Know your objective
Charlotte Booth • 24 March 2021
The importance of the reader's experience
In a recent attempt to motivate myself back into running following a slump I decided to read two books about running: Your Pace or Mine
by Lisa Jackson and What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
by Haruki Murakami.
On the surface both books were the 'same'. Both authors are marathon/ultramarathon runners, both are passionate about running and both books were a story of their lives in running.
However, one left me annoyed as it represented everything I hate about running and the running community and the other made me lace up my trainers and register for a couple of races (fingers crossed they go ahead). I may even buy a novelty hat to get into the spirit.
Jackson's book was about the joy of running, and the wonderful positive experiences she has had. As an ultramarathon runner (more than 26.6 miles in one go), and someone who runs at least one marathon a month her approach to running was refreshing. She didn't care about time - other than she never wanted to be picked up by the sweeper bus - and judged the success of a race by how many people she had chatted to on the course.
Murakami's book on the other hand was about pushing yourself to the extreme. He runs every day for at least 6 miles, and runs one marathon a year. After running the same routes for years he is on nodding terms with other runners. He considers a sub-four hour marathon to be a disaster, and is fixated on time and pushing past the pain barrier.
Jackson's book was about motivating people to run and showing that the running world can be an inclusive place, whereas Murakami's book was a personal account, which left me as a slow runner feeling utterly dejected at my marathon times. Jackson's book made me actually look at my times for Bournemouth 2017 and London 2018 and be proud that I earned those medals, blisters and manky runner's feet. She made me feel two marathons in six months (and one of the hottest on record) was an achievement. Murakami's book made me want to hide the times and never discuss them again.
These two books demonstrated perfectly to me the importance when writing a book to actually think about your reader and what you want them to feel when they've finished.
Lisa Jackson obviously wanted to make the reader feel motivated to get out running. For me, I feel Murakami wanted the reader to understand more about what made him tick as a runner and was not intended to motivate them.
When I work with authors on their books this is one of the first questions we work on - what is the reader going to get out of finishing your book? How do you want them to feel? As a writer you have this power.
If these questions are answered carefully then it can help guide the writing so that this goal is actually achieved.
If you have an idea for a book pootling around in your brain and you would like to start the journey to getting it written contact me about my mentoring programme
today or book a call with me.
There is nothing more amusing than checking out mediaeval artistic renditions of lions and other heraldic creatures. These beasts, grimacing and gurning are a strange juxtaposition of human, animal and demon and as far from the cute image of Alex from the Madagascar franchise or in fact a real lion as you could possibly get. There are three main reasons mediaeval lions are so ‘bad’ and un-representational; The artists were following a very tight brief. Some of the artists may never have seen a lion, and were following the descriptions they were given. These lions were representing heraldic principals of bravery, nobility and authority; all very human characteristics. When viewed through this lens it becomes more understandable why they look the way they do, but they are still ‘not right’ and not a great tool for learning about lions. Generative AI is very similar to an uninformed but talented mediaeval artist. There is a element of intelligence but at the end of the day it is following a brief, with no actual ‘knowledge’ of the thing it is producing. As an example, if you prompt your generative AI (ChatGPT and the like) to produce a blog for your new product or service, aimed at your ideal customer avatar you will in all likelihood get a mediaeval lion out the other end. Sort of recognisable, and sort of not. This is because AI doesn’t know what a customer is (ideal or otherwise), has no idea what your product or service is and does, and has no true understanding of how this service or product will serve your ideal customer and their needs. Of course, AI is pulling all the information available from the internet to help with its answer but there is no understanding there. There is no determining fact from falsehoods or even which websites are trustworthy and which are not. So, it skims the internet and puts together content which suits the brief as it understands it. This is then when the actual work should start as this content shouldn’t be used in the raw. It should be edited and tweaked by a human who DOES understand the brief, has been a customer (ideal or otherwise) and can imagine what your ideal customer will feel when using your product or services. We are in a world now, where we have generative AI promoting products and services to humans, when it has no concept of what a human is and how it thinks, meaning the marketing department are in fact more important than ever for ensuring content and copy is aimed at humans and human emotions. You could argue that the world would be a more entertaining place if there were more mediaeval lions in it, but it wouldn’t be a great environment for learning, or for basing purchasing decisions on. If you want to maintain the human element in your content, then I would love to help . Explain the brief, your CTA and your ideal client and I will know what I need to ask to get a clear idea before writing. Then you can rest assured your content was written by a human for a human and we can leave the mediaeval lions to the museums.
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