Audience Appeal

[sarillia]

How much do the opinions of the potential readers affect your writing?

These thoughts used to never bother me at all because I was the only one who would ever read anything I wrote. But recently I decided that I would like to try to get published after all. Suddenly none of my ideas seem good enough. Every time I think I've got one that will work, I start writing and then have a crisis of confidence, thinking that no one else will like what I'm writing.

I know I should write for myself first and I still have no problem writing something just for me but it would be nice to feel like something I write might be publishable.

Comments

[badass_tiger]

Writing for yourself doesn't mean you don't write to please an audience. Even if that audience is just you.

At least, that's how I've always felt about it. When I write, most of all when I edit, I always carefully go over the scenes I don't really like and try to change it until I do like it. Maybe the audience wouldn't even notice if I put it up as is, but I want to be able to read it again some time later and be happy with what I wrote, instead of cringing away because of a couple of unsatisfactory paragraphs.

Er, anyway. To answer your question, I realise that sometimes when somebody posts an opinion about something they dislike in general (such as summaries that end in a question, or a word they have an aversion to), I will usually initially shrug it off as their opinion, but when I start writing, I'll find myself actively avoiding including those things. Of course, sometimes it's good advice (I can now understand why summaries ending in question marks are usually bad), but sometimes it's just a preference and I'll find myself bowing to it anyway. So yes, I do think about my potential audience a lot when I write. I don't think it really decreases the quality of my writing, as I said above. The way I see it, 'write for yourself' just means that you don't write because somebody else pushed you to, or because you want money, and so on.

You're always your harshest critic anyway. I know I think your ideas are awesome and though I haven't seen any of your work, I definitely haven't seen anything that would make me think your work wouldn't be good. I'm sure a lot of your stuff must be more than palatable!

tl;dr: Yes, and I'm positive that the stuff you write is great so don't worry about that too much!

[sarillia]

Haha, that seems to be the consensus among people I talk to: "I love your ideas and you obviously know your grammar at least".

Thanks.

I know what you mean about sometimes bowing to preferences even though you know it is just a preference. I have one story I'd like to write about my take on the vampire-werewolf war but I know a lot of people are sick of that so I've been shuffling that idea into the "just for me" pile and if I get to it at all it will be much later than it would have been otherwise. I'm not too upset about that though. I have plenty of other ideas. I was working on another eight of them over the last couple days. I love the planning stage so much.

And now I'm just rambling.

[badass_tiger]

Oh? Well perhaps I should reword that: If you suck, you'll always have great friends to help you improve! Hehe. I wish you luck in getting your ideas off the ground.

[agilebrit]

The oldest advice in the world is "write what you know."

Feh. Fie, I say. You can learn what you don't know.

Write what you love. That story no one else is telling that you want to read? Write that. Your passion will shine through the words.

"Ideas" are a dime a dozen. Execution is everything. The best most original idea on the planet will go down in flames with crappy execution, and the worst most hackneyed idea can be a bestseller if executed well. I will be forever known as "That Werewolf Writer," because honestly, that's what I do, in a dozen different permutations. And I've heard over and over that "werewolves are over, no one wants to read that."

I sold six stories last year. Three of them starred werewolves in some form or other.

Just write--and remember that the magic of writing is in the re-write.

[sarillia]

I know what you say is true but when I get past the "no one will like this concept" part, I move on to the "what if they like the idea but hate the execution?" stage, because I agree with you that the execution is much more important.

I know I'm getting ahead of myself though. I really should just write.

[agilebrit]

>>I really should just write.

Yes. Yes, you should.

Don't worry about the first draft sucking. It's a given that the first draft is going to suck. My stories generally go through six or seven drafts before I'm happy with them, and I have four beta readers who grab me by the scruff of the neck and tell me when something's not working. They save me from myself on a regular basis.

And the only way to get better at this is to do it. All the theory in the world won't help a bit if you're not putting it into practice.

[sarillia]

It's not really the first draft that I'm worried about. I'm an expert at churning out rough drafts without worrying too much about perfection. I've got about twenty of them finished. But after that I have to start trying to make it Good and that's scary.

[agilebrit]

And see, I'm one of those weirdos who doesn't particularly like the actual writing process but loves doing revisions. Digging into it and figuring out what I was actually trying to say in the thing--and then bringing that to the fore in a way that hopefully isn't anvillicious--is fun for me.

And, again, the only way to get good at it is to buckle down and do it. And you can. *\o/*

[sarillia]

I've been trying to figure out how to get into your mindset but writing new stories is so much easier for me that I'm always tempted to just move on.

[caecilia]

I do better when I'm focusing on what I want to make people feel. I'm not begging for approval, I'm reaching into people's brains and saying "CARE ABOUT THIS." If this makes any sense.

[sarillia]

I think I get where you're coming from.

[inkdust]

I think about this. A story is nothing to me unless I care about the characters, and care to a ridiculous degree, and the entire point of writing what happens to them is to convey it vividly enough that an outside reader will care a fraction as much as I do.

[ayumidah]

it takes a lot to make that leap from writing for yourself to considering others. I only just recently started emailing my original stories to friends, and even that took a lot of arguing with myself, because I've only let people read fanfic before now. But my friends like my original works too, so I think a lot of times it feels worse to us than it actually is, and we need to overcome that self-doubt and just write what makes us happy, and take it from there.

[sarillia]

Congrats on getting past that hurdle! It is definitely difficult.

[serria]

I'm in the exact same boat as you. When I was a teenager, I wrote just for me - it never even occurred to me to put things online, let alone publish them. And I would shoot out so many words every day, because I was having fun and there was nothing else I wanted to be doing. Then I started posting fanfiction, which at first was nervewracking for me, but I got so into writing "completed" stories or one-shots (as opposed to unrefined scenes and stories) that I still ended up producing a lot. Until I garnered a lot of readers... I was in a pretty popular fandom and my stuff had a lot of subscribers and reviewers, and it started getting to the point where I was thinking about them more than me, and what they would like or wouldn't like. It really took a toll on my writing, because I started second-guessing everything.

Now I don't do a lot of fanfiction (some! Just not regularly), but I'm focused on finishing something that could be published one day. I'm not rushing myself, or stressing out about it, but at times I feel like I'm more focused on the finished product than the process of writing something I like.

To be honest, I don't think it's a bad thing to keep your readers in mind, if your goal is to produce something that will be popular/published. It shouldn't be the first thing on your mind, but can help you keep perspective with your story. That being said, I think writing a first draft should be pure creative, innovative art. It doesn't have to be good or successful, you should just be having fun. Maybe in the editing process or second draft, you should start thinking about your goals beyond that?