A common piece of writing advice is to choose a specific person (close friend, spouse) and write to that person. It helps clarify the tone of the writing. Instead of writing for a nebulous crowd of people and have the writing float into the type of writing that sounds like writing, you’re keeping a stronger voice throughout. A lot of writers find this practice very freeing.
In his book On Writing, Stephen King says:
“Someone once wrote that all novels are really letters aimed at one person. I think that every novelist has a single ideal reader; that at various points during the composition of a story, the writer is thinking, ‘I wonder what he/she will think when he/she reads this part?’”
John Steinbeck echoed
“Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death, and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person—a real person you know, or an imagined person—and write to that one.”
The same thing can be said of a physical space. When designing a hotel, coffee shop, restaurant, etc, choose a singular, guiding muse that you’re creating the space for. This is going to be the type of place that XXX would come to after XXX. Where would that person want the bathrooms? The color of the drapes? The appetizers we offer?
In this circumstance, the person doesn’t need to be familiar or even alive. But you must choose just one. A few months ago I was talking to a very successful restauranteur in Los Angeles about this. He’s known for creating all the celebrity hotspots around town. He said for each of those places he always had a specific celebrity muse in mind. His most recent creating was a lounge he imagined Drake going to after a show. Placement of bar? Location of parking? What would Drake do? Want? The place is now open and successful beyond imagination. It also has become one of Drake’s favorite places to come hang, after a show….
All this to say, the more specific you can get about who you are creating something for, the better. Your goal should never be to create something for everyone. Those are the type of creative endeavors everyone forgets.
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