Imagine that you are sitting in front of a group of people and you have just completed your first reading of your first story and the audience gives you a standing ovation. Or, imagine that you are sitting at a table in a bookstore signing copies of your first book, and there is a line out the door and around the corner of people waiting to meet you. In both cases, you look at these people and acknowledge that these are your fans, these are your people. But who are they? Can you see them in your mind's eye? Can you tell me how old they are? Can you tell me their gender, their income level, their main area of interest?
Knowing who your audience is will make a big difference in how you craft your story. For example, let's say you are writing a children's story. What age group are you targeting? The text in a ?first reader? will be different than the text in a ?read it to me? book. There was a gentleman who gave me a manuscript for his children's book; he wanted my opinion and helpful comments. The story had short sentences but the words were big and the ideas were vague. There were very few concrete images for the reader to imagine. When I asked him which age group he was targeting, he said, "I don't know! Maybe this isn't even a children's book!" Mind you, this was after he had already spent thousands of dollars with a graphic artist to do the pictures! There was no turning back. He was crushed.
This man made a common mistake. He assumed that because he was writing a ?children's book? that he should write short sentences and that would qualify his work as being for little people. When I read it out loud to my eight year old daughter, she was offended. She picked up immediately that he had made a mistake. She wanted to know why he was talking down to her with the short sentences and then over her head with the big words and ideas. The result was that she wanted me to stop reading; it was boring and offensive. Her expectation was that we were going to read a story that would be for her; what she got was something else, which caused frustration and rejection of the story.
Knowing who your target audience is will help you choose the language in your narrative voice. Ideally, your narrative voice should sound like you, and we'll cover this more in-depth in another article, but if you are writing an autobiography and you are a Mexican woman and your goal is to inspire other Mexican women to rise above their circumstances and make something of themselves the way you did, then you should write to that target audience. In other words, if you sound like an academic, because now you have your PhD, this particular audience might not want to read the book. They might be offended by your tone. Similarly, if you are writing a book about nuclear science, then your language needs to reflect the educational level of your audience in order for them to want to approach your book.
Knowing your audience is crucial because each reader comes with certain expectations, as do publishers. Depending on the genre, females might be attracted to language that invokes more emotion; males might like language that is concrete and tangible. A sports story needs to know if the audience is full of beginners or experts. If you are not sure who you are writing to, go to the bookstore and people watch. Hang out in the section you are interested in and see what kind of people pull books off of your shelf. Are they more male or female? How old are they? Which books did they choose? You might be surprised by this research.
So imagine again, this time you are on the Today Show or sitting on the couch with Oprah for your whirlwind book tour. Who is in the audience? Can you see them? Find out who they are so you can speak their language. They'll love you for it.
Copyright (c) 2007 Write With Grace
Help could come in as simple a form as a brochure, but if we’re really starting something that is taking us into our own unchartered waters, we will be better served having a guide, rather than trying to figure out how to do whatever it is we’re trying to attempt.
Henry Ford, in running his company, had a bank of buttons on his desk. When he needed advice on accounting, he pressed a button to call in his accounting guru. For engineering, he pressed another button. Henry Ford was successful, in part at least, because he knew that he couldn’t know and do it all by himself. He kept a stable of mentors-gurus who were knowledgeable in areas where he wasn’t.
Most of us don’t have the luxury of having gurus at our beck-and-call. However, in this computer age, we are closer to being able to reach out for a mentor, anywhere in the world we may be, and anywhere in the world a mentor might be.
We can go one-on-one with someone who knows what we want to know without ever leaving our home.
I was in a group with a financial mentor who told us to, “find someone who has what we want, do what they did, to get what they got". I’ll admit, I tried that, but didn’t get quite the results I’d aspired to, however I learned a lot. This method works for some highly dedicated people, but most of us average folks may come up short, as I did.
I’m ready to retire, and want to have a renewable income source to keep me financially secure for the rest of my life. I decided to take everything I’d been doing for more than fifty years in basketball and market it to the world.This would have been extremely difficult for me in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s, but now in the new millennium, I can accomplish this via the internet.
