On writing for an audience

[C. Jordan]

The following is taken directly from here. The web-site is run by an English teacher. I think that will be clear from the same which follows.

The key to all good writing is understanding your audience. Every time you use language, you engage in a rhetorical activity, and your attention should always be on the effect it will have on your audience.

Think of grammar and style as analogous to, say, table manners. Grammatical "rules" have no absolute, independent existence; there is no Grammar Corps to track you down for using "whose" when "of which" is more proper, just as Miss Manners employs no shock troops to massacre people who eat their salads with fish forks. You can argue, of course, that the other fork works just as well (or even better), but both the fork and the usage are entirely arbitrary and conventional. Your job as a writer is to have certain effects on your readers, readers who are continuously judging you, consciously or unconsciously. If you want to have the greatest effect, you'll adjust your style to suit the audience, however arbitrary its expectations.

A better analogue might be clothing. A college English paper calls for the rough equivalent of the jacket and tie (ladies, you're on your own here). However useless or ridiculous the tie may be, however outdated its practical value as a garment, certain social situations demand it, and if you go into a job interview wearing a T-shirt and jeans, you only hurt yourself by arguing that the necktie has no sartorial validity. Your job is to figure out what your audience expects. Likewise, if your audience wants you to avoid ending your sentences with prepositions, no amount of argument over historical validity will help.

But just as you shouldn't go under-dressed to a job interview, you shouldn't over-dress either. A white tie and tails will make you look ridiculous at a barbecue, and a pedantic insistence on grammatical bugbears will only lessen your audience's respect for you. There are occasions when ain't is more suitable than is not, and the careful writer will take the time to discover which is the more appropriate.

This in particular is for the writers among us. I posted it because on first thought this was precisely the opposite of Ayn Rand's ideal in writing. She did not "adjust [her] style to suit the audience, however arbitrary its expectations." But she also sought "to reach the men of the intellect, wherever such may still be found."

According to Prof. Lynch, Rand's first job was to "figure out what [her] audience expects." Surely it is a good strategy, to figure out what "the men of the intellect" expect?

The floor is open.

[Wolf DeVoon]

Let's stipulate that both kinds of writers exist: those who tailor their work to please an audience, and those who write what they want to write in their own choice of subject and style. The former are scholars, TV producers/advertising hacks, college and high school students (for grade credit) and Wayne Dyer - Newt Gingrich - Pat Robertson inspirational sleazicks.

I write what I care about, in my own voice and voices belonging to believable characters who earn the right to appear in my story on merit or (more often) necessity. I can't do a single line of text if I think about public reaction generally or intellectuals in particular. Having encountered both, audience be damned until the work is ready for publication. At that point, an editor is within his rights to ask for correction of errors and minor rewrite to fix a clunky passage.

W.

Edited September 17, 2007 by Wolf DeVoon

[Bidinotto]

This is a more complicated topic than would appear on its face.

Yes, one should write in one's own voice, especially if one is a fiction writer. That is an enterprise of pure art, pure self-expression, and one should write the kind of stories he'd like to read, in the style that best expresses his personality and values. I'm entirely in agreement with thriller writer Lee Child on this issue.

However, non-fiction writing is aimed at having certain informational or persuasive effects on a certain kind of targeted reader. Here, I think the advice of Prof. Lynch has more relevance. You need to have a good sense of who your targeted reader is, and then gauge your choice of language, level of language, and style to engage and move him. Otherwise, you're just writing a diary.

In either case, the rule for me is: form follows function.

[Rodney]

I think you are misunderstanding the thrust of the passage. The author is defending, not too effectively, good grammar and usage, and appropriate level of formality.

Edited September 18, 2007 by ashleyparkerangel

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I think Rand's stance against writing for an audience was in terms of priorities. She obviously wrote with an audience in mind, but as a background. She would overload technical details in a novel (like architecture in The Fountainhead, for example) since she was writing for the general public. I have no doubt she understood that the audience for ITOE was vastly smaller than the one for Atlas Shrugged and her writing shows it. I think she was against sacrificing the primary drive to write, which is to want to say something important.

From her letters, she always cautioned against trying to write for success as a main goal. Her caution seemed to be against the "write a blockbuster novel in 60 days" approach.

Michael

[C. Jordan]

Everyone has a good point.

First, to ashleyparkerangel: you have a point. And Professor Lynch does have a point. In his defence, I may say that his site has much to recommend it for a writer's techniques. The only thing I find objectionable is the tone, and specific words.

To Wolf Devoon: well said.

