In the Target? That Is the REAL Question…

Is it good or bad? Irrelevant.

Is it target-placed or outplaced? This is the real question. And it doesn’t matter if it’s a product, an event, or simply a sketch you wrote and read for fun.

I wrote a short, absurd sketch, “Interactive consultancy“, about a psychological counselor who goes crazy provoked by a client. It’s a three-page satirical instance I wrote for fun, which I have read on a few occasions.

As I have stated, I’m not a good fiction writer, although I’m working on it as a hobby.

This is the beginning of reading the text at Dragoş Butuzea‘s [ro, blog] Recitiri on November 2, 2009. (Filmed by iYli [ro, blog])

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This is part of the discussions upon it that night (Filmed by iYli [ro, blog])

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This is the text read at the International Psychology Fair, 2008, with Adrian Popescu.

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And these are the discussions at the International Psychology Fair

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I haven’t published the text, and I don’t intend to. But if you wish me to send it to you privately, you can write me an e-mail and I will.

First, I wrote it for fun and haven’t improved it. Its stake is whether it works the way it is or doesn’t. Like most of my short fiction scribblings, the main structural problem is that it offers an expectation and fulfills it. That’s all. No twist. No surprise. No real conflict. It’s just an action-reaction setup, which doesn’t offer much from a story point of view.

Then, it’s much too niched. And now, I’m coming to the critical marketing point I wanna make. As you can observe, the two kinds of audiences’ reactions are quite different. At the International Psychology Fair, it was well-received by psychologists who said there are a lot of incompetents who behave like the character in the play. On the other hand, the impressions were quite contrary at Dragoş Butuzea‘s [ro, blog] Recitiri [ro, html], where a literary standpoint was imposed. This is a perfect example to keep in mind considering:

1. If somebody likes your presentation, it doesn’t mean it’s great. It might just be that they’re in the target.

2. If somebody doesn’t like your presentation, it doesn’t mean it’s terrible. It might just mean that they’re not in the target.

3. Whether it’s good or bad is not as relevant as being memorable. People might comment on it, forbid it (like Sorin Tudor did by first posting my text on the website and then deleting it, for which I thank him – it adds to my point, and also, I was pretty on the fence about publishing it), but they will not forget it soon.

4. When you become aware of what you sell, you will find the most proper way to get the public to it. The first time I presented a censored version of the play was in May 2005, at the EuroDiversity Contest in Iasi (represented Romania), organized by a student association, ANSSA. Then, when I actually presented it as a premiere during the National Theatre Students’ Festival in December 2005, I made some posters inviting the public with the tagline:

“Are you tired enough of being psychologically fucked?”

That was on the day of the premiere. The hall was full of people. It was shocking, and I meant it to be, because it raised an expectation, as a spectacle, that was fulfilled (even if from a literary standpoint, it is not good enough). One of the participants in the audience at the spectacle even told me she wanted to star in the following play setup. That brings me to…

5. It doesn’t have to be good to sell it. You just need to find its public. That doesn’t mean I’m in for low-quality sales; I’m just stating a fact that you might have noticed. The “number one” is not necessarily numbered 1 in quality because it is number one, but most likely because it got the promotion capital to be on the market as number one. Number one on who’s standards?

This short sketch doesn’t compare to my two pretty expanded drama plays (in space, time, and characters), which I also haven’t published, but on which I got some appreciation from theatre experts. But those were plays on which I worked for months, even years, not a sketch drafted in a few hours and read for fun.

I wrote this post as an argumentation, not even from a “look what interesting thing I’ve experienced” standpoint, but as a mere observation of how someone can use an experience to look at it. I don’t ever intend to get money from selling “Consultanta interactivă” because 1) I’m not into theatre, and 2) It’s simply bad writing. And you might notice that I’ve started a marketer’s reason first rather than an author’s reason. In the end…

6. If you want to sell yourself as an author, you’d better market yourself well!

[All videos embedded in this post are in only Romanian]

PS: I’m only going to Recitiri for fun (you can read here Chinezu’s entry on this). And sometimes it’s very, very fun.

Marcus Victor Grant

Text copyright © Marcus Victor Grant 2009-present, all rights reserved.

The materials on this blog are subject to this disclaimer.