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AS a young short story fellow at the UP National Writers Workshop in
Baguio a decade ago, the workshop banner carried our batch’s
official theme: Who do you write for?
It got me thinking. Who do I write for, indeed?
At first, the answer is always selfish: I write for myself. If I
write a short story, I should be the first one to say I liked it or
I hated it.
However, as a trained scriptwriter for film and
television, I learned early on that I don’t write for myself; I
write for my audience—not even the reading audience but the
audiovisual-receptive audience. I know that as a scriptwriter, my
manuscript will be translated by a creative team into another medium
whose very nature will alter at least some of the ideas I created in
that manuscript. But in that workshop—the very first of its kind
that I attended in my life—I found out that it doesn’t work like
that in literature.
A literary writer has a more personal
relationship with readers. The readers plug directly into the minds
of the writers when they read poems, short stories, novels or
essays. There is no in-between interpretation of one’s work unlike
in the case of the scriptwriter or the playwright. The readers are
the ones who do the visualizing of the piece, imagining the emotions
themselves and picking up the thoughts, meanings and lessons
directly from each piece. It’s a one-on-one creative
correspondence.
A literary writer could then choose to be
conscious of his audience when writing. With a target market is in
mind, it is sometimes easier to write. Whether one writes pieces of
young adult literature for teens, children’s literature for kids,
cosmopolitan love stories for “chick lit” female readers or
horror stories for fans of that genre, a writer could easily utilize
tested templates that could supply pieces with ready expectations.
But what about writers who do not want to be
boxed in a specific format or genre? For this type, a kind of
branding could be developed, making their audience come to them
because of their personal mark. In the world of film theory, we call
this the auteur because a specific filmmaker such as Kurosawa,
Brocka or Fellini already has a visual and narrative-type trademark
identified with their work and their person. In short, when you
watch a Lino Brocka film, you already know what to expect: a
discourse on third world poverty, the highest level of performances
and a quality story that challenges elitist status quo.
The same is true for literary writers. When you
say Virgina Woolf, Haruki Murakami or Jeanette Winterson, you
already know what to expect from their works. However, this does not
mean their works are predictable. On the contrary, you read their
works because you prefer their style or manner of narration, the
kind of stories they tell, the philosophical challenge they pose on
you with their works’ meanings and themes. This is how you
identify favorites.
So do writers, then, write for themselves first
and their audiences second? It depends on what kind of material a
writer wants to create. In the end, it is not very relevant anymore
to ask, “Who do you write for?” Instead, I think the questions
that should be asked are: What do you want to say? What insights
about an aspect of human existence do you want to share with others?
I think these questions will pose more
interesting answers to the writers themselves, and will produce more
challenging narratives that will attract wider audiences in the long
run. 
Comments? Suggestions? E-mail libay.scribevibe@gmail.com.
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