Open thread: The audience question

When to adapt, when to stand firm

Photo by Vidi Drone on Unsplash

I began my Tuesday column with a scenario meant to illustrate how we all reshape our ideas or experiences when relating them to different audiences. Another variation on the idea is matching famous people’s hypothetical responses to the perennial question, “Why did the chicken cross the road?” There are dozens of variations online, but here are a few I’ve collected over the years.

I did not cross the road with that chicken. Could you define “chicken”? (Bill Clinton)

How many roads must one chicken cross? (Bob Dylan)

In my day, we didn't ask why the chicken crossed the road. Someone told us that the chicken had crossed the road, and that was good enough for us. (Grandpa)

To die. In the rain. (Ernest Hemingway)

To boldly go where no chicken has gone before. (James Tiberius Kirk)

The idea here for teaching writing is to imagine what answer your target audience might give to why the chicken crossed the road. If you can crystallize your audience’s philosophy, sense of humor, and personality into a single line, it will be easier to keep in the back of your thoughts as you shape your own work with that reader in mind.

Here are a few questions that emerged in the comments on Tuesday’s post that we might continue here:

• Jennifer wrote that the house guest analogy made her think differently about her business. Was she inviting clients into her space, as she’d formerly thought? Or were her clients inviting her into theirs? I’m curious if there are other readers out there who are thinking about the audience question in professional contexts other than writing. Audience could be interchangeable with client/customer. What else? Do the same choices apply as those I’ve described for the writing process?

• Jason, a community college professor, wrestles with how to respond to declining literacy rates among his students. He wrote, “About 1 in 4 of my students taking a second year course read near grade level…. And just recently, you may have heard that only 1 in 3 young Americans read at grade level… As a professor in a field that requires the pinnacle of reading comprehension and abstract thinking [philosophy], I'm deeply concerned with the science of reading, of curricular planning for an audience who doesn't or cannot read at grade level, and of getting them…up to speed.” How much ground do teachers give to students who are not prepared for grade-level or college-level reading?

• How much ground should writers give in order to reach the average reader? One might say that at a certain stage of development, a writer trusts their own instincts and lets those chips fall where they may. My novel is set in rural Iowa and rural Idaho — perhaps the worst settings to choose if I wanted to land a New York publisher. But I don’t want to tell a story about someone moving back to Idaho from L.A. or NYC, at least not in this project, and I’m unwilling to upend the whole premise to satisfy the marketplace. We like to believe that staying true to ourselves is what makes us authentic. This is more or less Iris DeMent’s philosophy, and I’ve always loved the results. But that way of thinking can easily undermine the concept of audience altogether. What is the balance between self-indulgence, staying true to ourselves, and using our craft as artists and writers to bridge the gaps between ourselves and others?

Tune in next Tuesday for a guest post by

Jenn Zuko

, author of

Zuko's Musings

. Jenn will share an excerpt from her unpublished memoir, Next Time.

And I hope you’ll hop on over to

Inner Life

to see today's post by

John Pistelli

, author of

Grand Hotel Abyss

.