Top Menu

Archive | Audience: how to write for your reader

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.]

larger audience

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. ]

We'd love to have you access this content. It's in our members-only area, but you're in luck: becoming a member is easy and it's free.

Already a Member?

Not a Member Yet?

sharing your memoir

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.

[Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]

We'd love to have you access this content. It's in our members-only area, but you're in luck: becoming a member is easy and it's free.

Already a Member?

Not a Member Yet?

audience in mind

Should You Write With An Audience in Mind?

While some people decide to write a memoir according to structure—healing memoirs, investigative memoirs, etc—as I wrote in a previous post, others write with an audience in mind. (Writing with structure in mind often calls for writing with an audience in mind, also.) Sometimes the audience is of specific people but many other writers, while they do have a specific audience in mind, are really writing to a group according to their interest.

“I want to write for my kids and grandchildren. I want them to know who I was,” one sort of memoirist will realize. While another will think, “I want to my children and grandchildren to know me, too, and I want to place my life in a greater context. I’m hoping to have readers beyond my kin, readers who are interested in a larger picture of what life was.” [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]

We'd love to have you access this content. It's in our members-only area, but you're in luck: becoming a member is easy and it's free.

Already a Member?

Not a Member Yet?

memoir writing information

How to Have a Successful Book Reading–Author Book Reading Tips

A successful book reading requires a little planning upfront.  If you use the following tips, you will have a great book reading and engagement with your audience.

At a recent author book reading, I read from my mother’s memoir, We Were Not Spoiled, to a group of Senior College people. Since the program was offered in Lewiston, Maine, where my family is from, I looked forward to the event because I knew that the space would have many individuals who had known my mother, me or many people in my family. [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]

We'd love to have you access this content. It's in our members-only area, but you're in luck: becoming a member is easy and it's free.

Already a Member?

Not a Member Yet?

speakingman

4 More Steps to Reaching a Larger Book Audience for Your Memoir

Reaching a Larger Book Audience for Your Memoir

It is possible to reach a larger book audience than family and friends with your memoir. Here are four suggestions to enable your story to appeal to a larger public. 

1) Write a story that is truly well-written and whose reading—the prose itself—will bring joy to your reader.

[Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]

We'd love to have you access this content. It's in our members-only area, but you're in luck: becoming a member is easy and it's free.

Already a Member?

Not a Member Yet?