Who is your target audience? That question is one most of us hold in the back of our minds, but never spend more than a passing thought on. It seems so self-evident when you write a story. This story is being written for... who?

However, when you stop to think about it, you might realize something shocking. The young adult writers and the fan fiction writers may come to a horrifying realization. You're writing this story because you wanted this story to exist. The target audience... is you...

That is not always the case, but I'm betting a lot of you here are writing stories because there is a story you want to tell. You don't make a scene romantic and fuzzy because you think other people will find it romantic and fuzzy, you write that scene because it makes you feel romantic and fuzzy. You don't describe Dr. McSexyPants (yes, he's gotten a doctorate since we last met him) as a rugged man with rippling muscles because that's what others find sexy... you're probably doing it because that's what YOU find sexy.

Even if you're the same sex, at some point, you have an idea of what a sexy man/woman is supposed to look like, and you superimpose that idea over your character. That character is "your" idea of sexy. That next character is "your" idea of annoying. That last character is "your" idea of charming. In reality, your story may not reflect you as a person, but there is a good chance it reflects how you see other people.

However, this habit is something we all need to grow out of as we become better writers. The easiest way to do it is to understand your own demographic. If you're a teenage girl who likes romance novels, chances are your target audience can be teenage girls who like romance novels. That's honestly fine. Who would know how to write romance for teenage girls better than a teenage girl who enjoys romance? However, you won't always be a teenage/20-something girl/boy forever, so either your demographic is going to change, or you are going to have to.

However, this isn't really the subject of today's chapter. Today's chapter is talking about target audiences, and the subtle ways you need to change your writing to cater to them. Even if you are your target audience, at some point, you're going to change. Therein lies the trick to writing good stories. You need to know who your target audience is, and what they want from you.

Through the course of writing this blog/book, I'm often asked about how large a story should be, or how to make a story better, or more generally what is the story missing. Is my 800 word chapter too short? Do I need more descriptions? Hey, this person on wattpad did something you said not to do, and they're really popular, what gives? The ultimate answer to all of those questions is simple... it depends.

What your story should be is ultimately dependent on who you're writing your story for. If you're writing it for a very young audience, you might not need that much description. If you're writing it for adults, you might need a little more grit. A point I made before, if you write a mystery, how obvious the clues are depends a lot on the age of your audience.

And it isn't just age. You also need to think about the culture. A poor person's concept of money is radically different than a rich persons. An American will radically see the world differently than an Asian. We grew up in different cultures with different family dynamics, and while something may seem obvious to one culture, it is strange to another.

For example, in America, we worry about a child's ability to talk. We talk in baby babble. We practice speech. We're constantly trying to get our children to talk sooner and better. That's simple common sense. Many cultures in the Mideast don't think that way. To them, a baby learning to talk is an inevitability of growing up. They don't take the time to practice words with a baby who can't speak. That's pointless. Do you know what they care about? Sitting up. They obsess to make sure a baby is able to handle upright positions, something most American's consider an inevitability of growing up.

This kind of difference layer throughout a writing, and while I'm not saying you need to understand or cater to every culture on the planet, I am saying that it's always a good idea to be aware that your characters may completely fall apart in another culture. Characters you think are awesome and fun may come off like insufferable jerks when perceived by another demographic.

Every other day I read stories about teenage girls who are just awful, awful people. They think crap about their friends, they are unappreciative, they have life handed to them, and they still get hot guys drooling all over them while they proceed to treat those guys like crap. Then again, I'm probably not the target audience of those particular books.

I once said that because I read the book, I "became" the target audience for that story. I still consider this true. If I'm reading a book, I am, whether the author likes or not, one of the audience members, enjoying or criticizing this book. That said, things that work for a mature 50 year old woman might not appeal to a 20 year old man. Things that appeal to a high school student might not appeal to a college student. And things that appeal to me might not appeal to you.

When you seek out critiques too, that's another thing that might be worth putting in your blurb. Who your target audience is will influence how someone ought to critique your work. Ideally, you should find someone within your target audience to critique your work, as well as someone outside. Compare the opinions of a romance nut with someone who generally doesn't care for it.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, set up your environment. Be very upfront about the kind of book you're writing. Don't try to trick readers into reading your book and hope they like it. You'll be far off finding your niche of readers, and letting them know that if they want to read about a Chinese-American who lives in the Bronx and is a professional boxer, yours is the book to read.

And don't forget, when you think about your target audience, apply that to your genre as well. If you want to write a dime romance, you're going to want to fill it with as many romance clichés as you can think of. People looking for a quick romance before bed will be looking for those things, and will be more likely to stop reading your book if it doesn't give them the things their looking for from a typical clichéd romance. Sometimes, niche writing means embracing the clichés.

So, in the end, your target will affect how your write. It can do this in a couple of ways. One of the most obvious ways is determining the length.

