LJ Idol Home Game, Week 6: Not of Your World

[teaberryblue]

All writing can be categorized into two groups: Writing for oneself, and writing for others.

Comments

[alycewilson]

Great advice. I'm afraid too many people fail to consider their audiences. I like that you drew the distinction between talking to your audience and talking down to them.

[teaberryblue]

I think it's hard, because if you know you're talking about something they may not know, the usual response is to think you need to explain it, and not to trust the wonder that is the human brain to be able to fill in the blanks, which many people's brains can do. Sometimes, you do need to explain, and figuring out which times those are is tough!

One thing I see a lot of Idol entrants do is define the phrase that is the topic, and that always strikes me as a little silly since every other entrant has to write on the topic as well, and that means they probably looked it up if they didn't know what it meant already. It can be a little alienating and make it seem like the author suspects other Idol writers don't actually know what the topic means. It might be in there for their non-Idol friendslist, but I think there are better ways of handling it than assuming people don't know what the phrase means.

[writingmoments]

As far as defining a topic, follow the oft repeated writing rule, "Show, don't tell." :)

[teaberryblue]

I don't even think you need to show in that case. Everyone participating should know what the topic means.

[alephz]

This.

[xo_kizzy_xo]

Ditto :)