Emotional Writing Part 2: Know Your Audience

Recently, I've been writing about making your piece of writing more literary.  Of late, I've been focus on things I've learned on this subject from the League of Utah Writers conference I attended.  In the session I highlighted last time, Angie Hodapp of the Nelson Literary Agency talked of emotional writing.  One subject she emphasized was that one needs to know your audience's expectation and give it to them, or they will not be fulfilled. 

For instance, she pointed out if you're writing a romance novel, your audience will not feel fulfilled until your main characters get together.  Otherwise, it's not really a romance.  She says that romance writers are at the top of the game because they can so easily give the reader emotional fulfillment in so many ways.  Someone asked the inevitable questions what if they don't get together?  She said that if the main character doesn't get together, she said that one needs to give the main character some kind of fulfillment.  If she doesn't get love, she needs something else she desires, but that needs to be set up from page one.  This would be true, too, even if romance is simply part of a subplot and not the main point. 

Hodapp also pointed out that horror is the same way.  If the reader wants to be scared or startled, the writer needs to comply or he/she is in the wrong genre. 

I would expand that to any genre.  Know your audience.  Know what they're seeking to feel fulfilled after they finish your book.  You may find a unique and/or quirky way to fulfill that emotional need, but the basic emotional need still must be met, or the reader will walk away feeling unfulfilled. 

Look at your book.  What is its genre?  Is it suspense?  Read suspense.  Research what a reader of suspense needs to feel by the end of the book in order to feel fulfilled.  The same would be true whether you're writing historical fiction, women's fiction, children's fiction, or any other genre.  What is your reader seeking?   

Write the first draft for yourself.  Write what you love and what you're seeking.  That's when you go to work to research how to fulfill the reader's needs if you want this book to go anywhere in the market.  Best of luck.