While we writers write in isolation—session after session, alone in our writing rooms, when we show up at our computer screen and produce text, usually for most of us, this writing has an intended reading audience in mind, a group of people we want—and often need—to communicate with.
Writing memoir almost always implies a reading audience.
Whether we are writing for our children and grandchildren or for a whole class of unknown people out in the world, most of us have someone—a type of reading audience—in mind. Ultimately writing is a communication between a writer and readers.
If we think about it even a little bit, we will realize this audience is not likely to be the whole world. Instead it will be an appreciative group that is waiting for our memoir—even if its members do not yet know it.
Writing for a reading audience implies a dialog.
That we are writing for a reading audience implies that we are engaged in a dialog. Sometimes that dialog comes as a letter or an enote from a reader. Other times, it is expressed in a review on an online bookseller’s site.
All dialogs can be enhanced though attention to both the content and to the delivery. These can be learned with the mastery of literary techniques, discussions of which are ever present on this blog.
Learning how to write more engagingly to your reading audience can only benefit your ability to communicate.
In conclusion
These blog posts are one source of learning the craft of becoming a better writer by addressing your reading audience more effectively.
[To see a video that offers you four easy-to-implement tips to help your story to appeal to a broader public, click here.]
Beginning the End Stage Before Publication
Last week, I realized I needed to acknowledge to myself that I was in the end stage before publication of writing my memoir. For one thing, I finally came up with a name—French Boy / Growing Up Franco-American—that I’m likely to keep. (So many titles in the trash!) This title reveals the content of the memoir—a good title has to position a book for its audience. A good title says: “This book is for you.”
My natural audience
Since I am a self-publisher, I am super aware of audience. While I believe that anyone might enjoy reading French Boy—do I flatter myself that it is insightful in presenting its theme?—but I know its natural audience is the Franco-American (francophone Canadian-American) who grew up in the mid-century. That is the person who will go on a search for such a book. That person will say, “I’ve been waiting for French Boy.”
That audience has searched for my mother’s memoir, We Were Not Spoiled, and has downloaded it several thousand times. I find that incredible that so many people have downloaded the life of an ordinary (albeit lovely) woman whose memoir spans the years 1921 to 1952. (I stopped the story in 1952 and then picked up the thread in French Boy.)
The readers for my own memoir are largely the same and so I am confident about reaching them. While I hope many, many different people will want to read my memoir, I don’t want to take my natural audience for granted. [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]
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How to Write a Memoir for a Broader Audience: 4 Tips
Would you like your memoir to attract a broader audience? While family and friends are a worthy readership for your memoir, are you one of those many writers who aspires a larger public?
Writers will admit, if pushed, that they would enjoy a public response to their efforts. Your story can appeal to strangers—if you pay attention to these four tips—and may even move these strangers to new insights and motivations. And how knows—this broader audience may write you a fan letter.
My newest You Tube video offers you four easy-to-implement tips to help your story to appeal to a public beyond family and friends. [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]
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Who Cares About My Memoir?
Have you ever asked, “Who cares about my memoir?” Certainly, a lot of people have!
A perennial, and perhaps inherent, challenge every memoir writer faces is that of audience. Specifically, every writer is saddled with the incapacitating doubt that there is an audience for his/her memoir.
“Who will want to read my memoir? Who cares about my memoir?” asked enough times can bring your writing to a halt.
Of course, it’s a good question. Who will want to read about someone else’s life or even—horrors!—MY life.
“But,” you gasp, “isn’t that what a memoir is—the story of my life? What’s the point of writing if no one is interested?”
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Sell Your Memoir to Your Intended Audience: 4 Tips
An important step to sell your memoir is to identify your intended audience early in the process. Your buying audience will affect what you include in your memoir and the manner in which you write it. You will likely include different material in your memoir depending on who you believe will purchase it.
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Whom Are You Writing For?
“Whom are you writing for?” I ask writers who come to me. They are generally at the early stages of the memoir-writing process and my goal is to save them time and energy. “I want to my children and grandchildren to know me,” they generally answer, “and I want to place my life in a […]
Who Will Be the Audience for My Memoir?
Writers ask me all the time: “Who will want to read my memoir?” Recently someone said, ”If I were to write my memoir, it would probably be of no interest to you or anyone else. There is no audience for my memoir!”
Your memoir has a niche audience.
Wondering about the available audience for your memoir is legitimate and necessary. At the core of the effort most writers commit to is a deep desire to share with others—to reach an audience. Certainly this is true of a memoir writer also.
This is the challenge: stop thinking that no one will want to read your memoir. It may be true that I may not be interested in your memoir, but someone in this wide world certainly is. There are some billion people on this planet who read English. Surely you will find there will be “an audience for my memoir” among that billion!
Find your niche
The name of the game for an unknown memoir writer seeking an audience is niche writing and marketing.
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How to Write for A Larger Audience than Family and Friends — 4 Tips
While family and friends are a worthy readership for your memoir, it is possible to write for a larger audience.
Many memoir writers I have worked with will admit, if pushed, that they would enjoy a larger audience. I believe it is a pleasure for most writers to discover that the words they have written appeal to strangers and may even move them to action.
Here are four suggestions to enable your story to appeal to a broader public.
1) Write a story that is truly well-written and whose reading—the prose itself—will bring joy to your reader.
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Don’t Pass On Reaching A Larger Audience – 4 Tips
Perhaps you’ve been writing a memoir for your family and friends. The composition started off easily enough. You jotted a few memories and passed the stories out. People started saying you ought to write a book, but you were doubtful no one else but family and friends would be interested. For a long while you were satisfied creating your book for a small audience and then it occurred to you you that you were writing with a theme that might interest a larger audience. Perhaps, you wondered, if there was something in your lifestory that could address a larger audience of strangers. Or…
Perhaps from the get-go, you had a sense that, while this story of yours is personal, there was something in it that certainly could interest a larger audience.
While family and friends are always a worthy readership for your memoir, it is possible to reach an even larger audience.
“But, how to do that?” you ask. “What’s the magic bullet?”
Well, I don’t have a magic bullet but I do have a few suggestions to help you reach beyond a small circle. Below are four suggestions to empower your story to appeal to a broader public. [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]
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How to Get the Most Out of Sharing Your Memoir In-Progress
How sharing your memoir will help
A critical step for a brand-new writer is sharing your memoir writing in progress with others. There is nothing like a reader to help you develop a healthy critical sense of your work. This article is especially for the writer who cringes at the thought of sharing his/her writing.
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