Member-only story
The Problem with Writing for a Target Audience
Don’t ignore the kind of writer you are
Hey you! Yes, you. You who are reading these words right now. Who are you? They told me I should know who you are, that I shouldn’t write for myself, but for you, my reader. So who are you?
…
What was that? Did you say something?
Sorry, unfortunately, I can’t hear you. That means I have no idea of who you are. Nevertheless, I’m supposed to conjure up an image of you. I’m supposed to define my target audience. I’m supposed to decide your gender, age, education, social class, religion, nationality, occupation, personality, and I don’t know what else. And this is supposed to help me succeed as a writer. After all, it’s common wisdom: you need to write for a target audience. You need to choose a prototype reader and write for them. Apparently I’d be a fool to write for myself and assume anyone else out there cares about the same things I do, has my sense of humor, and enjoys the same kind of writing I do. The consensus is clear. Write for a target audience. Don’t write for yourself.
But is that really true? Is it true for writers who want to make a name for themselves online? Is it true if you’re not trying to push a certain product, but your only product is the words you write?
The problem with writing for someone else
If you’re a writer, one way to think of your potential readers is as pegs and of yourself as a hole:
Given these reader-pegs, if you follow the common advice given to new writers, what you’d do is choose a shape you want to appeal to: decide which out of all the reader-pegs out there you want to accommodate. The idea then is to carefully think about your readers and choose a shape for yourself that either fits the widest possible array of pegs or a shape that fits a type of peg that is particularly valuable. So, for instance, you might choose a shape that corresponds to an underserved class of readers — a shape for whose attention not many other writers are competing. Instead of just writing…
