Pebblepup's Writing Den

When you are writing, you should think about who you want to read your work. Considering your audience helps you make the proper word choices for the work. To do that, you need to consider the average age of your potential reader. The sex of the reader or how they identify. What the potential reader’s probable education is. What is their economic status, place in society, values and assumptions. That’s the broadest overview.

If you know what your readers might want will help you in choosing the right words, actions and plot points. Start by asking the question, “who am I writing this for?” as well as “who might find this in a store or on the internet?”. Be aware of them, even if you don’t think they would read your work.

Then do some research. Try to understand the readers you want to reach with your work. That will make it easier to meet their expectations and needs. Ask why they should read your work. What kind of problem would they want to solve? The answer to that question should influence your choices. They will help you figure out problems your characters need to encounter and solve.

Choose a style your potential reader wants to read. This means you wouldn’t want to write a technical text for a story aimed at elementary school children. Also, you wouldn’t want to write at a grade two level for a potential reader who is attending college. This is more aimed at people writing reports.

Knowing your audience will influence what words you choose. It will influence the sentence structure, as well as topic. It will also influence your marketing strategy and sell your work. That is what you are aiming for after all. You want people to read your stories, so you need to write what they want to read.

Of course, if you are only writing for yourself, this isn’t important. Most people write for other people to read, though. So you need to determine who you envision your audience is. If they don’t want to read what you wrote, they won’t. If you want them to read your work, you have to write something they want to read.
That’s the whole thing in blunt terms. You need to write what your audience wants to read. Or you need to make your audience want to read what you write. That’s all.

In order to do that, you need to know who you are writing for. You need to know who to target your marketing towards. That’s the final part of the writing process, marketing and selling your work. So do your homework and figure out your target audience. Find out who is most likely to read what you write.