Creative Writing | Knowing Your Audience

Let’s face it. It’s happened to most of us. You have what you think is a great idea for a piece of creative writing—maybe a blog post or an op-ed. You spend all day organizing your thoughts and putting your words together to create what you believe is a work of art. Then, the piece gets published and…nothing. Few readers, no comments, and absolutely zero shares.

So what happened to the piece you were so sure about?

Chances are you forgot the first rule of creative writing: Know your audience. All those fancy words and clever turns-of-phrase may have made for legitimately good writing. But, if what you wrote doesn’t resonate, it’s not a successful endeavor.

Instead of writing to please your readers, were you actually writing to please yourself?. To be sure, you should never publish something that you’re not happy with. But if your only consideration is what you think, you’re missing a key ingredient in the recipe for writing that resonates.

The key to drafting creative writing content is to show your readers some respect. Ask yourself the following questions:

Who am I writing for? Is my audience young or old? Male or female? Are they business executives or suburban housewives?

What do they need? What do they care most about? What is irrelevant to them?

Why am I writing this piece? What do I want the reader to think, do, or feel after reading it?

What does my reader already know about this topic? Have I given them enough explanation? Or, have I given them too much explanation and, thus, insulted their intelligence?

How do they feel about this topic? How can I honor their perspective?

Sometimes we get so excited about our own ideas that we forget that creative writing is supposed to be a conversation between us and our readers. But simply by asking ourselves what their expectations are, we can avoid the trap of merely talking to ourselves.