Getting Started 3

Wow! December already...the past week has been consumed with getting my December issue magazines to the printers, my full-time job, so now at last I have a few moments to speak with you. Hopefully you have fitted out a corner of your home for writing. Now to the task.

The first thing you must do is determine your audience. A writer does not use the same language and tone for children as for adults, neither does he write the same for specialist media as for mass market. The more you know about your audience, the better you will be able to connect with them.

Determine, if you can, the following: age, educational level, nationality, sex, cultural orientation and special interests. This will help you to choose vocabulary your readers will understand; select idioms, similes and metaphors they will grasp; present situations and characterisations they will find believable and engaging; establish the credibility of your 'voice' and avoid references that could be offensive.

I recall one time, while I was living in Hong Kong, editing an article in which the writer tried to use idioms with which she herself was unfamiliar. When she tried to convey that a certain woman had someone 'twisted around her little finger' (meaning that the woman had someone under her total influence), she wrote that she had someone "running around her ring finger". It took me awhile to try to figure out what she meant to say (were we talking wedding proposals or what?). The phrase "twisted around her little finger" is an American idiom. If your audience comes from elsewhere, they may not understand such idioms. Some people may call English "the universal language", but this language has many variations and contributions from the areas in which it is spoken. For example, many areas of Asia were taught British English. As a writer and editor, I have had to adapt my spelling and usage from my native American to British formats for my audiences here. When I am in Australia, I have to tweak it again, perhaps inserting "He's as popular as a blowie at a butcher's picnic" to indicate a person who is most unwelcome (a 'blowie' is one of those huge, slow flies that you sometimes see buzzing around people's faces in outdoor summer television coverage Down Under inspiring those wide-brimmed hats with dangling corks so especially enamored by today's tourists!). Important point: when using an expression not in your own common usage, double-check it for accurate application!

If you wish to write for a global audience, then you will have to avoid idiomatic expressions except for use when establishing a character -- and then remember that you will somehow have to weave an explanation of the idiom into your text for your readers.

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