Other People

The Peter Elbow's chapter Other People is about how your audience affects your writing.   At first I thought he meant it literally but, he meant it figuratively. The audience he is talking about is the audience in your mind. You picture yourself in front of an audience and began getting nervous. Your audience can help you or hinder you. Elbow tells us about two types of audiences, safe audiences and dangerous audiences. A safe audience is the audience everybody wants. Safe audiences are supportive, friendly, comfortable, and your words come easier. If the audience is paying attention to you, you'll have more ideas and be able to speak more freely. A dangerous audience is what no one wants they are uninterested, you will stumble over your words, and they are just no real audience at all. You will become nervous and you will develop a protective voice. Peter Elbow tells us to ignore our audience and just think of talking to a friend. He also suggests a lot of free writing and changing your audience.