Week 3 – Who’s Your Audience?

 

Now that you’ve come up with a story idea and have had some time to play around with it, the next step is to determine your audience.  Who would read this kind of story?  Here are some of your choices:

Literary isn’t really a genre but from everything I’ve read, no one has really given a clear definition.  As a reader, you know when something is literary.  You can usually find the books on Oprah’s list.  She doesn’t normally suggest genre fiction.  It’s easier for me to show what literary fiction doesn’t have rather than what it does, so here are my thoughts on the subject.

 Literary fiction doesn’t always have a happy ending and some times, it doesn’t always have a satisfactory ending.  Don’t get me wrong, I read literary fiction but on a bad day, it may not be my first choice. 

 The stories often have deeper meanings and sometimes I feel you have to work harder to get it.  They are generally all stand-alone stories.  You won’t find a series, usually that are considered literary.  The story settings can be anywhere and any time from historical to contemporary. 

Romance – has always been a popular genre.  For quite a few years now, they’ve sold over 50% of all genre fiction.  Some people think it’s the easiest market to break into.  I even had a writing instructor tell me all you have to do is contact a publisher to get an outline to write a romance.  The publisher supposedly will just send one out for you to complete.  That was when I decided I’d wasted my money on that class.  The instructor was a lawyer by day and he bailed out on us mid-term.  The basic requirement for a romance is that it has to have a happy ending.  The hero and the heroine always end up together.  There are vast variations though. They range from historical to contemporary, romantic comedy, suspense and so many more.  Over the years, they have developed many sub categories and the publishers have responded with different categories for each.  If you are interested in writing romances, I would suggest reading as many as you can to determine what category you want to write.  Then contact the publisher for the guidelines that will enable you to complete something they will actually have an interest in reading.

Western – The Western is one of the oldest forms of American literature.  Like most historical novels, it pays to be accurate about your information. If you long to go on a cattle drive, participate in a shoot out on Main St., or hang out at the saloon and gamble, this might be the genre for you.  Like romances, westerns have evolved and don’t necessarily have to be from the cowboy’s point of view.  It could be any of the characters in the story, women, Indians, one-room schoolhouse teacher, dry goods clerk, the choices are infinite.  Westerns haven’t been so popular in the past several years but things change.  You might write the next novel that pulls new readers back into the genre.  

Science Fiction– This genre seems to be popular with the younger writers I meet.  Science fiction takes real science and adds a twist to make it more interesting.  Some of the fictional storylines from the past have actually happened.  When Jules Verne and H.G. Wells wrote about going to the moon, it hadn’t happened, yet.  Writers of science fiction have to stay ahead of real science.  Who knows maybe what they write fuels the imagination of modern scientists? Science Fiction tends to either happen in the future or somewhere else in the universe.

Fantasy – While Science Fiction is based on scientific possibility, fantasy is making the impossible believable.  This genre is also widely popular with younger writers, at least the ones I’ve met locally.  Fantasy can happen anywhere at anytime. 

Mystery – This genre requires some skill with puzzles.  Instead of developing one story, you have to develop two, the central story and the mystery.  It usually involves a murder and it can happen behind a closed door or it can be as graphic as the writer wishes.  Like the other genres there are different sub-categories of mystery that go from a cozy that tells about the murder but isn’t explicit to suspense novels that go into detail about serial killers and their methods of murder.  Mysteries can be anywhere from historical to contemporary.

The difficult part of all this is that all genres can contain elements of other kinds of writing.  That’s what makes it interesting for you and helps you decide exactly what you want to write. 

Here is another suggestion to help you continue to come up with new ideas.  Use a book journal.  This isn’t something you write about you, it’s a way to organize your thoughts about what you are writing.  You can use it to keep track of story ideas, scene ideas, character names and background information.  Write down what you accomplished on your novel for the day.  Write down your word count or page goal.  You could keep this journal separate or include it as a section of your book information binder.  Find what works for you.  Keep this next to you when you write.  When your memory fails you, open it up as your personal writing reference.  Have a section that describes your characters so that when you’re half-way through the book you don’t mention green eyes for a character that started out with blue.  Writing a novel takes time and this way you don’t have to remember everything in your head.  Write the thoughts down and you have them for future reference.  I like to have a section that shows my outline, story ideas, characters, settings, time frame.  Stick a calendar in your binder that will also cover the time frame of your story. Anything that will keep you organized.

These are just some of my suggestions.  How do you work on your novel?  Want to share your thoughts about the writing process?

Assignment –

This week decide whom your audience is and what kind of book you want to write.  Start reading what is on the bookshelves in that genre right now.  Get familiar with the genre.  Take it a step further and check out the publishers.  Go online and find their guidelines so you can shape your story into something they might like.  This is an adventure.  Have fun with it.

Next week, I’m going to write about where to begin, characters or plot?

Virginia

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Tags: Novel Genres