Considered writing

[Colleen Thomas]

This question is a little bit from left field, but I'm interested in what the Ah gang has to say.

How much consideration do you take of your audience when working on a piece? Does knowing who you are writing to dictate terms to you as you write? Do you give tyour readers too much credit or not enough, in their ability to pick thing sup, make inferences or draw conclusions? Have you changed something structurally or plot wise specifically because of you appreciation of your audience?

I started wondering about this when I re read a critique I did for a new lit author. My advice, while I think it was good, was almost specifically tailored to posting on lit, from warnings about how hard it is to read something on the screen to some of the auto-backclcik triggers that Ahers have expresed.

 

[cantdog]

Audience is paramount for me. I am writing for women, specifically straight women. I want my descriptions to grab straight women by the gonads and make them helpless. Between sex scenes, though, I have a laid back feeling of being attended to by just the minds of my audience. I want them to be caught, intellectually. Then the sex is visceral, comes up from below.

 

[Guest]

I write what I feel.

I consider the audience when I look at my scores.

 

[lucky-E-leven]

I lost a lot of verve for writing when I started paying too much attention to audience. I don't know that I much believe in writing for or targeting a specific audience. I think I've come to the conclusion that I'll be conscientious of the genre and it's peculiarities but the audience will have to decide whether or not they care to follow my particular type of story-telling.

~lucky

 

[cantdog]

Don't you picture someone listening to you as you tell the story?

Maybe a friend? Maybe an abstract sort of Listener? I do. There's a thirtyish, maybe fortyish straight woman to whom I direct my words. She is no one in particular that I know, no real human, but a sort of construct. But I couch my words in language to reach her. I make my characters accessible to her.

Don't you even assume a woman will read you? Don't you even pick phrases and words to make sense to any particular sort of listener?

 

[impressive]

I think I've come to the conclusion that I'll be conscientious of the genre and it's peculiarities but the audience will have to decide whether or not they care to follow my particular type of story-telling.

*nods*

I write what I feel/think. Maybe the audience will come along, maybe not.

 

[cantdog]

*nods*

I write what I feel/think. Maybe the audience will come along, maybe not.

So when you write, who is listening? Just yourself?

 

[sophia jane]

I primarily just write for myself. That struck me most when I wrote Fantasy Nights, what I consider to be, by far, my best writing yet. So, imagine my shock and surprise when not only did it get lower scores than most of my others, it got me hate mail! I hadn't even considered the male audience pov because it was my story.

 

[Guest]

So when you write, who is listening? Just yourself?

i have many personas who listen when i read to myself.
it works for me.

 

[Alex756]

I think I have hit a stride of the audience being me. Then again maybe this says bad things about my mental state that I don't know where my story is going but am along for the ride.

I think if you listen too much to the vocal minority, your writing will loose something. Take box for example, he breaks alot of the things you hear about on here about what people want, but he has massed of people who love what he writes.

I write for the audience of me, but I've found there are people like me out there who like it.

~Alex

 

[impressive]

So when you write, who is listening? Just yourself?

No -- just a vague universal audience.

 

[cantdog]

Exactly. You 'speak,' and you have a mental construct of the person or persons who are 'listening.' Thank you.

I don't think it's the way Colleen stated it. I don't take into account the perceptions of the people who, later, on the feedback boards or somewhere, will make their opinion known. But I want to make women come. When I write sex scenes I am aiming them at a mature woman; I want to catch her by the lust bump and drag her into a place where she must react.

 

[lucky-E-leven]

Don't you picture someone listening to you as you tell the story?

Maybe a friend? Maybe an abstract sort of Listener? I do. There's a thirtyish, maybe fortyish straight woman to whom I direct my words. She is no one in particular that I know, no real human, but a sort of construct. But I couch my words in language to reach her. I make my characters accessible to her.

Don't you even assume a woman will read you? Don't you even pick phrases and words to make sense to any particular sort of listener?

Why must I picture a fantasy someone? I'm a someone. I tend to enjoy the things I write. I don't imagine I'm the only woman reading lesbian erotica that enjoys women fucking, so I kind of figure that if I like it, chances are there are other women out there that do the same. I guess I just don't need the mystery and hope of a pleased readership. The dream of the story comes alive before my eyes as the fingers plunk away and that's enough for me. I take pride in turning a snippit of a vision or a fantasy of mine into something others can read/witness. So far, there have been zero complaints from women and a large enough male response to make me want to strut.

~lucky

 

[Colleen Thomas]

thanks all who have commente thus far. In my own perception, I write for me, but when I look closely, I also write for the people I know are reading my works.