Bidinotto made a reference to the Lee Child's interview, which can be found practically anywhere in this sentence that you choose to click. Child said the following:

Child: ...You can sometimes tell people are writing to impress their friends or some kind of inner circle. That’s stupid. Your friends—how many are they? They’re going to buy, like, six books. What you need is to impress the audience out there. So I don’t care what a critic says. Critics can say whatever they like, it makes no difference to me. It also doesn’t tell me anything. I’ve lived with the book for a year; I know whether it’s good or bad; I know where it’s weak or strong; I don’t need somebody else to tell me. So, it’s a matter of total indifference to me what anybody says. It sounds very cynical, but all that I care about is: How many copies does the book sell? And not because I’m greedy for the money, but because that’s the only true measure: Are real people actually reading this book?

TNI: A measure of what?

Child: A measure of success. We’re here to entertain the audience. The audience comes first, second, and third. If you ever lose sight of that, you are sunk.

TNI: That’s your sense of responsibility as a writer?

Child: Yeah, absolutely. I learned that in television: that nothing matters except the audience...

Emphasis was mine through out, to hightlight those statements with which I don't agree. Of course one should read the whole interview in context, which can be found here and also here and guess where else. Lee Child gave a long interview; he had much to say and much of that I found worthy of attention.

But to the subject at hand...

My own thinking here actually began with Umberto Eco, from his essay How I write. Eco writes:

"However, I would not like these last statements to generate automatically another view common to bad writers -- namely, that one writes only for oneself. Do not trust those who say so: they are dishonest and lying narcissists. There is only one thing that you write for yourself, and that is a shopping list...and when you have bought everything you can destroy it, because it is of no use to anyone else. Every other thing that you write, you write to say something to someone...unhappy and desperate the writer who cannot address a future reader."

--Umberto Eco, trans. Martin McLaughlin

I would like to emphasise the word 'reader' in distinction to the word 'audience'. I agree with Eco, that I believe in writing for readers. As many as possible. But I think of my (future) readers as readers, meaning first as individuals.

I am also a reader, and I have read Chinua Achèbe, Umberto Eco, Ayn Rand, Ray Bradbury, J.R.R. Tolkien, and many more. But I do not consider myself a part of Rand's audience, or Tolkien's, or for that matter J.K. Rowling's. And I don't believe it is very complimentary to one's readers to think of them as an "audience."

Perhaps this is a matter of semantics. But it is also a matter of priority. Michael Stuart Kelley is correct, to identify that as an important element.

I disagree when Lee Child says that the audience comes "first, second, and third." I say the work itself comes first; readers come second. I don't know what comes third.

I do not agree with the television approach of targeting your audience. And I resent the implication which I read both Professor Lynch, and in the italicised quotations from Lee Child that I should let the "audience" dictate to me how and what I should write.

It occurs to me that Ayn Rand was once told that "no audience existed" for her book. Robert M. Pirsig was told much the same thing.

But before I leave, I should like to quote the very end of the Lee Child interview: the part with which I emphatically DO agree.

TNI: What advice would you give aspiring novelists?

Child: Normally what I say is: Ignore all advice. Like I said before to another question, it’s about producing an organic product, and you cannot do it by committee.

You cannot think, “Okay, what I would really like to do here is have my character pull out a gun and shoot this guy in the head. But this book says, It’s too early to introduce that; and this book says, That should happen in the second act; and this book says, You should never show your character in a bad light where he would do something underhanded like that. So, maybe I should have him provoked—no, maybe I should have him provoked by two people, or—no, maybe I should leave it for a little bit later in the book.”

If you do that, you’re going down a slippery slope. If you want to have the guy pull a gun and shoot somebody in the head, then that’s what you do. If you make every single decision based on your own 100 percent personal preference, then, at the end of the book, you’ve got a living, breathing, organic piece of work. If one human being likes it—i.e., you—and if one human being in the world likes it—the chances are very strong that others will, too.

So that’s what I say: Ignore all advice, write exactly what you want, even if you’re certain that everyone else will hate it.

TNI: You see no value in fiction-writing courses and books?

Child: I’m very skeptical about that, to be honest. I read fiction-writing books out of interest and because I’m a compulsive reader. I’ve never found anything in them of any value. Very occasionally something comes through that clarifies something you’re already thinking or short-circuits you into a conclusion that you were already on your way to. But really, of very little practical value.

I’m out of sympathy with the American way of endless education. And in a sense, I think education is a bit of a cop-out. Somebody says they really want to write a book, and then the next sentence is that they will go and do an MFA. Well, if you want to really write a book, then write a book. The MFA is just a way of putting it off; it’s procrastination.

And who is teaching this MFA? Are these major bestselling authors who have actually walked the walk? No, they’re not, because major bestselling authors don’t teach at college; they’re doing their next book, or they’re sitting on a beach somewhere having a good time.

So I’m not totally convinced about the value of it. I see the only qualification as having read a lot. Ignore all the classes, and write exactly what you want to write. Otherwise, it’s a dead product, dead at its heart because it carries no conviction.

And if you react to what you think the market wants, you’re way behind the curve. If you studied the market right now, by the time you’ve written and sold your book, and it’s gone through the sausage machine and become published, that’s four years from now. So a product four years in the future is trying to match something four years out of date, and that’s stupid.

