Everybody Wants to Touch Someone…Connecting with Your Audience

Growing up, I couldn't do my homework if I didn't have my stereo blaring, usually Barry Manilow (forgive me - I was a child) because no one else in the house could stand him and they'd stay out of my room. Even after high school and college, I found I couldn't write without music of some kind, and the harder the assignment, the louder the music.

In April, I bought the soundtrack to the movie "Once," loaded it iTunes and sat down to write an article for 3 Questions. I had seen the movie several weeks earlier and the songs kept playing in my mind. For weeks, I woke up humming at least one of the songs all day. Sometimes the soundtrack in my brain would switch tracks mid-day. I made a playlist on YouTube of song clips from the movie, then finally decided I needed the CD. I thought it would be great writing music.

So there I was with my blank Word page, my notes, my music, ready to be tremendously productive…I had to turn the CD off. The lyrics, the music kept drawing me in, stealing my attention so I could listen to how they played together, so I could join their fun. I shook my head and turned back to my page. One sentence became two, but then my favorite song came on, one I hadn't found on YouTube, and I was off again. I had 700 words to write and a deadline! I needed to concentrate on my article and I couldn't with that CD playing. The songwriters, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, had created words and melodies that bound me to them and their music.

The need to connect is no more important to anyone than it is to a writer. We have to build connections to the people and the world around us to maintain our source of inspiration. We have to build connections to our creations, and through them, we build connections to our audiences.

How do we make connections?

Write what you know, or better yet, write about something that holds your passion. Several years ago, I reviewed a book about Savannah from its early days as a coastal settlement through its first years as the capital of Georgia. It wasn't my favorite subject or time period so I had no intention of forming any kind of bonds. The writer, Carl Solana Weeks, meticulously researched the book, stuffing every fact he found into it like a kid trying to show all his treasures. Weeks had come to know and enjoy the people he followed through Savannah's childhood so much so that they were real to me through his words and I kept reading to the very end.

Use plot themes or "Universal Truths" to connect. An universal truth is something to which most people can relate. Family relationships are full of universal truths—mothers and daughters, the in-laws, sibling rivalries, etc. Audiences can relate to family themes because they've been there, done that. Everyone has some kind of family.

Common life situations can also draw the audience in. For instance, Stephenie Meyer, author of the Twilight series, set her stories in a high school. In an interview on Amazon.com, she explained, "…high school is such a compelling time period--it gives you some of your worst scars and some of your most exhilarating memories." Although her books are aimed at the YA market, they rank high with adult readers, because they can relate with high school memories of their own

Characters make the strongest connections with readers and audiences, person to person. YA readers in particular look for characters in their age bracket and issues that are important in their lives. However, everyone, young or old, wants to see something of himself/herself in the hero or heroine. Characters that share our dreams, our flaws or our frustrations will draw us in even if they live in a different time, a different reality or are of a different species.

For example, I find the movie "Capote" creatively inspiring. The movie is set in the late 1950s/early 1960s, with an eccentric, androgynous leading character, while I'm definitely a female who wasn't born when Capote began writing his book. Yet I've watched it three times and each time I suffer with Capote over his obsession to his book and the criminals that inspired it. I come away hoping one day to have that sort of passion for a project.

Are there any other ways to connect with readers, listeners or audiences?

Thousands, maybe even millions of ways. Some obvious instant connections include professions, interests and region or location. The 1980s movies "Working Girl" and "9 to 5" follow women office workers rising up against their deceitful, egotistical bosses, drawing raves from working women, while history buffs pushed His Excellency: George Washington by Joseph J. Ellis and Jimmy Carter's An Hour Before Daylight: Memoirs of a Rural Boyhood to the best-sellers list shortly after their release dates in 2005 and 2001 respectively.

What is the best way to connect?

There is no BEST way. A good writer tries to connect with his audience on as many levels as he can. Dan Brown used the struggles of between men, struggle between religious beliefs, a well-known setting in the Louvre, and a likeable character in often-befuddled professor Robert Langdon to make The DaVinci Code a novel hard to put down and a best-seller to boot.


As much as a writer strives to reach his readers, his readers work to find a connection to the writer, be it through plot, character or setting. People want to connect. They want you to invite them step inside your world and get lost for while.