Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/41655
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I'm taking a writing course and the biggest challenge I'm facing is figuring out my audience — particularly for something I have written where I didn't have an audience in mind. Some topics or style of writing, of course, are easier than others. I'm posting a paragraph (not for critique, just context). Is it legit to appeal to a general or broader audience? Mind you, this is just a paragraph exercise, possibly it would be easier to figure out the audience if I was expanding the paragraph into a specific piece. I guess I am looking for guidance on what cues I might pick up from a piece of writing to determine who might be interested in reading it.

**Edited to add:** My thinking was possibly a piece like this could appeal to collectors of objects? Those, maybe, who are interested in old versus new technology? Or is this too specific?

> I yearn for the ticktock of my grandma’s cuckoo clock. Mesmerised by its swinging pendulum, I would sit quietly, waiting for mister blue bird to pop out. Picturing it cozily tucked away, twitching its wings, wanting to fly, fly away. The appearance of the cuckoo was always a rare and magical moment. Years later, I learned its marvel was a gift of technology and not forest fairies or gods. Cuckoo clocks, it turns out, are equipped with a mechanism made from cast weights in a pine-cone shape. The original “cu coo” sound was derived from the bellows pushing air through two wooden whistles that mimic the call of the bird. Despite this stab of reality to my fairy tale heart, the cuckoo is a reminder of a time when things were made intricately by hand and time was measured in hours, not tweets.

Original score: 2