GAUGING YOUR AUDIENCE

This Friday I had two work-shopping sessions at university. One was for a ‘fairy tale’ piece and the other was for this sci-fi short that I'm now hoping to take further. Now for those who know me, know that I fall flat on my face when it comes to reading work out, particularly my own. So luckily for me, my work was read out by others and I didn’t have to stare at a page overflowing with text, but was able to…

Gauge my audience.

Now, quite bluntly, I don’t understand why I have never thought to do this kind of experiment before – maybe because it’s slightly voyeuristic? I don’t know. Did it help? Probably.

So I was having my first piece – the demented ‘fairy tale’ one – read out, and I couldn’t help but look around instead of at the words that I had already browsed through too many times. Now this particular piece ended up transforming into essentially, concrete poetry, and as soon as it did; I could tell. Because my audience and my reader were surprised and even revitalised. It was different and that’s what I liked and loathed so much about it. Now in this particular case, that became a dividing moment. Some people became more interested, while others stopped reading the text and just listened in order to decipher the images.

Now for my second piece – the sci-fi one – I was entirely unsure of the reception it’d receive. It was essentially a first draft but had a frame narrative induced twist that I loved. But deep down, I knew that I wasn’t so sure on the piece, because I frankly hadn't obsessed over this one. So some guys began to read it for me (cheers again for that) and I could tell some things were hitting the okay notes, others the cringe-inducing ones and then there was the climax – and I crap you not – the guy reading it just said, “Whoa. Shit.” once he got to a certain part. Then he got to the twist of resolution and there was this all round silence, the pleasant un-awkward type where you ingest what you’ve just read and go on to talk about it.  

Just remember, facial expressions are often underrated. You can fake them – I know – but when readers get lost in a piece, they get lost, and from my studying readers often tend to react as if they were there in the flesh.