With your purpose in mind and your audience profile under way, you are ready to think about the best way to connect with your audience. The benefit of composing multimodally is that you have options for communicating your message. Consider the following scenarios and think about what decisions you would have to make to best connect to these audiences.
You are composing for a group of local second graders to teach them about air quality.
You are composing for other college students to share advice on making sound financial decisions.
You are composing for your school’s administration to propose building a war memorial on campus.
How can you appeal to these audiences in these situations?
The second graders might need pictures to help explain the concept of air quality.
The college students might be interested in hearing audio clips from other students who have faced specific financial challenges.
You might reach the school administrators by knowing the school’s mission statement and core values and presenting slides that connect those values to your proposal.
When student composer Marisa Williamson began working on her composition, she did some talking, reading, and exploring. Her assignment was to present an argument creatively on a topic of her choice and for an audience of her choice. She was familiar with writing argument essays; for this project, however, she decided to compose a video argument.
Williamson wanted to explore historic events that had national attention in the United States and somehow tie them together. She wanted to connect to people her own age, so she began by thinking about events from her own childhood that made a lasting impression on her and had national significance. The event that stood out most clearly was the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack that destroyed the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City.
She started to think about other national events that were captured on film or video, what they have in common, and what it means to her generation to experience historic moving images recorded before their birth. To brainstorm ways of effectively reaching her audience, she also thought about arguments she had encountered that had affected her thoughts or feelings on a subject.
Williamson, “To the Children of America” (video essay project)
Related topics:
Prewriting with your purpose in mind
Identifying your audience’s needs and perspectives
Recognizing an unintended audience