Prewriting: Considering Audience, Purpose, and Tone

Introduction

Analyzing your audience

Determining your purpose for writing

Establishing the right tone

Success in writing also depends on your ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes.

Introduction

If there is any great secret of success in life, it lies in the ability to put yourself in the other person’s place and to see things from his point of view—as well as your own. —Henry Ford

You can put yourself in your readers’ shoes by understanding your audience and your purpose.

Introduction

Once you know what you’re going to write about, you need to consider who you’re writing for and why—your audience and your purpose.

Analyzing your audience

Before you begin to write, analyze your audience by asking yourself some important questions:

1. Who am I writing for? What are my readers’ needs and expectations?

People of different ages and backgrounds often need and expect different things from what they read.

How might these readers’ needs and expectations differ?

Analyzing your audience

Your readers’ point of view is important too. If you were writing to convince people to watch your favorite reality show on television, you would have to use different arguments for people who like reality shows and people who don’t.

Analyzing your audience

2. What might my readers already know about my topic?

Readers who are familiar with your topic don’t need the same level of detail as readers who aren’t familiar with it. If you were writing about your favorite sport, how might your writing change for a reader who

plays that sport?

has never heard of that sport?

Analyzing your audience

3. How can I make my writing appeal to my readers?

Different readers have different interests. Analyzing your audience can help you decide what details to include to capture and hold your readers’ attention.

to vote in the next election?

to get out and get more exercise?

Analyzing your audience

4. What do I want my readers to do or understand as a result of reading my work?

Make sure your readers are capable of understanding and responding to your writing.

Would you ask this reader

Determining your purpose for writing

Knowing why you are writing is as important as knowing whom you are writing for. Your purpose, or reason for writing, can be one or a mixture of the following:

• to persuade

• to inform or explain

• to entertain • to express yourself

Determining your purpose for writing Writing to inform or explain

When you write to inform or explain, you provide your readers with information. This type of writing includes

• newspaper and news magazine articles

• comparison-contrast explanations

• cause-and-effect explanations

• research reports

• literary analyses

• informative Web sites

effect

effect

effect

cause

Determining your purpose for writing Writing to persuade

At times you’ll write to convince readers to share your opinion of a particular subject or to take action. Texts you can write to persuade include the following:

• editorials

• letters to people in authority

• brochures and advertisements

• movie, book, or music reviews

Determining your purpose for writing Writing to entertain

Hollywood screenwriters and novelists aren’t the only ones who write to entertain. You, too, use writing to entertain when you create

• short stories• jokes and riddles• graphic novels or comic books• e-mails with funny anecdotes

Keep in mind that to entertain does not always mean to amuse with light reading; horror stories and intense dramas are also forms of entertainment.

Determining your purpose for writingWriting to express yourself

Self-expression seems to be a basic need for human beings. We talk, yell, make faces, move our bodies, and often write to express our thoughts and feelings. Written forms you can use to express yourself include

•personal letters

•blog entries

•diary or journal entries

•memoirs or autobiographies

•poems and songs

Determining your purpose for writingWriting for multiple purposes

Many kinds of writing can serve multiple purposes. For example, Joe Kubert’s graphic novel Fax from Sarajevo serves all four writing purposes.

It entertains readers with a gripping true-life narrative.

It informs readers about conditions during the Bosnian War of the 1990s.

It expresses the thoughts and feelings of the writer.

It persuades readers to pay attention to the tragedy and to take action.

Establishing the right tone

How you say something can be as important as what you say. Knowing your audience and your purpose helps you determine the tone of your writing. Your writing can be

formal or informal

subjective or objective

serious or lighthearted

Establishing the right tone

You express tone through your choices of language and sentence structure.

To create a formal tone, To create an informal tone,

use more sophisticated vocabulary

avoid contractions, colloquialisms, and slang

use longer, more complex sentence structures

use simple, ordinary language, which can include contractions, colloquialisms, and slang

use shorter, simpler sentence structures

The End