Many writers and blogging “experts” will tell you that you need to write for your “one person”, that is the typical target person for your business or writing. Some people, like Jeff Goins, adapted this idea slightly and started writing for themselves as their target person. Making things that they would be interested in and in a style they would like. This is great for an author or you are part of the target user demographic, but not so great if you want to write for another business and aren’t part of that demographic.
Anyway, I realised that I don’t quite follow either of these ideas. I actually write for “dumb Chris” most of the time.
Writing for Dumb Chris
Dumb Chris is a lot like me, he often has had the same experiences, the same dreams, fears and loves but he is always lacking something of “slightly smarter Chris” (me). Sometimes it’s an experience, or it’s a piece of information that I’ve found out about. Whatever he is lacking I want to help him in finding out and help him to become “slightly less dumb Chris”.
Of course, I probably could explain things to “Dumb Chris” using eloquent words and prose but…well, he a bit thick so it’s better not to risk it and just stick with using basic and easy to understand words and phrases.
Your Dumbself
This isn’t anything revolutionary, it’s a pretty basic writing principle to try to keep things simple and easy to understand but it can be so easy to forget about when you are in the middle of a writing project. Sometimes we assume that people must know what we are talking about…after all we know what we are talking about. Or maybe that they too know something “obvious”. It’s a common issue for people on the autistic spectrum to not be understand how someone doesn’t know something they know, yet I wonder how big an issue this is for your average writer.
Who do you write for?
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