Like John Cougar Mellencamp, 🎵I was born and raised in a small town🎵.
Each August, our main street would be lined with tables of discounted items outside each of the shops for a sidewalk sale.
The first item I ever purchased with my own money, earned from helping with the copious yard work of our tree-filled acre, was a tiny stuffed mouse holding a real corn kernel between its front paws. It still sits in my shadowbox as part of my lifetime's collection of precious items. How many $2.99 purchases boast that kind of charm and longevity?
During the sales, my friends and I would stop to look at every table, even when we knew at a glance nothing on offer was for us. Men's socks, bins of screws and nails, boxes of discontinued permanent hair color. As I said, it was a small town, and worse still, I was a teacher's kid. Everyone knew me. Even as a child, I had a strong sense of not wanting to inadvertently hurt someone's feelings by not spending at least a few moments looking at the merchandise on offer.
Why am I telling this story?
Two reasons. First, not everything we write is for everyone.
There's no such thing as a truly general audience. The adage you can't please everyone all the time does not mean something is inherently wrong with what you've written. It may just not be for a particular reader. That's ok.
Second, whatever we are writing does have an audience.
Executive summaries, fantasy fiction, grocery lists. Writers ignore this fact at our peril. Clearly define and never forget who this audience is. Audience determines what you include and exclude, how you craft the language, where you begin.
In short, audience affects everything about how we edit.
