| Write Ideas |
 |
 |
 |
|
Get Ready. Set. Then You Can Go. As I child, I didn’t like Lewis Carroll’s popular story, Alice in Wonderland. Why? I had a paranoid fear of being like Alice, always wandering, forever lost. She didn’t know where she was going. Obviously, the Cheshire Cat was not a writer, or he would not have said, “Any road will get you there.” If you want to get somewhere, you are helped by knowing where you’re headed and why. Because there are so many different directions you can go, your answers to the following questions will reduce your wandering down roads lined with rejections and will put you on a more direct route to success. (1) Who is my target audience? Don’t pick a group. Imagine one person of a particular gender, age, and concern. We don’t talk to a teenage girl the same way we would talk to a boy in first grade or a grandfather in his sixties. That’s why good writing is never “one size fits all.” Our writing needs to be a tailor fit for only one individual. (2) Who is my target publisher? Every publisher has a different approach to the market and seeks a different kind of writing. If we aren’t writing to suit only one publisher, we probably have a topic and style that won’t be what any publisher wants. (3) How will my reader benefit from my writing? We call it the takeaway, the valuable information or story experience that will cause the reader to say, “I’m sure glad I read that.” We most easily write from our own passion, and that’s great if we’re the target audience. Since we’re not, we need to choose a theme—a writing focus—that satisfies our reader’s needs, not ours. |
Topics
