Write for your audience?
Writing gurus often say this. While they state many things that are complete garbage, like “write what you know” (I’m not an ET, for example, nor know anything about real ones—that’s also a great rebuttal to all the anti-cultural-appropriation idiots out there), let me give all those so-called gurus the benefit of the doubt here and try to make sense of this advice.
I believe my first published novel Full Medical (2006) is as current and entertaining as my last, Son of Thunder (2019). (There’ll be more, of course.) They’re all fresh because I write stories like those I love to read (for that reason, I do very little fantasy and horror, and eschew pure romance and erotica—I’m just not that interested in reading such stories…or writing them).
And while my main motivation for writing these stories is to tell a good story that entertains my readers, a secondary motivation is to entertain myself while writing them. As a result, I constantly put myself in the readers’ point of view: what turn of phrase will resonate most here, what character’s action is appropriate, what plot twist will wow the reader, and so on? For me, “write for your audience” means to write for those imagined readers, myself included. Fundamentally, that’s all it can mean, all you gurus who read this.
Let me embellish that a bit. For so many authors (including me), our audience is just too varied. While a how-to book or novel about a drug addict might have an audience we can focus on, general fiction usually cuts across many demographics. At a book event, a tween wanted to read The Midas Bomb (I had the print edition on sale). Because it treats some very adult themes, I conferred with the girl’s mother. “Oh, she reads all mysteries and thrillers.” Case closed, because Mommy gave it the okay. (Maybe she wouldn’t be as quick to do so with Teeter-Totter between Lust and Murder, but who knows?) In that same event, or another (they’re all blurs now), an octogenarian wanted me to sign the copy of Rogue Planet she’d just purchased—she loved sci-fi. As I write this article, I can only ask: What would the gurus say about that?
They’d have to admit at least that my audience is rather general. If I twist the gurus’ arms a bit, I could probably get them to admit that my tactic for writing to my audience is correct: Imagine my general reader, from twelve to eighty-two, and without considerations for race, religion, sex or sexual preferences, and so forth, write stories that I believe will entertain that general reader.
As a matter of fact, that’s easy to do! I am one of those readers. I got turned onto writing as a kid because I was an avid reader and figured I could write books like the ones that I enjoyed reading. It took me a while to do it because life events got in the way, but now I’m doing it full time…and loving every minute of it.
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Comments are always welcome!
More than Human: The Mensa Contagion. Another “evergreen book” from yours truly, that is, as current and relevant as the day it was published, and just maybe a story that might make you feel better during the pandemic (maybe COVID will force us to make some positive changes in our society?—it has certainly revealed some flaws!). An ET virus comes to Earth and creates Homo sapiens 2.0. What do the new humans do? They don’t go to Disney World after that big win—they colonize Mars! This is an epic sci-fi saga all in one novel. Available in .mobi (Kindle) ebook format at Amazon, and in all ebook formats at Smashwords and its affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.) and lending and library services (Scribd, Overdrive, Baker & Taylor, Gardners, etc.).
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
