StoryCraft Novel Challenge Day 3: Do you know your reader?

Have you ever thought about who will actually be reading your book?

What often sets apart good writers from great writers is that they understand who their reader is, and they know how to craft a novel that both meets and exceeds their expectations. 

One of the core tenets of the StoryCraft Process is that your first draft is for you, but the final draft is for your readers. You’ll always have a version of the book that makes your heart sing, but in order to reach the widest group of readers, we need to make sure we understand who we’re writing for. 

This is a great exercise while we’re developing our novel because it can critically change the direction of the story itself.

The three main touchpoints we want to understand are our Genre, Audience, and Market.

Your Genre is the flavor of your book.  It’s where the book fits on the shelves at the bookstore. Are you writing a fast-paced thriller? A slow-burn horror? A quippy romance? Each of these genres has an optimal reader, and these readers have expectations for the books they pick up. If you’re writing a commercial romance, you’ll need some form of Happily Ever After in order to satisfy your reader.

Your Audience is the age category of your reader. Writing for Adults vs. Young Adult vs. Middle Grade all make for very different experiences, and you’ll want to make sure your characters fit those conventions. Writing for children and teens, especially, needs some consideration to make sure the voices of the characters sound right. Speech patterns of current teens have changed a lot since we were teenagers.

Finally, you’ll want to think about your Market. Is this book more commercial or literary? 

All of these considerations will help you determine who your reader is, and therefore how you should adjust the story and the voice to meet and exceed their expectations. Create a list of comparative titles to this future book and pay attention to where these books are shelved. 

A commercial romance has a very different feel to a slow-burn, literary horror, and if we know in advance what kind of book we’re writing and who it’s for, it can save time on that eventual final draft designed for our readers.

Use the hashtag #StoryCraftNovelChallenge to share the flavor of your book and find other authors with similar writing styles!

Happy Writing,

Jess and L Theodoora