We pay a lot of attention to the characters we’re writing about. They’re given carefully thought out names, appearances, relationships and jobs. We choose their age, marital status, gender and pretty much everything about them. It has even been suggested we get to know them more thoroughly by taking them out to lunch or tea to have a nice chat and find out more about them.
Do we give our audience that much thought? By looking at the advertisements in magazines some idea of the type of reader can be attained. A story may then be crafted with that readership in mind. Of course it is still difficult to know who will be reading our work: male, female, young, old, lonely or busy people.
Perhaps we could concoct a composite picture of our audience person and pin it up near our writing station and write with that person in mind.
I've never thought about the audience before, Patricia. I suppose I always assumed it was female and of a certain age, but it's a good point. Regarding characters I always cut pictures out of magazines and work from there. I give them a star sign and cut out their horoscope for that week. It helps put flesh on them. I always give them one bad quality too to make them human. e.g. they cheated in an exam, something along those lines.
ReplyDeleteDeveloping a character is great fun, isn't it, Margaret. We often get side-tracked searching for pictures when we should be getting on with the writing!
ReplyDeletePatricia I'm always aware that there is a reader at the end of my story, so to speak. I'm always chuffed when I get a nice comment about a story and have had two nice mini-reviews on Smashwords this week. Always encouraging. It starts with loving the story and characters yourself, then you hope an editor likes it all and buys it but the ultimate destination is our reader. May there always be plenty of them.
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