Writing for a target audience: email them
1. Think of someone you know who belongs to that target audience. The predominant criterion should be the level of knowledge of the subject-matter. Are you writing for novices, experts or intermediates? Visualising this person in your mind will help you to pitch any technical vocabulary and assumed knowledge at the right level.
2. Go to your email client and write an email to that person, making the case or telling the story you wish your article to convey. Don’t self-edit as you go, but write personally and informally as you would ordinarily to that person. Send the email, explaining that is assisting you in writing an article.
3. Copy and paste your sent email to a text editor or word processor, and remove any personal information. Remove the salutation and sign-off.
4. Now, read what you have and change anything that you think needs to be changed to turn what you have into the article you want to write. There probably isn’t anything. If you’ve written in the second person, keep it, unless you have a particular reason not to.
