The advice gets repeated so often and so widely, it has become its own adage. Know your audience. We authors are urged to this, admonished to it, even scolded for somehow not doing it or doing it poorly.
I'm here to suggest the advice is not only impossible, it does more harm than good. It doesn't inspire toward a noble or useful goal, but instead intimidates and leads astray those who take it seriously. Here is my argument.
I can know who I *hope* is my audience, or *expect* to be my audience, but there is no way of my knowing. Indeed, even after I've sold books, I can't know who my audience was. I could meet them in person and still not know them in any useful sort of way. To do that, I would need to know them *at the time of reading*, because people do change. I have a hard enough time knowing myself. An even tougher time knowing those around me. Knowing my audience? An illusion, sez I.
A live performer can know their audience. They see and hear and even sense reactions to their own performance. Over time, they can even experiment with different approaches and so adjust to the audience. Here "the audience" means that strange beast that exists only in an assembled crowd, a meta-being the comes into existence at the start of a performance and dissolves again at curtain fall. An author doesn't have the luxury (and burden!).
So, why not just dismiss the pronouncement as nonsense. and move on? I argue that new authors, the yet-to-be-published authors, can be intimidated by this advice. They fret over it, as they fret over so many things, and they fret when they ought to be writing. They can be led astray in the sense that they try to bend their writing in this direction or that, believing they've caught the audience's scent, and so go down every path but their own.
Even at the extremes, just to anticipate certain counter-arguments, I say "know your audience" is a chimera. Let's say I want to write a book for young children. Hah! That's an identifiable audience, isn't it? I wouldn't try writing a book with big, long words that they can't possibly understand ... oh, I beg your pardon Mr Seuss. Didn't mean to step on your toes. But even with such a crowd, I say it's better for authors to write to what they *think* is the audience. They should recall their own childhood, or look to their own children, or the children of others, and write whatever they are inspired to write. There are many different kinds of children, after all. They read all sorts of books.
There is one audience I can imagine as existing, being useful to identify: the publishing business. It pays to consider a magazine editor as the audience. It pays to regard one's agent as one's audience. It might pay to know something of the various editors at the major publishing houses. They decide whether written books get published. If the aim is to be traditionally published, then there's an audience worth knowing. Worth taking out for drinks.
There's my argument, stated plainly so as to elicit responses. I'll now duck, find cover, and see who advances.
I'm here to suggest the advice is not only impossible, it does more harm than good. It doesn't inspire toward a noble or useful goal, but instead intimidates and leads astray those who take it seriously. Here is my argument.
I can know who I *hope* is my audience, or *expect* to be my audience, but there is no way of my knowing. Indeed, even after I've sold books, I can't know who my audience was. I could meet them in person and still not know them in any useful sort of way. To do that, I would need to know them *at the time of reading*, because people do change. I have a hard enough time knowing myself. An even tougher time knowing those around me. Knowing my audience? An illusion, sez I.
A live performer can know their audience. They see and hear and even sense reactions to their own performance. Over time, they can even experiment with different approaches and so adjust to the audience. Here "the audience" means that strange beast that exists only in an assembled crowd, a meta-being the comes into existence at the start of a performance and dissolves again at curtain fall. An author doesn't have the luxury (and burden!).
So, why not just dismiss the pronouncement as nonsense. and move on? I argue that new authors, the yet-to-be-published authors, can be intimidated by this advice. They fret over it, as they fret over so many things, and they fret when they ought to be writing. They can be led astray in the sense that they try to bend their writing in this direction or that, believing they've caught the audience's scent, and so go down every path but their own.
Even at the extremes, just to anticipate certain counter-arguments, I say "know your audience" is a chimera. Let's say I want to write a book for young children. Hah! That's an identifiable audience, isn't it? I wouldn't try writing a book with big, long words that they can't possibly understand ... oh, I beg your pardon Mr Seuss. Didn't mean to step on your toes. But even with such a crowd, I say it's better for authors to write to what they *think* is the audience. They should recall their own childhood, or look to their own children, or the children of others, and write whatever they are inspired to write. There are many different kinds of children, after all. They read all sorts of books.
There is one audience I can imagine as existing, being useful to identify: the publishing business. It pays to consider a magazine editor as the audience. It pays to regard one's agent as one's audience. It might pay to know something of the various editors at the major publishing houses. They decide whether written books get published. If the aim is to be traditionally published, then there's an audience worth knowing. Worth taking out for drinks.
There's my argument, stated plainly so as to elicit responses. I'll now duck, find cover, and see who advances.
