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Think about your audience

Before you sit down and write anything, for example, a story, a poem, or a movie review, you need to think about your intended audience. These are the people who you expect to read what you write.

Now, don’t make the mistake of thinking that your audience is whoever is marking your work. While it’s true that a lot of the time work is just read by a marker and not by anyone else, it’s still important to write with an intended audience in mind.

Writing for a specific audience is just like behaving differently in different situations. At a funeral, it’s not (usually) appropriate to jump around and cheer. Instead, the mood or tone is usually quiet, sombre, reflective and often sad. However, if you’re at a football match, a totally different type of behaviour would be appropriate. You might be cheering, shouting, jeering, screaming, laughing, crying, and many other things. Different situations require different behaviours, just like different audiences require a different tone of writing.