What Does The Audience Know? - Writing and Editing Advice by Greg Luti
- Greg Luti
- 6 hours ago
- 5 min read
Superman and What the Audience Knows
There is a question regarding one of pop culture’s iconic heroes that a writer can use in order to better understand their own story. The knowledge that Superman is, in essence, a disguise for the real man is not a surprise. The very idea is so well-known that many mock that one person can fool everyone by taking off his glasses. But there is a storytelling device that we can use.
The Superman Situation
First though, let’s discuss the situation. In the story of Superman, the audience knows his identity. That is, in fact, part of the charm to it all. He is helping people, but not really doing it in a way to draw attention to his real identity. We know that as we are following him, he is kind of also tricking people too. He is saving people; no one knows who he is. It creates a light-hearted dynamic. When Clark Kent becomes Superman, we as the audience are not expected to be taken aback.
Why the Audience Needs to Know
In other stories, you may see this tactic of split identities used as a way to tell the story, but in superhero stories, this tactic of the main character’s identity is never hidden from us. For example, imagine if you were not told that Superman was Clark Kent, and that only at the end of it all, you are told that reveal. Well, that kind of takes away from it all. Rather than being with the hero, we are following the story, not him. When you know the story from the perspective of Superman, his actions become the important part, not his identity, since we obviously already know it.
What the Characters Don’t Know
The other key part of the knowledge of the character is that the characters in the story, those that know Superman, don’t really know he is Clark Kent. They only see a man doing incredible feats of strength, not aware that the guy is nothing more than the average journalist in his spare time. That is deliberate, by the way. If the characters in Superman know that he is also Clark Kent, the story is kind of ruined. (Yes, I do know that some recognize him, but for the most part, the world he lives in does not) The characters become the audience, downplaying the very actions the character does, since they see him as not the Man of Steel, but as Clark Kent. The hero then has to answer an uncomfortable question: why even be Superman? This then shifts the light-hearted actions to something more serious. And why? Because the characters in his world figured out he is Clark Kent.
The Two Rules of the Story
The entire framework of Superman is built on two very important storytelling components. 1. The audience knows his real identity. 2. The people he is with, those in the story, do not. (for the most part)
Every plot point, every scene, every interaction goes back to those two things. If the story deviates from this, then the very character created shifts.
The Key Question for Writers
That leads us to the important question every writer should ask themselves before they write a story: “What exactly does the audience know?” Whether it is a tragedy between two Italian lovers, a thriller about a patient on an island, or the actual identity of a superhero, the audience’s knowledge of the characters plays an important role in how you create them.
How Other Stories Handle Audience Knowledge
Once a writer answers that question, the writer can then decide on what they want to do with that information. Shakespeare tells us about the deaths of the two main characters, so we are following the story with that in mind. Shutter Island keeps it vague so you are unsure of the mental state of the main character, creating suspense throughout, and Superman wants you to go along for the ride with the hero as he saves the day, rather than having his character put on trial. And why can this happen? Because the writers clearly defined what information the audience would know in the story, making the story itself easy to navigate, because every plot point went back to that original idea.
Practical Advice: Write It Down Early
I would suggest that a writer write out a line or two when they outline their book of what the audience is aware of, so that the writer never gets too far from that. I can give two examples from stories I wrote.
My Own Examples
The first is when I wrote my first novel, Day in the Life. I decided the audience would only know what the narrator tells them. There is no other person jumping in to correct the narrator. That means there are times when the real story, or what is actually happening, is different than what is being told to the reader. Yes, the narrator can learn from his journey because he is the one the reader is with and naturally closely attached to it, but that also means he may miss a few things along the way too. I knew that I had to have the narrator believe his story more than anything else.
The second is for a story in my short story collection, Everything Must Go. In it, I had a character meet some sort of mysterious vendor. Right away, I knew the vendor was meant to be an almost-ghost-like figure. The hero does not know if the person he is speaking to is real or not, and neither does the audience. That means that when the vendor character spoke, I knew I had him speak in a way that was realistic but could be seen as ominous too.
I did both of these when I wrote my stories because I knew what the audience was going to know.
To use another example from a flash fiction piece I wrote that will be in my latest collection, Little Fires, I had a joke in a flash piece that is for readers of my stuff. I noticed that I wrote a handful of flash pieces that had a quirky message at the end of them, so I decided to subvert that expectation in one of them by not having a message at all and having the narrator of the story almost disappointed by the absent trope. The audience, who are readers of my stories, should get the joke. They just read 5-6 stories in a row of people meeting in an everyday setting and learning something deep from a random encounter, so when a story doesn’t present that, the readers should recognize the pattern.
Why could this happen? Because the answer to what the audience knows was answered early on. Don’t go back to what the audience knows in your story. Have an answer for that right away.
Why Superman’s Glasses Actually Work
Oh, and to answer the myth about how stupid it is that Superman is Clark Kent. I think that is an easy thing to say, and funny as a joke, but really fails to see the story being presented. Think about it like this: how many people in the Superman world see Superman up close? Maybe a handful? It is not like it happens all the time. Isn’t the guy mostly flying around or punching things? And when people are seeing Superman up close, what are they doing? Probably being saved, right? He is holding a building up, saving you from a fire, or doing something else where you are like, “What the hell is going on right now?” That means Superman is a guy who is rarely seen up close, and when he is seen by people, he is saving them from dangerous situations. Let’s be honest, most would probably remember the big S on his chest and his cape, and not even look at his face, because moments ago, they thought they were going to die. If you were ever saved from a fire, would you be able to tell the face of the firefighter who saved you? Probably not.