Advice from Diana Wynne Jones

For my web-log post on audience analysis, I picked an article by a favorite author. Diana Wynne Jones wrote the piece Hints about Writing a Story for a children's website, so it is meant for younger readers who have found they enjoy writing.

To sound friendly to children, Jones adopts a casual, conversational tone, not worrying too much about being grammatically correct. This is evident in the passages "You will come across bits that make you sort of squiggle inside and say ‘Oh, I suppose that will do.’ That is a sure sign that it won’t do," and "You could ask someone to do a drawing and they would draw it just as you had seen it. Promise." I was impressed at how easy it was to understand what she meant by "squiggle," and the impact of her advice was not diminished by her lack of formality. In addition, her choice to speak in second person is good for this audience, because her readers will probably readily agree with her, whereas second person narration can be irksome if you disagree with what what the author says about 'you.'

Jones makes some suggestions and gives some hard, fast rules about writing. For example, she says, "The IMPORTANT THING is that you should ENJOY making up your story," and "You must read your story AS IF YOU HAD NEVER SEEN IT BEFORE." She explains how you should carry out these instructions, but she knows that she doesn't need much further logical support behind them because readers of her essay are probably already familiar with her writing and authority to give advice on it.

But she might sound condescending to children if she were to give all of her advice imperatively. To avoid this, she only uses that style when she considers her observation to be something that doesn't vary from person to person, such as when she says "Everyone is different and that means that everyone is going to need to write a story in a different way. You have to discover how you need to do it," or "To start, you have to have an idea. I can’t help you there."

Jones manages to target children as her audience without sounding too bossy when she says some things are non-negotiable through her understanding that she is already held in high esteem as a writer.
(Too much commentary, not enough analyzing.)