Out there

In class we were reminded as to why we write in the first place. We write for the audience. We write to convey a message or encapsulate part of the human experience, in a manner that is understood clearly by an audience.
The Audience was something I had trouble keeping in mind when writing music with my friends. Music to me has always been something I am able to pour myself into. Allowing my consciousness to sort of free flow in to sound waves has and always will be something very important to me. I enjoy writing music in a sort of therapeutic sense. When I sit down and write I don’t think about whether or not a specific group of people will like it. I just do what feels right, and it becomes this entity that will always have an attachment to my life.
When I try to think about writing for the audience my mind turns to dull and repetitive ideas. Whenever I listen to the radio everything sounds the same. Obviously there are many different stations that play many different genres of music, but these stations are often playing the same list of songs a few other stations are. There are the stations that have nothing but dance beats and wubs, stations with country songs full of the same four chords and the same song structures on repeat, and the stations that have the pop singers and rock bands which combine the previously described stations to form audible vomit.
The class seems a little shocked to hear the statistics about the average reading level being between 5th and 7th grade. We were told that this statistic must be kept in mind when writing. This doesn’t mean that you should write like the audience is stupid, I think it has more to do with attention span. We are used to everything being so quick, quick, quick, with instant gratification, so our audience needs to have this same pace present in order to enjoy and comprehend the story.
This doesn’t mean that every thing has to be short. Artistic commitment shown through detail and complexity will always be extremely adored and appreciated, but Prof. Jenkins did have an interesting point to make. It was less a point, more so an ambiguous yet clear observation about old tales. Most of the fairy tales and memorable stories we hear throughout life have short and direct morals. For some reason or another the only thing I can think of now is “Don’t cry wolf”. It is only three words but the message that comes with them is powerful and relevant.


It makes me think of “don’t cry wolf” as being