The Writing Slant: Same Topic, Different Audience

Award-winning writer Kathy Widenhouse has helped hundreds of nonprofits and writers produce successful content and has gained 600K+ views for her writing tutorials. She is the author of 9 books. See more of Kathy’s content here.

An online devotional for writers

A Word From The Word

Many people have set out to write accounts about the events that have been fulfilled among us. (Luke 1:1, NLT) 

A Word For Writers

A writing slant is a specific angle on a topic, geared to a specific audience. 

The story may be the same, but it is presented in a different way or with different details to different readers. 

A good example of slant is the Nativity story as told by two different writers: Matthew and Luke.

Matthew was a Jew and one of Jesus’s disciples. He wrote to the Jews about Jesus, a Jew. His version of the Nativity story (Matthew 1-2) opens with Jesus’s genealogy to show Jews that the Messiah came from the line of David. His story includes several Old Testament references to the Messiah to emphasize God’s fulfillment of prophecy. Jews were looking for a king. Is it any wonder that magi from the east came to worship their new leader? 

Luke, on the other hand, was a Gentile and a physician. He wrote to Gentiles about Jesus, although he had never met Him. In Luke 1-2, the good doctor doesn’t mention Jesus’s ancestry nor Old Testament prophecy. His focus is on the impact of this child on different kinds of people – Elizabeth, John the Baptist, Mary, shepherds – as a physician should.

Today, we celebrate the Nativity as a composite of these two versions of the same story. But these two writers recorded Jesus’s birth in versions that were best for their readers.

A Wise Word

Slant your article to specific readers.

A Word To Pray

Gracious Father,

Thank you for the 40 authors who recorded your Word in the Bible. Show me the writing slant to use in each piece of content I write. Help me to understand my specific group of readers and write to their needs.  

In Jesus’s name, Amen.

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