Introduction: Writing as a Form of Entertainment
You want to be a writer. That’s great. But how well do your desires fulfill an audience’s desires? Will the audience accept you?
The average person who takes up writing may do so for a variety of reasons. Very often writers are passionate people who feel the need for self-expression more deeply than others. For them writing, like music or painting, offers an outlet where they can engage in heightened communication, expressing emotion as powerfully as possible.
Some are revolutionaries, out to change the world.
Other writers are less passionate in general, but may have a specific conflict in life that they need to express. For example I’ve known writers who have suffered from child abuse, spouse abuse, or unusual sexual desires and who need to create fictionalized stories about it as a form of therapy.
Again, I know writers who have no specific passion or conflict, but who write merely to attract attention. They see the medium as a road to fame and fortune.
The fact is that your motivations for wanting to write are probably complex. You may have a few great passions, you may want to be rich and famous, you may need therapy.
In fact, your reasons might be primarily economical. You may recognize that being a writer gives you a certain kind of independence from local economies so that you can live in an area where good jobs are tough to find.
Heck, I’ve known many writers who take it up for health reasons. When I started, I was so sick that I couldn’t hold down a regular job.
Whatever your reasons for wanting to be a writer, the audience doesn’t give a damn.
Audience members each have their own agenda. And in order to satisfy them, in order to sell widely so that you can make a living from your art, you need to understand your audience.
So, Why do People Seek out Stories?
The answer to that question depends on who you ask. Many people will tell you that they read or go to movies for “entertainment,” which is a vague and unsatisfactory answer. After all, one man imagines himself laughing when he’s entertained while the wife standing next to him imagines herself crying.
So the answer to the question is quite complex, and the reasons for seeking stories aren’t necessarily the same for all readers.
For example I don’t read horror. I’ve seen enough real horrors in life that the fictions I have read seldom can even faze me. Nor do I like murder mysteries. I had friends murdered by a serial killer when I was a child (they were hacked into pieces and thrown from a speeding car). So such tales may be too painful to read.
Nor do I consider myself to be an expert on romance. But I will talk about some attractions that are common to almost all fiction, and I’ll discuss how to use that knowledge.
Before that, I’d like you to perform an exercise.
Exercise
You probably have a good idea about what you want to write—horror, mainstream, fantasy, historical, romance, westerns, religious fiction, and whatnot. Sit down for ten minutes and list five things that you feel you most like in the fiction you read. Then list the biggest potential danger you see in trying to create that effect.
Doing this exercise will help you understand who your potential audience is, and some of the challenges you may face in reaching that audience.
For example, let’s say you like fantasy. Your response may resemble the following:
1—I like to escape to strange new worlds
But I’m afraid that the worlds I create might not be strange enough. I sometimes wonder if I have enough imagination to compete with the likes of Tolkien. Other times I imagine things that are so alien that I’m not sure I can communicate them to my audience.
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