Five Questions to Help Focus Your Writing

Communication is all about sharing ideas between different people. In order to make sure your message gets heard, you, as the speaker or writer, need to communicate in a way that will make sense to your audience. No idea, no matter how great, will ever get recognized unless it's understood by the audience audience. 

Whether you're writing a resume, an essay, or a blog post, you need to focus on being understood and appealing to your audience. Here are five questions you can use to help you focus your writing to your audience.

1. Who is my audience?

Ok. It sounds a little too broad to be the first question. But think about your audience's demographics, such as age, gender, education level, profession. Unless you're writing the next great American novel, you're probably writing for some very specific audience. Your class essays get read by your teacher, who studied a specific topic in college. Your cover letters get read by a hiring manager, who probably has some experience in looking at resumes and probably some experience in your field. Try to come up with a specific answer to this question. 

2. What does my audience want or why is this person reading my work?

Let's face it, we all want something. HR departments want to hire a good candidate for an open position. Magazine readers want to be entertained or to learn something new. Your professor wants to see that you understand the material you've learned in class. Once you know what your audience wants, make it your top goal to meet that need. As you write, organize your work to help meet your audience's needs. 

3. What does my audience expect?

Now that you know a little about who your audience is, put yourself in their shoes and try to imagine what they expect. Your teacher expects that you'll demonstrate mastery of a topic. The person holding your résumé expects to see that you've met the minimum qualifications in the job announcement. The reader might expect you to use certain words, like vocabulary from a lesson or key words in a job announcement--use them! Avoid jargon, or terms and phrases that the audience doesn't know or expect. Figure out what and meet those minimum expectations.

4. What one thing can I do to impress my audience?

Once you know the minimum your audience expects, try to come up with one way you can exceed those expectations. Can you come up with a clever, but reasonable, interpretation of the book you're reporting on for class? Can you think of one unique characteristic or achievement you can add to your resume to show that you're better than just any average candidate? Remember, ideas and achievements impress audiences. Complicated writing does not!

5. What can I remove from my writing to better meet my audience's needs and make it more clear?

Less is best! Think about it: if you had to read a single paragraph you'd remember a greater amount of the content than if you read an entire book, right? Use one strong example instead of two. Don't try to list everything you've ever done on your résumé. Pick three key points and highlight each with only a couple very impressive, specific examples. Don't use filler. Use only the BEST examples. Make those sentences shorter by watching out for and eliminating repetitive words. Find one word that can take the place of a phrase. When you think you're finished read, reread, and edit, edit, edit some more!