Discover the value of knowing your story's ideal reader and how it guides your writing. Explore real-life examples of writers modifying their characters to connect with their target audience. Learn how understanding your ideal reader enhances storytelling, editing, and book marketing strategies.
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Quick takeaways
Understanding your story's ideal reader is crucial for crafting a book that resonates with them and meets their wants, needs, and expectations.
Knowing your ideal reader helps authors stay on track and tell stories that have a meaningful impact on readers.
Deep dives
Importance of Knowing Your Ideal Reader
Knowing your ideal reader is essential for writing a book that resonates with them. Your ideal reader is the person who will love your book as much as you do and will recommend it to others. By understanding your ideal reader, you can craft a story that meets their wants, needs, and expectations, delivering the emotional experience they are seeking. Knowing your ideal reader also helps in the editing process, allowing you to focus on what's important and remove elements that won't appeal to your target audience. Additionally, understanding your target audience is crucial for publishing and marketing your book, making it easier to connect with agents or find the right readers for your work.
Examples of Ideal Readers' Impact
Two examples highlight the importance of ideal readers. In one case, an author had an ideal reader named Sage, a 17-year-old girl who resonates with certain qualities and desires. Guided by Sage as the ideal reader, the author could ensure that the story aligns with Sage's interests and connects with her on a deep level. In another example, a writer made a significant change to their book based on feedback but later doubted the decision. By reevaluating their target audience and considering their ideal reader, they realized that reverting to the original main character was crucial to impacting the specific group of readers they wanted to reach. These examples demonstrate how understanding the ideal reader helps authors stay on track and tell stories that have a meaningful impact on readers.
Developing an Ideal Reader Profile
To identify your ideal reader, you can consider several questions. Start by imagining your ideal reader's name, location, and age. Then, delve into their personality traits, fears, hopes, and desires. By understanding what keeps your ideal reader up at night and what they value in books, you can shape your story to address their specific challenges and provide them with inspiration. Additionally, knowing what kind of books your ideal reader enjoys can inform your writing and help you find comparative titles in the market. Finally, it's important to remember that while you may hope to appeal to a wide range of readers, starting with a well-defined ideal reader allows you to write a story that truly resonates with that specific group and has the potential to attract other variations of your ideal reader.
In this episode, we're going to talk about your story's ideal reader -- or the one person who is going to love your book just as much as you do. Here's a quick overview of what we talk about in this episode:
[01:00] What is an ideal reader? And why does your ideal reader matter?
[02:20] How understanding your ideal reader can help you write with purpose and edit with focus.
[03:15] How understanding your ideal reader can help you when it comes time to pitch agents and market your book.
[04:45] Meet my ideal reader, Sage, and hear how she helps me cut through the noise and stay focused
[06:45] How one writer's ideal reader helped her get back on track after making big changes in her manuscript
[09:20] 10 questions to help you identify your story's ideal reader
[12:45] What about everyone else? What if I want my story to appeal to everyone?
[14:15] Should each of my stories have a different ideal reader? Or would all my stories share the same ideal reader?
[15:25] Key points and a recap of the episode.
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