finding an audience

Sundog Rising!

Reflections on living the life literary by the Urban Sundog

Knowing Your Audience

Know your audience. One of the basic precepts of Introduction to Creative Writing.

The idea being that if you know who your audience is, you will write exactly what they want to read. Or conversely, if you know who likes the sort of thing you write, you target your marketing towards that sort of personality.

Most of my stuff goes out over the Internet these days. I don’t have a clue who my audience is, or how they even find me …

So I decided as an important exercise in literary development I should at least try to define who I see my audience as. A phrase came to mind unbidden and practically immediately that I think embodies the concept quite well.

My audience consists of reasonably intelligent, unpretentious sorts with good senses of humour.

What a pleasant bunch of people to know, I thought! — if only through the written word. When I pondered the concept further however, getting down to specifics, I began thinking … oh oh. This isn’t a very large group.

Let me deconstruct my statement. Reasonably intelligent. All right, what do I mean by that?

Well-read, to begin with. Sort of goes without saying. They wouldn’t have found me if they didn’t read in the first place. However talking to my son and thinking of conversations around the lunch table with my ex-co-workers and the experiences my wife and other people I talk to relate and thinking of the family and all, I come to the practically inescapable conclusion … practically no one reads anymore. So I lost most of the population right there.

In fact, I recently came across a study that stated 80% of American families did not buy or read a book last year. I doubt the numbers are much different for Canada. So if I add in the calculation that my stuff isn’t even in the bookstores …

I’m going to start a new advertising campaign for myself. You have to spin things positively.

John H. Baillie! The author over 90% of all Canadians agree not to read!

Moving on then — unpretentious.

That’s a positive trait for anyone to have. But then I look at the current state of mainstream Canadian Literature, an industry entirely subsidized by the Government for the overindulgence of the academic community and those who aspire to an ivory tower supposedly coated in maple syrup and therefore erroneously defining our national identity and I realize writing in this country is the very seat of pretension for the nation! So the Canadian writing community is the last place I want to look to for a lack of pretension — I’d do better going after the infinitely larger, infinitely more faithful hockey crowd — except they’re the folks who don’t read!

How many Canadian novels published in the last thirty years does this plot summary represent? “Something’s gone wrong. I think. Gee, I don’t have a clue.”

Okay, so on careful examination I discover my first two points reveal I am alienated from 98% of the market I am supposedly trying to reach. What about the third point? Someone who reads me must have a good sense of humour.

What do I mean by a good sense of humour? I once worked out that there are five basic styles of delivering humour. One — be disgusting, because for some reason a huge percentage of the population finds disgusting hilarious; two — be topical, meaning rely on political jokes or on humour making fun of current events in every field, meaning your laughs generally mean nothing after about a month when the world moves on; three — focus on your family or your ethnicity, humour that rarely goes out of style, but you need a light touch, otherwise you end up sounding bitter and disrespectful; four — slapstick, your physical humour, which isn’t exactly designed for the written word so much as the visual approach; and five — actual wit, taking language apart and throwing it back at you in ways that make you appreciate it anew.

I like the last two best. I’m not above the third, but you have to be careful. And I will occasionally descend to the depths of the first, but I don’t really care for it myself. I only use the second very occasionally, due to the short shelf life.

Now analyzing that assessment, I realize I’ve shot myself in the foot again. I only occasionally use disgusting humour, but the largest audience is looking for precisely that. There’s also a fairly sizeable audience who are into the political humour approach, but you have to be fast off the mark there, and ultimately, I’m just not that interested in politics to satirize it properly. I’m cautious about using family and ethnic humour, and slapstick doesn’t really transfer well to the printed page. Although I try.

Which means I like best the idea of wit, which is the hardest to do and probably has the smallest audience. A lot of people don’t get the joke. Or even realize there was one.

In the immortal words of Rocky and Bullwinkle:

Bullwinkle: You got that reference, Rock?

Rocky: Yup.

Bullwinkle: Millions won’t.

I’m running out of feet here to shoot myself in with my definition of audience. Sometimes you need to be an octopus to be a successfully unsuccessful author.

Okay, let’s be reasonable and turn things around. People are a lot more intelligent than anyone gives them credit for, including me; there’s nothing more pretentious these days than writing a blog and I’ve entirely adapted to that practice; and a few good jokes sprinkled in the right spots are going to reach the people the other obstacles I place in my path will prevent some readers from appreciating what I do. I’ll willingly hoist myself on my own petard if it means getting one more reader. (You remember Petard? Marcel Petard, played defence for the Habs in the sixties?)

So I’m going to stop worrying about how to find my audience, and settle for hoping you find me. You know who you are, you don’t need my help defining yourselves. And if you have found me already, you are all obviously women and men of rare discernment, regardless of how else you see yourselves. And I hope there’s no end to that range of definition …

I think what’s most important is that I would like to make any reader of mine feel special. I certainly think you are.

*****

REALITY FICTION AND BEYOND!

The Electric Detective Chapter Eleven goes up on Monday, May 18th, while part one of Episode Twelve, Kafka-Ish hits the Net on Friday, May 22nd. Reality Fiction Three: The Interrupted Edition continues at:

http://realficone.blogspot.ca/

“Metamorphos-Ish”. It was a natural. The big question is, who gets to be the bug?

Episodes to Date:

Episode One: Dante-Ish — Mak’s Inferno

Episode Two: Chaucer-Ish — The Hermit’s Tale

Episode Three: Malory-Ish — Le Morte de Mak

Episode Four: Doyle-Ish — Mak the Kipper

Episode Five: Carroll-Ish — Madelyn in Wonderland

Episode Six: Stoker-Ish — The Down For The Count Shimmy

Episode Seven: Tolstoy-Ish — Anna Makerena

Episode Eight: Lem-Ish — So there is …

Episode Nine: Hoffman-Ish — Dr. Hoffman’s Happy Gene Machine

Episode Ten: Shakespeare-Ish — Hamlet the Barbarian

Episode Eleven: Poe-Ish — The Usher Motel

Episode Twelve: Kafka-Ish — Metamorphos-Ish

All with illustrations by the author. The complete roster of 34 Contestants have now appeared, so we move on to the supporting cast, the Judges, and the Guest Judges.