Every good creative knows their target audience – the group of people that are their tribe. When they write, when they speak, or when they create, they keep this audience in mind. To do this well, you have to have to have a clear picture in your mind as you create.
Let’s say your target audience is middle-grade children, ages 8-12, for a brand-new fantasy series. Your main character is an 11-year-old boy with a new-found magical ability. He goes to a public middle school and is in the 6th grade facing a rotating classroom schedule for the first time ever.
Your target audience needs to be able to relate to your main character, so you need to get to know their world. Ask yourself questions like:
- How does your main character talk? What does a 6thgrader actually sound like? What would their word choices be?
- What television shows, games, YouTube channels and other media would be popular to them at this age? What dominates their attention?
- How does a middle school classroom rotation actually work? What is the subject matter they would be studying at that age?
- What are the normal growing pains they would face? What will be on their mind as they do everyday life?
And that is just to name a few good questions. Once you identify your target audience, you use their world as the backdrop for your stories, your presentations, and your creative content. Your target audience could be a million different varieties of people, but once you know who they are, you can create a world they can relate to and want to keep visiting over and over again.
Keep these tips in mind:
- See the target and never take your eyes off of it. Once you identify your target audience, keep them in your sight as you create. You are always creating with them in mind. Pictures on the wall are huge help in this area.
- Take aim and shoot for the inner ring. Every time you create for your target audience, be true to the world you have created for them. Unless you are purposefully adding a foreign element to their world, don’t wander away from what they know, or into a world they can’t relate to.
- Keep practicing until you hit a bullseye. Creating faithfully for your target audience takes lots of practice. And it gets easier the more you do it. Just like you rarely hit the center of the target the first time out, you rarely get a bullseye on the first try. So, keep practicing!
It’s a process and you will get better the more you practice. Stick to your tribe.
#beinkible
Recent Comments