Cool. I’m ready to go. Now, exactly how do I go about this? My computer knowledge and abilities are minimal. So, I got a mentor. That got me started. Now I have three mentors, and have gone through a couple of others. Because I need new information all the time, I can keep reaching out there into cyberspace to find the help I need. I ask, “what do I need to do?" and they tell me what to do and how to do it. Do I pay for this? Yes. What’s the alternative�"going to school for years to hopefully gain some of the knowledge they bring to me immediately, or use the trip-fumble-stumble method of trying to do it myself?
When I first started out as a basketball coach, I was a nineteen year old and college student running an after-school recreation program at an elementary school. Even though I had played basketball in high school, I was by no means qualified to teach it.
Upon graduation from college my first basketball coaching position. was at the middle school level and I found quickly that I needed more education.
During those formative years of my coaching I searched for as much help as I could get and found it from some of the most talented people of that era.
In the 1960’s, I fell in love with teaching basketball defense after reading a book entitled, “Mosquito Defense", written by Al McGuire, Marquette University’s coach. I used his methods of swarming defense successfully for many years, at the junior high and then at the high school levels.
I worked hard at teaching myself how to coach basketball and each season I improved, but it was a slow process.
A few years later, and with some seasoning behind me, my journey to “teaching-coach" moved up a notch from just reading about basketball to becoming proactive--attending clinics, seminars and camps. Among the clinicians to whom I owe much of what I know about teaching defense was Bobby Knight. This was in the 70’s. Knight, at that time, was the acclaimed guru of defense. His approach to playing defense and how to teach it, was innovative and genius to this young coach from California. His man-to-man defense philosophy and techniques gave me the ability to teach individual defense and then be able to build this knowledge right into my team defense . What I learned from Coach Knight, combined with my early success with “Mosquito Defense", enabled me to develop my own brand of defense and my “Giant Killer" defense emerged. Defense was to become my hallmark as a coach and later as an international consultant and lecturer.
These talented “mentors" inspired me to want to be more than just a successful high school coach. I read what they wrote; took notes on what they had to say at coaching clinics; I participated as a coach in their camps; I even took my players and my small sons to listen to them speak, to attend the camps as players, and to watch their teams practice. None of these “mentors" knew my name or would remember me, but they influenced my early growth in becoming the teacher of the game into which I evolved.
Now I’m a basketball coaching mentor for others. Oh, certainly not like Bobby Knight, Abe Lemons, Pete Newell, or John Wooden. But, I bring my teaching DVD, e-Books, basketball coaches tutoring, monthly newsletter and more to a special niche market. My more than 50 years of basketball playing and coaching experience have been successful, by won-loss standards and in the number of coaches and players I’ve helped to develop all around the world.
My focus is on the niche market where new, aspiring coaches venture into the sport without much more of a clue than a 19 year old boy in California had in getting started. I work with these “newbie" basketball coaches, with coaches who have some experience but are still learning, and even with more experienced coaches looking for a splinter of information which might give them the help they need to get to the next level of basketball coaching success. I work with high school players, whose goal is to play college ball,and teach position specific skills to help them be successful. My goal�"and my promise�"to each coach or player I work with, is that I will take them to a higher level of teaching and playing than they were at when we got started together.
The role of the mentor is to teach and guide the student to a higher level of understanding and skill, no matter what the field of interest may be.
Are you looking for a higher level of success from where you are? Who is your mentor?
Both Tara Schiro & Ronn Wyckoff are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Tara Schiro has sinced written about articles on various topics from Writing, Affiliate Programs and Writing. For valuable feedback and editing help on your articles, letters, or books, please contact Tara at .. Tara Schiro's top article generates over 5400 views. to your Favourites.
Ronn Wyckoff has sinced written about articles on various topics from Basketball, Writing and Basketball. Coach Ronn Wyckoff has spent more than fifty years in basketball, as a player and coach. As an international consultant, his programs have reached hundreds of players and coaches around the world. In forty-plus years of coaching, he has coached from sch. Ronn Wyckoff's top article generates over 1600 views. to your Favourites.