This week, we’ll be looking at the audience for your writing. While ultimately you have to write for yourself—no one will ever be as passionate about your work as you will—in order to get your message heard and understood, you need to consider the readers. Who are they? What do they like or dislike? What are their life experiences? What are their expectations?
Maybe you already know a bit about your intended audience. If you’re writing a children’s story about a five-year-old at their first baseball game, you know your audience probably isn’t hardcore science fiction fans–unless they are also parents or grandparents. You may know a bit about the demographics and expectations of your sweet romance audience because you’ve read books in that genre for years and participated in book clubs and reader groups.
But you might also be a little confused. You might even be thinking Why narrow this down? I want as many people as possible to read my work. Well, the fact is that even books that reach a mass audience with people of all walks of life reading them start out with a target audience in mind. Think about The Hunger Games. The book series and movies reached a wide audience, but the books—YA dystopian novels—had a clear teen audience in mind. They were written for teens, but the story struck a chord in many people.
On the other hand, if you try to write for everyone, you end up writing for nobody. You can’t please everyone—The Hunger Games has plenty of critics—and if you try, you write a story that’s a bit of this and a bit of that, a hodgepodge of different things that appeal to different people and it doesn’t feel natural or consistent. Or you end up squashing the power out of the story, trying not to annoy anyone. Plenty of folks dislike the love triangle trope in The Hunger Games or the immature decision making of its young characters, but both of these are YA staples.
You might be getting the feeling that your audience is deeply tied to your genre…and you’d be right. Which presents some problems if you don’t know what genre you are writing. Next week, we’ll do a deep dive into genre and category (yes, they are different) but for now, here’s a trick to try. List published stories that you feel like your work could sit alongside, books that have inspired you, books that you would recommend to someone who enjoys what you are writing. Then hop on Goodreads or Amazon or Barnes and Noble and see what genres those books are labeled under. If you’re still a bit confused, hang on until next week.
On the other hand if you do know the genre you’re currently working in (and it’s okay to write stories in different genres!) then do a little research into who reads that genre. Join some reader groups on social media. How old are these folks? What are they interested in outside of books? Read their posts. Read reviews on retailer sites or blogs. What story elements do they like and what do they dislike? And most of all read the books in that genre, as many as you can. Read the popular ones and see what they are doing well. Read the ones that get bad reviews and see why they weren’t as well liked.
So that’s your homework for this week, find your readers and make yourself a reading list. For more on genre and category, I’ll be back next week. Happy writing!
Want to leave the podcast a tip? I have a Ko-fi!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download