Do you cater to your audience when writing? Do you even know who that audience is?
Knowing whom we’re writing for helps on the creative front. I’m a firm
believer that you have to satisfy your creative vision, but if you want people to read your book, you also need to keep your audience in mind. My two pups have shown me that how you cater to that audience, however, depends as much on you and your material as it does on your readers.
Take my girl Sophie, a black Aussie-Golden Retriever who still gets mistaken for a Newfie puppy even though she’s 13 1/3 years old. Sophie loves people. Her favorite activity in the dog park is to visit all the humans for pets and compliments. During those short sojourns, she makes the people she has targeted feel like they’re her favorite, new friends whom she loves more than anyone else. Mission accomplished, she bounces back to me, her tail wagging and looking oh-so pleased with herself.
Misha, a two-year-old Aussie-shepherd mix with a bit of husky thrown in, approaches his prospective audience with what could euphemistically be called wild abandon. Forgetting both his training and his manners, he often pops up on his hind legs, greeting newcomers with two paws on their chest. Remorseless despite the immediate corrections that follow, his subsequent leaps and dances exhibit his namesake Mikhail Baryshnikov’s strength and endurance, but, regrettably, not his grace.
Depending on your audience and your material, there’s a place for both approaches when writing. That hit-‘em-hard-and-fast opener works great for a lot of readers, but probably not for cozy romance or even cozy mystery fans. On the other hand, actions fans will likely not respond to a memoir that starts off too gently. They’re going to prefer Misha’s in-your-face approach.
Either way, once you’ve established a relationship with your reader, you might just want to consider Sophie and Misha’s ultimate move that almost always wins over even the most tepid audience: Roll over and show them your belly.
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