This was definitely relevant for me this week with the fandom post, because I wasn't sure what percentage of my audience would be familiar with fandom, or how familiar they would be. In the class I wrote about, many of the students would call themselves "fannish", but obviously had an understanding of fandom from a different perspective and at a different depth compared to myself, Eryn, and Stash.
I mentioned to one of my friends in the comments that I really struggled to find an analogy that would make non-fandom readers understand how I felt having a stranger ask me about my fandom activity. It was tempting to compare it to asking someone "So, what sort of pornography do you enjoy?" but I felt like that gave the impression that the source of reluctance to discuss fandom was purely sex-related shame when that's not it at all.
Especially when you're coming from deep in a subject, it's hard to step out and explain things adequately so that everyone understands it.
Yeah, I get what you mean, and with the porn reference: a lot of people already think that fandom is somehow equivalent to porn.
I guess it's sort of like if a man went up to the only woman in a room full of men and asked her what her favorite cosmetics were. Like, "I know this is a thing that women enjoy, let me ask you a question about it to show that I am interested in things having to do with women!" Or like you're a research subject. "Tell us about this thing you call fandom!"
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.
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.
Hell, I've given up posts because I couldn't come up with a way to be scientifically interesting while still accessible to people who, let's say, don't have a degree in chemistry...
This does highlight a personal bugbear of mine. A lot of Idolers assume that everyone is American. So they write about something with specifically American references and don't explain what it is they're talking about. A simple hyperlink would fix that. I don't want to have to google to understand an entry, but American pop culture isn't necessarily as accessible to someone outside as you might think. I've had people be a little snippy before when I've said that I didn't know who someone or something was and would like an explanation. This then leads on to spoilers. There've been quite a few spoilers over the course of my involvement with Idol that wouldn't have been for Americans who've already had a series but I'm quite behind on a lot of them, in some cases by more than one season, so being given a piece of information that's assumed to be common knowledge without any prior warning incredibly annoying.
I didn't even think of the spoiler example! I guess I never really wrote about television last year so it didn't occur to me.
As for the other part, that's why I included examples like American football and grocery stores. People frequently talk about things that are local to their region with the same shorthand they would use to talk to another local person, without realizing that those things might not exist in the rest of the world or even the rest of their country. It's one thing if it's just a matter of Googling "Pathmark" or "Kroeger" but the same passage could be made so much more universal if the author substituted in "supermarket."
Last season I had TV series spoilt for me in the Green Room and in an entry. I also had a book spoilt for me in comments to an entry. The person doing the latter said "oh well, at least I didn't name names" but now that I've read the book in question, they really might as well have. It really, REALLY annoys me.
I also think that the ability to make your writing universal is another sign of a good writer. That's why you can sell the same piece of work multiple times - you rework it to fit different markets.
On the other side, trying to write in depth and without a lot of research can be super annoying to people with that specialized knowledge. Sometimes I feel like that with scenes about horses, and now law stuff.
While it's understandable that in a legal show you have to circumvent reality to tell a good story, sometimes, as a person who understands how long things actually take, its sort of annoying. Then again, if you tried to show the actual pace of a courtroom drama, it would be a lot of people staring at their online legal research program and muttering and sending snarky emails. Hardly Grisham stuff.
I think that's another issue entirely, because that's more of a "Write what you know" question and not a "understand what your audiences know" question, although it is important to know that if you're writing something you don't know well, there may be people who actually do know it well.
That is another thing that comes up a lot--and I think it does tie in to the not talking down to your audience bit. At least a litle.
I've seen a lot of fiction dealing with mental illness and substance abuse that rings extremely false for me, because it seems pretty obvious that the author doesn't have enough experience with it. But the annoyance is compounded when you can tell that they are trying to explain stuff to you that they don't even really understand themselves.
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I mentioned to one of my friends in the comments that I really struggled to find an analogy that would make non-fandom readers understand how I felt having a stranger ask me about my fandom activity. It was tempting to compare it to asking someone "So, what sort of pornography do you enjoy?" but I felt like that gave the impression that the source of reluctance to discuss fandom was purely sex-related shame when that's not it at all.
Especially when you're coming from deep in a subject, it's hard to step out and explain things adequately so that everyone understands it.
/talking about myself like a tool, wut
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I guess it's sort of like if a man went up to the only woman in a room full of men and asked her what her favorite cosmetics were. Like, "I know this is a thing that women enjoy, let me ask you a question about it to show that I am interested in things having to do with women!" Or like you're a research subject. "Tell us about this thing you call fandom!"
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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.
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Hell, I've given up posts because I couldn't come up with a way to be scientifically interesting while still accessible to people who, let's say, don't have a degree in chemistry...
Great one as always.
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;)
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As for the other part, that's why I included examples like American football and grocery stores. People frequently talk about things that are local to their region with the same shorthand they would use to talk to another local person, without realizing that those things might not exist in the rest of the world or even the rest of their country. It's one thing if it's just a matter of Googling "Pathmark" or "Kroeger" but the same passage could be made so much more universal if the author substituted in "supermarket."
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I also think that the ability to make your writing universal is another sign of a good writer. That's why you can sell the same piece of work multiple times - you rework it to fit different markets.
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While it's understandable that in a legal show you have to circumvent reality to tell a good story, sometimes, as a person who understands how long things actually take, its sort of annoying. Then again, if you tried to show the actual pace of a courtroom drama, it would be a lot of people staring at their online legal research program and muttering and sending snarky emails. Hardly Grisham stuff.
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I've seen a lot of fiction dealing with mental illness and substance abuse that rings extremely false for me, because it seems pretty obvious that the author doesn't have enough experience with it. But the annoyance is compounded when you can tell that they are trying to explain stuff to you that they don't even really understand themselves.
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