I’ve never really thought too much about audience while I was in the process of writing. I think about it plenty after I’ve finished the work – trying to decide what markets to send material to.
From a marketing point of view, I guess I usually go about the whole business upside down. If you were to design a product from a clinical standpoint you would look at the market first and see where the demand was, then go and build your widget to match that.
The only problem is I cannot create this way.
I usually get an idea for a story, or character, or setting that starts the whole business of world creation, then the story gradually grows from that seed. I very much feel as though I am following a particular conception.
As I am writing I usually try to stay as true to that initial conception as I can. To bring to life what I have already see in my mind’s eye. Up until now I have never brought a potential reader or intended audience into this process.
But recently I went through an exercise of trying to summarise the themes I dealt with in each of my manuscripts to help me articulate what they were about in marketing pitches. A strange thing happened. I started to think about the sort of reader the work would appeal to. Now I find that if think about that person as I write it helps me to direct my energy.
Do you think about your ultimate readership when you are in the middle of creating your work? Do you deliberately target your stories for markets?
Mad Genius Club 
8 responses to “Who are you Writing For?”
Like you, I usually start with a character, a world, a story idea . . . Usually I don’t think about the reader, but I found that when I started with teenage protagonists, I caught myself thinking “Shouldn’t say that in front of the kids” several times. Or, “that’s bad enough to allow a damn!” or “a fourteen-year-old who was precosiously smart and socially/sexually slow would have an ‘Ick!’ reaction to that,” wouldn’t think this and so on.
My SF/F cross-over series, I rather thought would appeal to women readers, but that was aftersight, not planned. I didn’t deliberately slant it that way. I seem to have as many male readers as female, judging from Amazon reviews. So maybe my perception of who it would appeal to was wrong.
I think most writers are the same in terms of starting the story.
That’s an interesting point Pam. How your own expectations of what you write will appeal Vs what reader actually do respond to it. Makes life interesting:)
And if you don’t want to read the rest of it, what are you? Stupid?
About a month after I published the first book, I met a fellow in a social context (friends of friends) who became fascinated about having a conversation with a “real live author” and we chatted for hours. I was so jazzed by it, that I put up a blog post which was so brief, I’d like to add it here in full.
That’s who I think of now, that and one other fellow who sends me emails from his phone as he gets to exciting parts (and scolds me for scenes I leave offstage). 🙂
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I Met My Reader Today
What I mean is, I met an embodiment of the person for whom my books are written.
Oh, I’ve followed the advice of other authors who say to make up a person of a certain demographic and set of opinions, the better to target a marketing message at. That never worked very well for me as a concept.
My reader was excited to spend time with an author, in depth, discussing a book not yet read. We ranged all over the conceptual landscape discovering common opinions about how a plot should work, how worlds should be built, how characters should be, what makes a hero. We were someplace where we had the time to do that.
The whole time, I was at least as excited to meet the sort of person with whom my kind of story connects, to feel our mutual enthusiasm.
THAT’S why I’m writing, not just because I can.
Hi, Karen. I know exactly what you mean. That contact with just one or two readers who respond to your work can mean so much after all the struggle. A bit of additional inspiration never goes astray!
I tend not to think about the reader, because the story has me so tightly in its grip. But as I mull it over a bit, given my visceral reaction to the agent who said (at a writers’ workshop) “don’t write at more than a 4th grade reading level” i.e. for 10-year-olds, I’d guess that I write for readers who don’t want to be written down to and who like a good yarn. One of the best compliments I’ve gotten was from a friend who said that she doesn’t like science fiction but she really enjoys my stories.
I did have an alpha reader tease me that I’m the only mil-sci-fi author that he knows of who writes PG-rated stories instead of R, because I tend to keep the nasty bits off stage.
I write for me – I have to, because I have to satisfy myself or I can’t do it at all.
But I periodically stop and ask myself: who the heck is going to read this THING I’ve been working on for so long, and have so long to work on before it’s DONE.
Before self-publishing was a viable option (yeah, I started before then), I despaired of ever getting it past an agent and finding a publisher.
The problem is that the most obvious words to describe it have such strong connotations I haven’t yet found the right way to not get dismissed out of hand by the very people I think might like it.
The un-obvious words are coming slowly, and led to the addition of a very short prologue that is essentially a third strand to how the story is being told. When I tried it out on a beta-reader, it had the right startling effect.
Maybe I’ll get those tiny bits of writing just right by the time I’m done, so I can actually reach ‘my tribe.’ But phew – it is more work than the writing!
Ultimately, I don’t think I have the internal fortitude to tell this story unless it reaches the readers I want – it is just too much darned WORK.
ABE
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