Photo by Trevor Cole
There are many reasons to write. Maybe you have a specific story or idea wriggling away inside of you that just needs to get out. Maybe you want to put hard-earned writing skills to use. Maybe you simply need to write, the way others need to run or draw or play. But wherever your motivation originates, chances are you ultimately aspire to some kind of social recognition and economic reward for all your work.
In the hope of achieving these goals, most people will at least consider writing to suit their imagined audience. Some aspects of this impulse—when it comes to articulating clearly, building a well-rounded world, creating complex characters, finding an original concept, and understanding how their work fits into their chosen genre—are necessary concerns that truly can determine a novel’s success.
Crucially, however, all of these useful concerns revolve around how to best bring your ideas to life for your aspirational audience. None of them are about pandering to fads or other assumptions about what an audience may or may not want. Making that particular leap from trying to best communicate your ideas to your audience to trying to write content for your audience can be a deadly one, as it typically results in a story and characters neither the author nor the reader will care about.
So, if you are considering writing a novel with a female protagonist because someone told you that’s easier to sell, but you have no particular interest in writing a female protagonist, then don’t write a female protagonist. Same deal when it comes to race, sexuality, ability, non-binary identities, and non-European cultures.
Likewise, if you don’t enjoy reading or writing romantic or erotic subplots, don’t force one into your novel just because many readers like them.
If you want to write literary fiction but think you have a better shot at getting a YA horror novel published…well, maybe see how drafting the YA novel feels. Sometimes genre experimentation can lead to great and unexpected experiences! But if it just isn’t working for you, get back to your real passion and don’t look back.
Trying to force yourself or your characters to follow one of these “trends” will almost always come across as inauthentic, if not insulting, to your readers. But if you are writing what matters—truly, deeply, matters—to you, then your book has a real chance of resonating with an audience who cares about those things too.
Focusing on your own ideas/concerns/perspective is especially important in your first draft, where the core of your novel is formed. From there, your readers, editor, agent, and publisher may suggest you incorporate additional elements to better round-out your story, world, and characters. This is the point—when you have specific feedback available to guide your craft and the basic elements of your vision are already well-established—at which stretching beyond your initial comfort zone and pushing into the realm of the unconsidered and non-personal is most likely to benefit the final novel you will ultimately share with the world.
So just remember: When building your novel, always write for yourself and to your audience.
This is not to say you shouldn’t take specific feedback or the realities of the field to heart. But at the end of the day, good books are honest books, and that honesty has to come from you.