There is no 'Right way' to write... (3)
...so why can't we stop ourselves looking for one? Part 3: Who do you write for?
In Part 2 of this series of posts I looked at the first of three fundamental questions I believe you need to ask yourself before you go on to contemplate what you are writing and how you are writing it: this question was Why do you write?
Did you try to answer the question, and if you did so - being ruthlessly honest of course! - were you surprised by the answer?
Now it’s time to consider the second of the three questions…
Question 2: Who do you write for?
As with ‘Why do you write?’, this is one of those questions that appears really superficial at first blush. The most common answer - especially amongst those for whom writing is a non-professional endeavour - is likely to be “I write for myself”. And that is an entirely acceptable response. And, like “Why do you write?”, there aren’t going to be any wrong answers either.
But if you give yourself some time to really think about this second question, you may find that your response is actually far from cut-and-dried.
For example, here are some possible (and plausible) answers:
Undoubtedly there are many more.
Still sticking with the first answer you thought of?
Many people talk about writing for their readers, though without any real idea as to who those people actually are. If that is your answer, can you take it a stage further and describe what your readers look like? It’s important. Are they lawyers, students, member of Hell’s Angels, nurses, train drivers, children etc.?
Why does this matter? As I said in the previous post, when it comes to these three fundamental questions it’s all about alignment; as writers we need to get ourselves into a space where the answers to “Why do you write?” and “Who do you write for?” - as well as the forthcoming question 3 - sit in harmony with each other and not in conflict. If you can achieve this you should have laid a firm foundation upon which to build when it comes to thinking about what you are writing and how you are doing so.
For example, if in response to question 1 you said that you were writing to make sense of your own life but in question 2 said you were writing for a specific audience - let’s say children, just to illustrate the point - it is more than likely that those two answers are incompatible i.e. your target audience would probably not be the least bit interested in your life. If your answer to 1 was that you wrote to share your deep knowledge on a specific subject - Tort, for example - then that would align incredibly well with a target audience of lawyers. Or if you said you wrote in order to fulfil a contract and thus were writing for your publisher, those answers would also be aligned wouldn’t they?
You get the point.
When tackling “Who do you write for?” try and approach it in isolation from the first question. I know it will be hard, but it’s very easy to ‘cross-contaminate’ answers and come up with an easy and ‘pat’ combination that might feel right, but might not be a true reflection of ‘the writer you’ at all…
Honesty - ruthless honesty - is the critical thing here.
And if you do write for yourself, what does that actually mean? Saying you’re writing for yourself is the easy answer, but if you’re going to be serious about understanding your motivation, alignment and the rest, then meaningless off-pat answers won’t cut the mustard. Are you talking about a desire to increase self-esteem? To meet goals? To make you feel good about yourself? To prove to yourself that you can do something? All of these are ‘writing for yourself’, but each has a different slant, and as a result may or may not align well with your other two answers.
Later, when you have your three answers and we move on to what you are actually writing, we will undertake a sense-check from both directions; we will work forward from the ‘why’, ‘who’ etc. towards that ‘what’, and then back the other way from the ‘what’.
Next time, Question 3…
I was going to put this post behind a paywall, after all it’s my intellectual property, my effort has gone into it, and the site is part of my livelihood. You wouldn’t do a week’s work for someone and then tell them not to bother paying you…
But then I decided not to. However, if you’d like to support me…