TNI: And there is a lack of authenticity.

Child: Yeah, absolutely. And authenticity is so subtle. Most people call it “voice,” and to me, voice and authenticity are kind of the same thing. If it’s strong and true, it works perfectly; if it’s in any way slightly fractured by any kind of a compromise, then it just falls apart.

The nearest analogy I can give is baseball batters. There’s absolutely no consensus whatsoever about batting stance or swing or style—everybody does it themselves. Take any batter you like; imagine saying, “Okay, you can’t swing like that; you’ve got to swing like these other guys.” It just ruins them completely. They would just never get anywhere.

TNI: They’d become so self-conscious.

Child: Absolutely. Baseball is highly coached and highly ritualistic; and yet there’s no attempt whatsoever to standardize your swing, because it’s just got to be what works for you. It’s the same thing with writing. You’ve just got to do it your own way.

Ironically, this is the very argument I would use in rebutting the claim that "the audience comes first, second, and third." Or is it ironic?

Again, you can find this interview at any number of links.

[Selene]

The following is taken directly from here. The web-site is run by an English teacher. I think that will be clear from the same which follows.

The key to all good writing is understanding your audience. Every time you use language, you engage in a rhetorical activity, and your attention should always be on the effect it will have on your audience.

Think of grammar and style as analogous to, say, table manners. Grammatical "rules" have no absolute, independent existence; there is no Grammar Corps to track you down for using "whose" when "of which" is more proper, just as Miss Manners employs no shock troops to massacre people who eat their salads with fish forks. You can argue, of course, that the other fork works just as well (or even better), but both the fork and the usage are entirely arbitrary and conventional. Your job as a writer is to have certain effects on your readers, readers who are continuously judging you, consciously or unconsciously. If you want to have the greatest effect, you'll adjust your style to suit the audience, however arbitrary its expectations.

A better analogue might be clothing. A college English paper calls for the rough equivalent of the jacket and tie (ladies, you're on your own here). However useless or ridiculous the tie may be, however outdated its practical value as a garment, certain social situations demand it, and if you go into a job interview wearing a T-shirt and jeans, you only hurt yourself by arguing that the necktie has no sartorial validity. Your job is to figure out what your audience expects. Likewise, if your audience wants you to avoid ending your sentences with prepositions, no amount of argument over historical validity will help.

But just as you shouldn't go under-dressed to a job interview, you shouldn't over-dress either. A white tie and tails will make you look ridiculous at a barbecue, and a pedantic insistence on grammatical bugbears will only lessen your audience's respect for you. There are occasions when ain't is more suitable than is not, and the careful writer will take the time to discover which is the more appropriate.

This in particular is for the writers among us. I posted it because on first thought this was precisely the opposite of Ayn Rand's ideal in writing. She did not "adjust [her] style to suit the audience, however arbitrary its expectations." But she also sought "to reach the men of the intellect, wherever such may still be found."

According to Prof. Lynch, Rand's first job was to "figure out what [her] audience expects." Surely it is a good strategy, to figure out what "the men of the intellect" expect?

The floor is open.

"But she also sought 'to reach the men of the intellect, wherever such may still be found'". << Would this not then be her audience. "Rhetoric", as Aristotle advanced the definition was "developing all the available means of persuasion in the given case." The "big" behavioral attack on Aristotle's Rhetoric was that it did not account for the "behavioral bean counters". Hmmm, well it sure did. Part of his assumptive system was that if there was good and evil. If man was rational by nature [thank you Ayn for cementing that for me] and if you gave equal powers and tools, arte and techne to both "sides", then you would achieve goodness. In essence, Aristotle inherently, in my opinion, seeks to achieve the "common good". Greeks were the audience. Greeks had a "sense" of common good. The difference is that they acted on it. Today we have the same sense of a "common good" we just permit ourselves to be shaken from what we know to be "basic" "goods". In law, it is the difference between "malum in se"[Grindstaff v. State, 214 Tenn 58, 377 S.W.2d 921, 926] and "malum prohibitum" [local "blue" laws, e.g., a bar cannot be open within 500' of a house of worship] < geez, can you imagine being dumb enough to vote for that!

[C. Jordan]

I found an update on the Jack Lynch site which inspired all of this in the first place.

Finally, the thorniest comma-related question, whether or not to include the serial comma (also known as the Oxford comma or Harvard comma from its inclusion in their house style guides). In most house styles, the comma is preferred before the last item in a list: "the first, second, and third chapters." Leaving it out — "the first, second and third chapters" — is a habit picked up from journalism. While it saves a teensy bit of space and effort, omitting the final comma runs the risk of suggesting the last two items (in the example above, the second and third chapters) are some sort of special pair. A famous (and perhaps apocryphal?) dedication makes the danger clear: "To my parents, Ayn Rand and God."

I couldn't resist. :frantics: