The Archer's Unseen Target: On the Myth of Writing for a Single Reader
There’s a piece of advice so common in writing circles it’s practically scripture: “Write for one person.” We’re told to picture a single, ideal reader—a friend, a mentor, a version of ourselves from years past. This, the wisdom goes, cuts through the noise, grounds our voice, and makes our writing feel intimate and authentic. It’s the archer focusing on a single, painted bullseye. The logic is seductive. But I’ve come to believe this focus, while well-intentioned, can sometimes lead us to miss the wider field entirely.
The problem isn’t the desire for connection, which is noble. The problem is one of artifice. Can we truly conjure a complete, nuanced human being in our mind’s eye and write solely for them? Or do we instead create a cardboard cutout, a composite sketch of traits we believe our audience should have? This imagined reader often becomes not a person, but a persona—an avatar of taste we assume rather than a complex individual we know. We end up writing for an idea of someone, which is just another form of writing for a crowd, albeit a very small, hypothetical one.
This practice can subtly limit the work. Writing for a single, predefined reader can become a form of pandering, a narrowing of scope to fit what we presume that one person wants to hear. It risks sanding down the interesting, rough edges of a thought because our imagined reader might not ‘get it.’ The true, messy, and surprising nature of exploration can be stifled by the desire to please a ghost.
I propose a different, perhaps more honest, aim. Instead of writing for one person, try writing from one person. Write from the deeply specific, unique, and irreplaceable place that is you. Your curiosity, your confusion, your particular way of seeing a crack in the pavement or the way light falls on a dusty bookshelf—that is your true material. Authenticity isn’t found in tailoring your voice for a hypothetical other; it’s found in the courage to fully own your own.
When you write from a place of genuine inquiry, you are not shooting an arrow at a single target. You are launching a signal flare into the night sky. You cannot know who will see it, or from how far away, or what meaning they will make of its particular hue and arc. Your job is not to aim for a specific pair of eyes, but to make your light as true and as bright as you can. The right readers—the ones who needed to see that exact signal, who will find resonance in your particular frequency—will find their way to it. They will see their own thoughts reflected in your honesty, and that connection will be far more powerful than any crafted for a fictional single soul.
Notes & further reading
A few pages I came back to while writing this: