The problem with writing for an audience you haven't met

Writing for an audience you haven’t met isn’t easy when factoring in structuring points for an audience and making sure they feel the writing the same way you wrote it.

Personalized Writing

For certain people, writing is personalized and goes into specifics of your unique experiences. When reading it, you feel like it is an adventure and your writing was an important part of your journey. However, when shared with an audience it’s not structured or refined. Yes, it could be raw storytelling, but does it resonate with the audience? Personalized writing almost never will.

Writers need to zoom out from the story and write the bigger picture. For example, everyone has different types of addictions, so when writing something on your addiction you might personalize and write about the experiences you went through. To generalize it though for an audience, try writing it based on pure feelings. Most of the audience will connect with you.

Assuming

When people write, the common mistake is writing like the audience knows more about the subject than they actually do. Imagine that, you are writing a piece on a sports team that has a new rising star and overcame his struggles from earlier on in his career. What struggles? Why did he struggle? How did he become a star?

These are questions that need to be answered. If not, the story has no substance, no meaning and it is just a report on someone who is a star.

Being Scared

Some writers will be scared to share feelings, experiences, and most importantly their voice. The audience won’t be engaged if the writing isn’t authentic. Usually if the writing isn’t authentic, it feels forced.

This might be the biggest fear for any writer, sharing struggles through writing while others feel with you, but you don’t know who they are. That is scary. However, think of it like this. You are the leader of the pack when writing to many people who feel the same way. It’s not easy to be a leader and being a writer can help you do so.

Writing and speaking to an audience have the same effects on people. It’s scary to go up there and share about yourself. My heart beats through my chest and I feel like everyone is watching me. I do it anyway, knowing that things will actually be better doing so. It is important to do things you struggle with now, so you can be prepared in the future.

The section above generalizes and relates to a majority of the audience. If it can be done in one section, it can be done in any writing that is shared to an audience.