For me the most author/essay in chapter two was "Writing for an Audience" by Linda Flower. Although I already know that thinking about your audience and keeping them in mind throughout the paper is a must, but Flower brought up some very interesting points that I've never thought about. For example, where you live can give one person a different view of a lake or beach, Flower uses a lake to show us this example. She states that even though that generally people see a lake as a sunny place to swim and ski, she thinks of lakes as "cloudy skies, long rainy days, and feeling generally cold and damp." This was a great visualization for me, I've never really thought about how some people might view something differently than the "norm." It made me realize that, should the need arise to write about a setting, I should give a better description so that my view of the place comes through and helps the point I'm trying to make to the reader.
Before Flower went into the differences between writer and reading she explained that one should take the time to actually examine the planned audience. I know that writing is "about" the audience but I can honestly say that I don't think I've ever truly taken the time to think about the expected audience and plan for what they already may or may not know, their attitude toward the topic or what the reader may need from the work. With this being pointed out to me, I feel that I can/should take the time to truly examine who I am writing for and why, so that my writing can can a solid turn for the better.
Although she does not spend much time talking about the knowledge of the audience, I think it is one of the biggest things we should look at, if we do not consider what our readers may or may not already know, we could cause problems when trying to discuss our topic to the audience. Flower's questions, "What does your reader need to know?" and "Does your reader have enough background knowledge to really understand you?" are great to ask ourselves when beginning to write almost anything. Even though this is probably common knowledge, I think we cannot emphasize taking audience knowledge into account enough.
Overall I think Flower does an excellent job letting us know that we need/should really examine our audience to the fullest; to make sure we know how the audience will react to and absorb the information you are relaying. Again, I feel this article helped me the most because it will allow me to prepare better and allow the things I write to be better than they are today.
I do agree that writers/authors have to take an account for their audiences’ knowledge on a said subject. However, as a reader I tend to pick books I am familiar with that I have some knowledge about. You pointed this issue of how much knowledge the audience has out already but it is actually a big problem with most writers. A good example of having some knowledge of a subject would be the popular fads out there currently right those being vampires, werewolves, and zombies. Writers of today seem to have the issue of just writing just for a specific audience of today.
ReplyDeleteI personally believe that the issue of knowing the audience is solved as the said writer gains more experience over time, this doesn’t apply to everyone but it is a common concept that has occurred. One way that could solve this issue of having or lacking knowledge of the said subject, which most television media has already discovered, is to have a review of what events have already occurred in the said subject/story. If the reader already knows of the previous steps/events then the reader can simply skip the review and move on to the main theme.
Lastly I would like to mention that there are many types of authors, but they are mainly segregated into two categories which are those who are reader friendly and those who are not so much reader friendly. There are more writers today that are definitely more reader friendly than there were back in old days. However, there are those types of writers that don’t really care what you know and just continue on the subject at hand without any real concern towards the said reader(s) knowledge of the said subject(s).