Who I write for
The ever creative ze-frank is currently asking a great question about creative process.
From his current post:
When you make things with an audience in mind, do you have internal representations of that audience to help guide you in the process? Are you in dialogue with a cast of proto-audience members that somehow represent different facets of your perceived audience? Are there little homunculi that provide editorial voices different from your own?
My answer, which I posted, is that I don’t have formalized characters when I’m writing a book or preparing a talk. But there is an ongoing dialog in my head when revising that approximates three or four imaginary people:
- The curious neophyte. If someone at random walked in off the street would any of this make sense? Would they keep reading/listening?
- The expert asshole. What if the person who knew everything about this subject and loved to criticize read this paragraph or heard this lecture. What vitriol would I hear? What bullshit would they call me on?
- The daily grinder. How about the guy who actually does whatever I’m talking about for a living and when I’m done will go straight back to work. Will anything I write or say impact what he does the rest of the day? week? month?
- The fan. Will someone familiar with my work find this boring? repetitive? derivative? Can I make this more fun for them instead of less?