A Dash of Words with Loleta Abi Romance Author

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The Writer’s Wheel 4/9/19 Your Purpose

Loleta Abi

Do You Know Who You Write For?

Who do you write for? Yourself? Others? Telling a story has no right or wrong audience. Your first reader is obviously yourself. Then you move on to cps and betas. An agent. Editor. Publisher. Readers everywhere. Do you know who your target audience is? You shouldn’t say everyone. If you’re writing for teens, for instance, there are the 12-14 demographic and the 14-18 one. MG is usually 8-12. Picture books for younger. Adults are 18+. Once you’ve identified your reader, consider your purpose for writing for that age group.

Do you want to inspire children? Entertain teens and adults? You’ve got to look at your stories and see where they fit. Too young? Too old? Can they be changed to your target audience or will it kill the story? If it can’t be changed, you’ll either have to look into a more appropriate audience or box the story. You wouldn’t want to put a story full of sex into a MG’s category. Likewise, you wouldn’t want talking animals in an adult book unless these are intelligent animals brought about my science ala Dean Koontz’s The Watchers.

Do You Know Your Purpose?

Why do you write? What do YOU get out of it? I like to think I write to entertain. I have no lofty ambitions that I know more than other people and want to educate them on things. Though from time to time, I do write stories that I do share that are important to get the audience to see from the point-of-view of the victim. I think those are important stories. Writing them is a challenge as you don’t want to become too preachy.

Instead, you just want to show your audience a scene and pull them along slowly and let them consider what to think as they go. You can’t slap them in the face with right and wrong, they won’t react well to that. Challenge their thoughts, their feelings. Let them open their eyes.

Have a great week, take care, and God bless! I go in for my second surgery on Wed. I hope to bounce back faster without the steroid shots.