avatarLynda Coker

Summary

The article emphasizes that the best audience for a fiction writer during the creative process is oneself, as personal passion and engagement with the story are key to resonating with readers.

Abstract

The article "How to Write Great Fiction — Tip 12" suggests that while knowing your target audience is important for marketing, it should not be the focus when writing fiction. The author argues that the primary audience during the writing process should be the writer themselves. Engaging one's own emotions, interests, and curiosity is crucial because if the writer is not captivated by their own story, it is unlikely that readers will be. Great fiction, according to the author, stems from a story that the writer is passionate about and can't stop writing. The article posits that by writing for oneself, the story will naturally attract a similar-minded audience once it is marketed.

Opinions

  • The author believes that traditional advice about knowing and writing for a specific audience is less applicable to fiction writing.
  • Engaging one's own emotions and interests while writing is seen as essential for capturing the attention of future readers.
  • The article suggests that a writer's passion for their story is a strong indicator of its potential to resonate with others.
  • It is the author's opinion that a story written with genuine enthusiasm will find an audience of like-minded individuals.
  • The author differentiates between the audience considered during the writing process and the audience identified for marketing purposes after the book is completed.

How to Write Great Fiction — Tip 12

Your best target audience may not be who you think

https://pixabay.com/vectors/vote-crowd-conference-group-146962/

How many times have you heard that you need to know who your audience is and that you need to write for that group or narrow it down to one person you know and write for them?

I’m certainly not disputing that tried and true advice because it works. But I do differ when it comes to writing fiction.

When marketing fiction we certainly do need to identify the general and specific audience for our book. That’s easily done once the book is completed.

However, when we're in the actual trenches of our writing process, there is only one audience that counts. In fact, that audience consists of one person — OURSELVES.

As the story unfolds, we’re the only relevant audience. If we can’t engage our own emotions, interests, desires, curiosity, and attention up to the end of the story, how do we expect to do that for anyone else?

In my opinion, great fiction is a story we’re passionate about. It’s a story we can’t stop writing because we have to know how it ends. We have to save our protagonists from whatever conflict is facing them. We transfuse them with our own life energy to rise above and conquer the villain, whatever or whoever it may be.

With all that said, how could we write great fiction for anyone else but ourselves?

We are not so unique that there are not thousands of other people who feel, think, and perceive things much the same as we do. When we write for ourselves, an audience of one, the story when marketed will find its own audience in those others who are like us.

Fiction
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