve never met, no doubt) throughout our years. But there’s no single depiction that we can come up with that will be an accurate, mimetic representation of the person or people who will read our work. No two readers are alike and, when you get right down to it, even a single reader can be a different type of audience depending on his or her mindset at a given moment.
So what’s a writer to do? If you don’t know who your audience is, how are you supposed to write to them? The answer to that question is complicated, but it boils down to adjusting your tone to fit the specific genre. Rather than speaking to a specific person, you need to think about it in terms of speaking as a specific person. In other words, you need to assume a voice in your writing that is tailored to the situation in which you are writing.
The problem is, that’s not an innate skill. It’s something that takes time to develop and even longer to perfect. That’s where I come in. I’ve been writing professionally for more than twenty-five years, and I’ve written for just about every conceivable setting you can imagine. So whether you need help with college application essays, academic writing, or some other form of communications, I’ve got the experience and the skills to do it right. Get in touch with me today and let’s get working.
Andrew B. Spencer // Writer + Editor 