Composition and Rhetoric, Using an Audience for Revision

The first audience is the writer. Even when revising for an additional audience, the writer is an important factor because you should always be engaged with the writing, clarifying and deepening the meanings for yourself as you improve them for another reader. But at times, thinking of yourself as the audience can create roadblocks or inhibit new thoughts, and the only audience students are really familiar with is the teacher, which may well be the worst possible audience. The only audience that may be more harmful to the process is no audience or an undefined, very general audience. A large, foggy sense of audience helps produce weak, foggy writing with broad statements and no substance.

Sometimes you'll need a real audience to work with, someone to read the essay, or someone to listen while you read the essay out loud. Writing doesn't always fit the isolated, hidden in the tower image. However, there are even more times when you need a fairly specific but imaginary audience to write for. How specific will vary both from writer to writer and from time to time. You'll need to practice to learn when to use which audience. As with most aspects of writing, if you pick the wrong audience at the wrong time, all you have to do is pick another one and go back to playing with ideas. All roads yield experience, and even the time with the "wrong" audience will help make better choices somewhere along the way.

A good piece of writing should affect an audience beyond the teacher or your close friends, but don't think too much about the bigger audience, the ones around the edge. Think, instead, of the target and the bullseye. As you write with an audience in mind more often, you'll get better at focusing both the audience and the writing more quickly, but start by eliminating the fringe, defining the difference between the target and the non-audience. In many respects that first step is primarily to push aside the teacher-as-audience. Sure, they'll still read the paper and give you the grade, but thinking about that as if it were the goal will get in the way of the thinking and the writing, resulting in a weaker paper and lower grade anyway.

Once you have an idea or a draft that needs refinement, make some basic choices about your target audience, keeping in mind that the easiest audience to write for is people like you because you have a better chance of understanding them. So members of your target audience are probably students close to your age and grade level. That will define the enough for the time being. Your subject, style, references, and vocabulary should match your audience, even if that means explaining some of the words to your teacher. One of my students had to work her way back through two or three levels of slang before I understood some of her word choice, but once she got through to me, it was clearly the best choice.

Thinking of audience like an archery target, the closer you get to the bullseye, the more your audience should react as you hope. At the outer circles, the majority of the audience should find the writing clear and interesting, but there will probably be only a small number who are actually influenced by the writing. As you move toward the center, the level of interest, agreement, and influence should increase. Most of the bullseye audience should reach the Wow level.

Beyond the target, some people will care, some won't, some agree, some disagree. Most are unlikely to finish the essay. Oh well. Attempting to bring in too many people will risk losing some of the target audience, so for the sake of your writing, your audience, and your sanity, let the people outside your focus go on their way. You'll have more than enough to worry about when you discover that your target audience isn't reacting as you intended, and you have to figure out what to revise.

To refine the draft, refine your sense of the bullseye audience. Close the age gap if you can. Are they the same age as you, a grade or two back about to go through what you've just experienced, a year ahead and already needing reminded what it was like to be a freshman? Does it make a difference if your reader is male or female? A topic such as dating, or the difference between love and friendship, could be successfully directed at one side or the other or both. Decide, and ask yourself as many questions about your audience as you can think of.

Your bullseye audience will probably bring to mind a few faces of people you know, giving your audience some substance. For additional revision (or from the very first draft if it works for you), look to those familiar, real faces. Of the people you know, there's probably one who represents your bullseye audience especially well, someone who would find the subject interesting and valuable. Who would you trust enough to speak with openly and honestly, to dare go into the deeper ideas that usually only come out after midnight?

Picture that person as you write, thinking of them by name, maybe even write their name at the top of the page, or write a draft as a letter if it helps. Talk with the person as you write. "Hey, Ralph, do you get the point here, or are you wondering 'so what'?" If asking the question in your head isn't enough, ask it out loud. Your roommate may worry about your sanity, but once they see the results in your writing, they'll start talking with real-imaginary friends, too.

Writing for that audience of one should help bring out more precise details and give the writing extra personality and depth. On the other hand, it may also bring out inside jokes and a level of familiarity that doesn't work with the subject or for the rest of the audience. Learn to play one audience off another to find your balance. After you talk with Ralph, ask "Hey, stranger, do you get my point?" And it always comes back to you. Does the writing really say what you want it to say, or are you pulling punches somewhere. Of all the audiences, you're the one who should be most affected at some level because the primary drive behind most writing isn't to be understood; it's to understand.

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Contact, Converse, Critique, Question

Would you like to know when the site gets updated? Drop me an e-mail, and I'll add you to the list. Much of my writing has been for the antiques site lately, but I have a long list of essays in assorted stages of revision for this site. The people who e-mail often apologize because they assume I'm swamped with e-mails. I only wish it were true. I'm a teacher from the marrow out, so give me questions. I'm a writer, so I also need an audience. Sometimes that means applause, sometimes rotten tomatoes.

From time to time, a student decides to use some of my ideas, or perhaps they even quote me in a paper. Great, I'll take what fame and traces of immortality I can get. However, I should also warn such students that my ideas are not always the things that your teachers want to hear. I'm a stubborn idealist, and that puts me at odds with quite a bit of education theory and literary criticism. Sure, I think I'm right about some things, and I'm sometimes convinced of my own brilliance, but don't jump into the fire blindfolded.

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