What is the Reader's Perspective?
It's also a good idea to be aware of your reader's general perspective on an issue when you write. For example, many people have an opinion on the issue of whether high school students should be allowed to bring their cell phones into the classroom, and their opinions are often determined by their perspectives - by who they are.
Many teenagers would support or oppose the idea of being allowed to bring cell phones to class simply on the basis of whether having a cell phone in class would benefit them. We could probably expect that the idea would be pretty popular among high school kids, but many teachers, on the other hand, probably wouldn't like the idea too much if they don't want a bunch of distracted kids in their classrooms.
So if you were to write an essay in which you argued in favor of high school students being allowed to have cell phones in class, that essay would be quite different depending on whether you were writing for an audience of high school students or teachers. And that's because we know that the members of those two groups have their own interests in mind.
So if you were to write in favor of allowing cell phones in high school classrooms and your audience were a group of teachers, you'd have to come up with ways that teachers could benefit from that policy. You would have to make an appeal to that group's interests. You might argue, for example, that in the wake of so many violent incidents in schools, allowing students to have cell phones is a basic matter of safety. Clearly, though, a group of teachers would be a much tougher crowd to convince on this issue than a group of high schoolers would be.
What Level of Knowledge Does the Reader Have?
Think back to our nightmare situation from earlier - about having panic-inducing bad dreams about trying to take a test but not understanding any of the words on the sheet or about your boss sending you an email about work that you don't understand.
You definitely don't want your audience's reaction to be horror when they read an essay you've written. (There are, of course, exceptions, but we'll save 'How to Write an Effective Vampire Essay' for another day.)
To prevent a scary reaction on the part of your reader, you should take into account what your reader knows about your topic as you write. The reader's knowledge of your subject might depend in part on his or her age or level of education, for example.
Think about what background information your reader might need to be brought up to speed on your topic. Are there any facts, processes or techniques that need to be explained? Any terms that need to be defined?
Let's say that you're writing about what a lawyer needs to do to get a photograph admitted into evidence during a trial.
If your audience were a lawyer that hadn't ever had to do that yet, you could use plenty of legal terminology and simply lay out the steps for him or her. If your reader were a law student, you could probably use most legal terminology safely, but when you describe the steps, you'd need to use a bit more context for what would likely be an unfamiliar situation.
And if your reader were a layperson - someone with no legal background - you would have to start with some background information, explaining why following the rules very strictly would be important. You would have to explain each step in detail, and you would have to define a number of legal terms.
Even in situations where the differences in knowledge levels of your potential audience aren't so varied, you should consider who will be reading your essay so that you'll know the right amount of space to devote to filling in background, explaining concepts and defining terms without confusing your reader or wasting too much space.
What Do You Want Your Reader to Take Away?
As you write an essay - or any piece of writing - you'll need to think about what you want your reader to take away from what you write. And there are really two layers to this point.
First, of course, is that you want to fulfill your basic purpose. You might want to inform your reader about how the electoral college works, for example. Or maybe you need to let your supervisor at work know about what parts of a project have been completed. Or, borrowing our idea from before, perhaps you are trying to persuade your school's faculty and administration that students bringing cell phones to class is a fantastic idea.
To inform, to persuade, or to entertain - those are examples of primary objectives, or purposes, and to meet those objectives, you'll need to think carefully about who your readers are and what their positions are, what your readers' perspectives might be and what level of knowledge your readers have about your subject matter.
But there's an important secondary objective that underlies much of what you will write, which is just as important as your primary objective. That secondary objective has to do with achieving what you want your reader to think about you based on your writing.
We all want our readers to come away from reading what we've written with a positive impression of us. If you've written a research memo for your boss, you want her to be informed by it and to form the opinion that you're a wonderful, valuable employee. If you've written an informative or persuasive essay for your teacher, you want him to be struck by how talented and meticulous a writer you are and by how much you know.
So how do you accomplish the secondary objective of making your reader think well of you based on what you've written? You'll have to pay particular attention to using all of the writing skills in your arsenal. Those skills would include effective organization, the use of details to support your main points and thorough editing.
Remember that in addition to informing, persuading or entertaining your reader, you may also have the added task of demonstrating all that you know about your subject and that you're a good writer (when writing an essay for a teacher). Or you might be trying to show how organized and creative you are (if your audience is your boss) and you've written a problem-solving proposal for her.