I break up long paragraphs because I know they hard on the ye. I attribute dialogue when I feel there might be a tendancy to misinterpret who is speaking. I tend to go for happy endings, because I would like to think people are smiling when they finish one of my stories.

I don't do these things on a concious level anymore, although I am sure I started out doing so. Especially the long para breaks.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Well, Colleen, you are dealing on two levels- one is the text, which you mostly write for yourself, am I right? And then there's the publishing issue- and like you, I now break up my paragraphs for readabitlity, clarify who's speaking (and then my editors yell at me and tell me to get rid of the "she saids")

... A side note- is there anyone here who can say those words "my editors" without a sense of smug gratitude? Youse Guys, those friends I've made here, the people who actually send me back files all marked up in red- THANK YOU!

One thing made an impression on me back in the 90's.
Some book of erotic short stories, written by a woman. I was disappointed in it, and actually called the publishers to ask them what their deiting polisies were. The person I spoke ot, and I think it was a man- told me they "didn't want to stifle the native voice" which struck me as being proundly patronising.
FUCK THAT!
And an awful lot of my own writing, my obsession with editing, has been in reaction to that statement.

 

[rgraham666]

Hmm.

I write pretty much for myself.

Above all, I write what I like to read. So the person I most try to please is myself.

I'm just glad I can reach others as well.

 

[Liar]

I don't consider the audience I've got, but the audience I want, and write for them. Partly because it's easy. The archetype reader that I want is me, so that gives me an easy reference to what appeals to my audience, and I write to cater that.

That's for fiction (and poetry). Smut and other.

My non-fiction bread-and-butter writing (reviews of tech and consumer products mostly) is all adapted to the situation the text is in. That includes it's audience, several classes of audience for a single article even, the media, the context in the publication, the readers' prior knowledge of the subject, the readers' attitude towards the subject, the teaders's attitude towrds the publication and me, when and where the article is most likely read... and on and on and on. Mapping out a complete context for an article is at least 50% of the job. After that, writing the content is a piece of cake.

 

[McKenna]

How much consideration do you take of your audience when working on a piece? Does knowing who you are writing to dictate terms to you as you write? Do you give tyour readers too much credit or not enough, in their ability to pick thing sup, make inferences or draw conclusions? Have you changed something structurally or plot wise specifically because of you appreciation of your audience?

One of the most important concepts I was taught as a tech writer was to consider my audience: Who will use this document? How can I facilitate its use? Are there any special considerations to keep in mind while I write this (i.e. socio-cultural influences.) I think about my audience constantly when writing non-fiction.

When I'm writing fiction, I like to be a bit of a rebel and write just for me. Of course I hope that those who read along will enjoy it, but I don't usually sit down and write something with the intent of pleasing someone else. I have to do that too much in my job. (And even as I write this, I'm asking myself why I even have voting turned on if I don't care what other people think. Possibly I just want people to like what I like, because I don't write on topics that don't please me.)

To answer your questions specifically, though, I have to think of them in the context of non-fiction. I think the key is finding that balance where you are neither over nor underestimating your reader. That said, there will be times when you have to cater to one at the expense of another, but hopefully in the end you've created a piece that will fulfill the needs of majority. With erotica, I think the goal is the same if you're writing for an audience. If your audience is the readers of lesbian erotica, you'll hardly want a plot whose main theme is heterosexual gangbang. You might also take into consideration what the most common selling points are to a lesbian story, and incorporate those into your work.

 

[elsol]

Before I answer this, let me state:

I've always considered facetious to say things like "I write for myself."

It begs the questions: then why put in a place that people can read it, why get pleasure when someone thinks you're hot-shit, and why get angry when someone slams your 'great piece'.

There are stories that I've written 'for myself', they were immediately destroyed upon completion.

I derive pleasure from building a story, from telling the story (writing it), a tremendous sense of achievement from writing 'The End', and it strokes my ego when people like it.

How much consideration do you take of your audience when working on a piece?

Very much.

I'm 'telling a story'... I don't want someone to fall asleep, or click off... in fact, SOL just fucked me by showing 'chapter' downloads. I get to see the drop-off of readers from chapter to chapter.

I want to keep readers from beginning to end and to do that I must be able to manipulate the reader into continuing.

Does knowing who you are writing to dictate terms to you as you write?

Yes, especially when that audience is able to reach out to me.

This is very noticeable in stories that are posted chapter by chapter... the audience has an opportunity to affect my thought process as I move forward.

It's much more difficult though when I've conceived the story in totality... even in multi-chapter story when I'm locked on to the voice and rhythm of the story, there isn't much that can move me.

