We’ve covered a number of necessities to keep in mind when preparing to write, as well as during the writing process, many of which are relevant no matter which genre you are working in. One such essential is knowing your audience, which sounds like it would be a simple thing to do, right?
Well, as with many things in this life, the answer to that would likely be: it depends. So, let’s dive right into this.
How exactly do you discover your audience? Do you consider aspects like your demographics (age, ethnic background, location, etc.), the little quirks that give your personality that extra pizzazz, or even your favorite food to eat when the weather is cold and the environment inside of your home is extra toasty?
Certainly, a consideration of these elements might take you somewhere, but in the long run, they likely won’t take you where you need to go.
After giving this a little thought, you might then find yourself thinking that taking a more statistical data-centered approach could be the very key to the whole thing. So, you hop onto the Internet and perform a few searches of your genre of choice, landing on lists of the common literary characteristics of works that grace that specialized category of writing, current trends in retail sales of works identified with your selected genre, and a plethora of other data points that may or may not be remotely of any help to you. And a search of that sort just might prove more fruitful than other evaluations previously considered, possibly even offering up to you a few ‘typical’ characteristics commonly believed to be reflected in the readership of different genres.
Now, you begin to think, “Wow, I might have finally stumbled upon something that is taking me in the direction I need to go.” You smile, do a little excited shimmy, expel a long-pent-up deep breath, and continue down the rabbit hole, sorting through one tidbit after another.
And then, a writer friend of yours calls you up and you start chatting about the new plant that you bought, the crazy cost of barely-countable groceries these days, and, oh yeah…that’s right, that little question that has been burning a hole in your mind for the past few weeks—how do you really determine who your audience is?
Your friend lights up—at least it seems that way, because their voice rises three octaves and their speech speeds into a-mile-a-minute territory. And then they say, “I know exactly what you need to do,” before taking a well-placed pause to build the suspense. You fill up with excitement as you await their profound, secret tip that, once shared with you, will be a gem that only the two of you are aware of.
And then it hits—surprise, followed by a flat sense of unexpected disbelief—when your friend gloriously shares that you need to poll people in your life who read and enjoy the genre that has captured your fancy. You turn your face away from the phone, which you conveniently have on speaker, if only out of sheer protest, only to turn your face back toward the phone when it dawns on you that your friend just might be onto something.
You’re still a bit hesitant to jump all the way onto your friend’s suggested bandwagon, so you ask them, “Now, how exactly is that any different than my fifty million searches for data on the Internet that resulted in the gathering of a few notable characteristics?” Your friend shakes their head—you can feel the sheer force of it through the phone—before telling you that it’s different because you would be receiving the information from real, actual people whom you know, whose responses you are more likely to be able to trust than some random bots or algorithms in the nether regions of the World Wide Web, who, though they’re admittedly intelligent, oftentimes remove the human factor entirely from their offerings, and, since humans will be the ones reading your work, it might be helpful to actually, you know, hear from them.
Your friend doesn’t discount your other efforts, though, noting with compassion, class, and grace that there are benefits to glean from those processes, but, at the end of the day, they stress the importance of keeping the human element in the mix.
And you know what?
You realize that you agree with them, wondering how you hadn’t landed on that bit of wisdom yourself.
So, drumroll please, I will give that same advice to you, though it’s more of an opinion rather than a hard-set rule. So, feel free to take it or leave it. Either way, I look forward to hearing where you land. Be blessed. #sanguinemango
Sanguine Mango 