Writer's Room(11).

How to Sell Yourself to Your Audience.

Welcome to the Writer’s Room.

This is a space for people who write, and for people who love understanding how writing works. Here, I break down the craft without overcomplicating it and share what’s happening behind the scenes of my own work.

In this section, we’ll talk about:

• how I build believable characters

• how I layer faith into fiction without preaching

• structure, POV, dialogue, and tension

• writing as both art and discipline

Think of this as pulling up a chair while the work is being made, honest, practical, and grounded in process.

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What is a Captive Audience?

Have you ever entered a bus and then someone begins to sell stuff?

It’s a very popular occurrence in Lagos. These bus marketers are taking advantage of the fact that you have nowhere to run to and are forced to listen to them. At that moment you are a captive audience.

The Miriam Webster dictionary defines a captive audience as “a person or people who are unable to leave a place and are thus forced to listen to what is being said.” Example: The passengers on the bus were a captive audience.

Now, you may have no choice but to listen to the peddlers on the bus, but that doesn’t mean you have to buy their stuff. They will need to do the work to convince you and convert you to buy their wares.

Now, it’s not only these peddlers that use this approach, multinational companies have also taken advantage of this opportunity. This is why they pay money to have adverts placed on public transportation with tv screens. Then they go-ahead to create content aimed at converting you.

However, except you are going to kidnap folks, it’s not easy to find a captive audience. So the table has been flipped. People will stick around for something that catches their interest. Loyalty makes them willing to be captured.

As a result, advertisers take advantage of platforms that have loyal audiences who have willingly become captive and place their products on those platforms. This is why advertisers place products on trending tv programs or radio stations.

So the next time you watch an advert on youtube or television, this is exactly what they are doing.

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