Don't Write for Yourself, Write for an Audience

We all know creators with enough ego to go around. But, unfortunately, it takes a bit of ego to imagine that people want to listen to you, follow you, and pay you for it.

In a lecture for the Tucson Festival of Books 2021, Laura Packer said that artists need to check their ego at the door and approach storytelling as a service.

Similar to any form of art that is looking for an audience, storytelling needs to add value. Ask yourself, what stories does my audience want to hear? What will be accessible to them? What will be helpful to them?
​
It gives importance to the often-cited first step of telling a story: identify your audience.

​I can think of several reasons to ignore this step. First of all, Maurice Sendak told me I could.

"I don't write for children. I write, and somebody says, 'that's for children.'" -Maurice Sendak

Second, it is a take on storytelling that ​requires you to change, adjust, or fix aspects of your storytelling to fit a specific audience and directly address their response to it.

"Storytelling offers the opportunity to talk with your audience, not at them." -Laura Holloway

If you don't want to miss out on a blog post, join my newsletter!

xx Cory

This post was proofread by Grammarly