It also depends really whether I'm writing for fun and experimentation... my coming of age incest story was really more about learning how to write.

So if someone wrote in with

> More mom/son sex... please.

I would accommodate just to see if I could.

It was...after all.. only stroke

Do you give tyour readers too much credit or not enough, in their ability to pick thing sup, make inferences or draw conclusions?

Not enough... i'm always surprised when readers get it.

Too much... even though the above is true, I continue to write in layers allowing readers to access the story on deeper and deeper levels.

I think most readers access my work at the stroke level... they don't notice that I'm playing three card monte with them.

And oh... but the ones who win the $20 dollars from me are so wonderful

Have you changed something structurally or plot wise specifically because of you appreciation of your audience?

Plot-wise... yes.

In A Master's Ring, I chose not to deal with the homo-erotic side of a specific male/male relationship.

It's undeniably there... but again I played a shell game with the reader. They have to notice how specifically the protagonist uses language.

When he addresses the specific 'class' of characters by their title... the reader must make the leap that he is talking about ALL of them... males and females.

As to appreciation... feedback has convinced me to write the story how I 'want' to write. I've written a few that were complex works and after positive feedback... I felt it was worth it to continue forward with my vision without dumbing-it-down for readers.

In those cases, I focused on satisfying the readers that wanted more and were capable of accessing it.

Sincerely,
ElSol

 

[togitc]

I write for my audience, all three of ya. My erotic fiction is for those who read it to enjoy, though I tend to stick to a skeleton of morals.

Someone once told me that mentioning a condom in one of my stories really killed the mood for them and that I should leave reality out of the story. I actually went through the story and cut the mention of the condom. When I read it I felt stupid for doing it and didn't submit the new version.

My non-erotic stories I write for myself. I write the stories I want to read and the tales I want to hear. If someone else has an opinion on them that is fine.

Now structure, I tend to take an eye-friendly format to the page. There have been great stories that I have read that just didn't work after the first paragraph due to the hard time my eyes were having, I had to copy the story into word and add spacing.

Anything I missed?

 

[Louise Brown]

My writing is mostly for myself, but only mostly. There have been a few times where a friend has asked me to write something of a certain topic, but in those cases, only the original idea is theirs... the fantasy written of after that becomes my own.

 

[BlackSnake]

Absolutely, I've change little things like

"Suck my motherfuckin dick" to "Excuse me"

dick to cock

I use cunt more than pussy.

My character are usually white now, or involved as interracial

 

[cantdog]

I neither allow my real readership to influence me, nor write as though I alone were the only reader. For me, to write is to talk. I feel that especially strongly when I write dialogue, but even in narration, I am telling a story. And therefore I am telling it TO someone, if you follow me.

But the girl I am telling it to is not derived from what the public says about my work. I am afraid I really don't pay a lot of attention to what people say about my work. With a few exceptions. But although there are exceptions-- gauche, 'dita, a few others-- when I am actually writing, I do not feel as though gauche or 'dita were at my elbow, critically evaluating. But I do feel like there's a sort of ideal reader who is listening to it.

edited to add: I love the 'all three of ya'!

 

[impressive]

One of the most important concepts I was taught as a tech writer was to consider my audience: Who will use this document? How can I facilitate its use? Are there any special considerations to keep in mind while I write this (i.e. socio-cultural influences.) I think about my audience constantly when writing non-fiction.

When I'm writing fiction, I like to be a bit of a rebel and write just for me. Of course I hope that those who read along will enjoy it, but I don't usually sit down and write something with the intent of pleasing someone else. I have to do that too much in my job.

Yes -- and one of the things that MOST disturbs me about getting my fiction (and poetry) published is that for the very first time, the non-me audience has entered my mind while I'm writing. It's just a cameo, but it's there ... and I don't like it one bit.

On the flip side ...

With my brand of activist non-fiction, which is intended to sway opinion, challenge paradigms, and just plain make people THINK, the audience ALWAYS has a starring role. Unfortunately, most of what I've read from others tends to "preach to the choir" ... which, as you might expect, does nothing to increase the size of the choir.

 

[oggbashan]

One and the other

Some of my stories are written just for me. The story wanted to be written: I wrote it.

Most of my stories, particularly the fetish ones, are written for a very particular audience that appreciates and understands that specific fetish. Scarf lovers appreciate stories about scarf bondage. Those who don't share that are not likely to like the story.

Almost all of my stories please someone. That 'someone' may be only one individual or may be a few dozen people. Few of my stories have universal erotic appeal. If I, or any of us, could write a story that was erotic to everyone - we'd be rich and famous.

Og