Writing is like an ongoing conversation with others. It is captured in a “rhetorical triangle” of the writer, audience, and message. The writer is the person who writes, speaks, or performs the piece. The audience is the person who reads, listens, or watches the piece. The most difficult part of the rhetorical triangle is the message, the message is the meaning of the piece.
The message is the most difficult part to understand and can depend depending on who the person is. The message can have many different interpretations. The writer will always have their idea of the message, but the reader can have many different interpretations. One reader could think the piece means one thing and a different reader could think it means a different. It all depends on the reader’s background, past experiences, and views on things. Some writers like to make it obvious what their message is and some like to leave it up to interpretation. Some things are meant to persuade people’s opinions on a certain topic. These things writers would want the audience to know exactly what their message and they would be more specific so it is easier to understand their point.
Part of the writer’s job is to know the audience. Knowing the audience will help the writer know how they should write the piece. Knowing your audience is getting tougher to know because of the internet and how fast information moves. A writer could think their work will only be read or seen by a few people, but now with the internet, many people could share it, and then a lot more people than the writer could have ever thought of would be reading their piece. “Thus the need, he argues, for writers to fictionalize their audiences”. Fictionalizing audiences can help the writer think of more types of people that might see the writer’s work. This is defiantly hard to do but the writer needs to take this into account when writing. A writer would write their piece a little differently depending on who is going to read their work.
Writers also have to know what kind of thing they are writing and the purpose of writing it, because that will change how they write it. The writer should know whether they want the audience to get the exact point of their message or whether the writer does not care as much and they want the audience to think about it and come up with their own interpretation.
Good writers will understand the rhetorical triangle. They will keep in mind their audience although it is harder than ever now to know who the audience really is. Writers should know their message of what they are reading and if they want the audience to receive the same message or if they don’t care.
