Write for Your Ideal Reader

Every writing project has one

One way to shape your writing is to imagine your ideal reader. Better yet, imagine your three ideal readers. After all, one of the most important reasons to write, at least for publication, is to have what you write read. We write for the reader.

Defining your ideal readers accomplishes several things:

1. Knowing who your readers are helps you focus...

...not only on what you want to communicate, but how you want to say it.

For example, you might want to write an article or a book on the effects of spending hours in from of a computer. If parents are you readers, you’ll want a whole different tone than if teenagers are your audience.

2. Imagining the ideal reader helps with marketing

When you know your readers, you’ll know how to find them. Knowing how to find the reader is the basis of all your marketing efforts.

Although the reader is often obvious when you’re doing articles and short stories for magazines, you may be surprised, if you take a few moments to write about your reader, you find additional markets.

For book length manuscripts, knowing who your readers are is an absolute requirement. Tempting as it is to think whatever we’re writing is for “everyone,” that’s just not true. In fact, if you try to write for everyone, or even a broad section of people, the work you produce is likely to be boring and disconnected.
 

3. Editors know their readers

Editors know exactly who their readers are. The media kits from magazine publishers reveal they know, in detail, the gender, age, income and interests of their readers. They know because they ask through reader surveys. In fact, it’s often a good idea to request a media kit from a magazine publisher, just to take advantage of that research.

Book publishers and their editors also know their market, which is just another way to say they know their readers. Their research isn’t as available as magazine publishers are, but a book catalog can help you zero in on their targets.

Editors love writers who demonstrate, through their proposals, queries and finished work, that they have thought about and identified the ideal readers.

Defining Your Ideal Readers

At a minimum I keep in mind the age and gender of the reader. For example, I sometimes do news articles for a small, local weekly newspaper. Since I live in the neighborhood, I know that we’re an incredibly diverse area, but that the readership of the paper tends to be older women. So that’s who I write for, keeping in mind the others, and occasionally working in some ethnic bits.

My current ideal readers for this site are:

No. 1 – female, white, age 20-105+, kids or grandkids, working or retired, wants to work at home, may have been published and is starting to take writing seriously.

No. 2 – fairly well established writers, mostly non-fiction, both men and women, ages 35 to 105+ wanting to know how to make more money and build their writing business.

No. 3 – Ok, not really a single reader, but a recognition that kids as young as 12 have asked questions on the forum; we have a fair number of readers in both Canada and the UK, and occasional others from all over the world.

I know these are my readers for two reasons… my internet provider (1and1) provides stats that allow me to know where people come from. I get email and I ask, and our forum also gives clues about who is participating.

Notice I said this was my current definition. That’s because I know things always change.

I do exactly the same thing for books… make a list of three ideal readers and describe them as best I can. When I’ve got that firmly in mind, I know more about how and what I’ll write, and who I’ll market to… not bad for a couple of hours of thinking.

Write well and often.