How long your paragraphs, chapters, and story will be will be dependent on who and what you're writing it for. The younger your audience, the shorter your books. Naturally, if you want people 10-13 to be reading your story, then you'll want simpler and easier to read stuff. In general, the shorter you keep things, the broader your audience will be, at least on wattpad.

Since your book is tied up with other people's books, people of all ages will end up looking at your book. If it has 5000 word chapters, you're bound to scare away the younger audience and even some of the older audience just looking for a quick distraction. If you write a 1000 word chapter, anyone 'could' read it. The question is, will they?

I've found that answer to often be yes, but others have had different experiences. In some ways, when writing a wattpad popular story, shorter is usually better, but I say this knowing a lot of commenters have disagreed with me on this point. By writing less, you might scare a few people away, or annoy them into leaving, but as wattpad typically has a lot of teens to begin with, you'll probably attract more people than you'll lose. Maybe... that depends on your target audience too. Do you want to attract the fickle reader that won't spend more than 5 minutes reading a chapter? That's a question you need to ask yourself.

Mind you, this is NOT advice for writing a novel, although it might be good advice for writing a novella. Like I said, your target audience is going to have drastic effects on the length. Your chapters will be longer or shorter, and so will your entire book. There is a reason Goosebump books are only 18k words long. That is about the right size for a 10-13 year old that might read those kind of books.

Any way you look at it, consider the age and demeanor of your audience before you decide how much you're going to write. You may find yourself so desperate to meet a word count that you're overwriting what is necessary for the audience you want to reach. However, on top of thinking about how much to write, you might also be thinking about what to write as well.

Critiques are always yelling at people to write more description, but there are cases where more description is bad. If you're writing for someone whose 12 with a relatively short attention span, describing the settings in depth can quickly turn them off. I may want you to describe the hot boy in your young teen romance in depth, but I don't need a two page description about the appearance of your room.

I've stated before about needless descriptions. My conclusion was to not describe things that aren't directly relevant to the plot. If you wake up in your room, leave it, and then never return to your room again, I don't need to hear a description of it. The second after your describe your room and leave it, I'll never need to know about it again. Of course, if you use a description of the room to describe the character, explaining why she has this favorite band or something, that can work, but that naturally falls on who your target audience is.

A younger audience will need less and simpler detail. If you're writing to 14 year olds, you might not need to describe the contours of someone's face as I described it in my 'describing faces' chapter. If you intend people to self-insert themselves into your story, giving you protagonist less detail and less of a personality might be optimal. How detailed a setting is might change from demographic to demographic.

On that note, setting is another thing likely to change when you consider your target audience. The book 'Ready Player One' is a really good example of this. The book is setup in a dystopian future where virtual reality has taken over a great deal of life. The creator of the virtual reality internet was a 1980s nostalgia nut.

And with that, the entire book selected an audience. That audience was not young kids, but 20-30 yo's who remembered what it was like back in the 1980s. The book is rich with references to 1980s memorabilia, quotes, and locations. It follows the wish fulfillment of nerdy guys everywhere, a young pimply teen growing up into a rich and attractive entrepreneur by playing video games. If any book knew exactly who its target audience was, 'Ready Player One' did, and its success was almost exclusively due to this fact. Almost all of its success (and criticism for that matter) stems from catering to that group of 30 year olds that remember the good old days while wishing that their love of gaming and finding Easter eggs had made them rich and famous, as it does the protagonist.

Moving on to you, what can you do to cater to your target audience? That is another question you should be asking yourself. But before you jump towards that... I have two trains of thought on this.

The first train of thought comes from the words 'fan service'. Some of your think fan service means putting boobies into an anime, but that term actually has a broader meaning. Fan service is a term used for when you take what I just suggested to the extreme. When you give audiences exactly what they want, whether it be seeing all the guys/girls in sexy poses, seeing a protagonist kick arse, or giant fancy robot battles. Everything Michael Bay does... I guess you could call that fan service.

However, fan service only becomes fan service when you put it in at the expense of the story. When fans want to see two characters get together, you put those two characters together, even when it really doesn't make sense to the story so far, that'd be fan service. Adding a sex scene just so your fans can enjoy the sex, well, that's a fan service.

While I'm saying it's a good idea for you to cater to your demographic, that's a bit different from catering to your fans, and a lot different from catering to them at the cost of a coherent story. Although, I'd go so far as to say that even fan service isn't necessarily bad, as long as it's kept under control.

And that leaves me to my second thought. These words are "broader appeal". Anyone who has played video games over the last 20 years might know what I'm talking about. Many people call it "dumbing down". It's an event where someone simplifies and streamlines a story (or gameplay) so that more people are interested in it. It can be good, allowing a previously difficult game to be more beatable to a casual gamer, or it can be bad, blending genre's to the point where a survival horror stops being a survival horror and turns into some silly action story (I'm looking at you, Dead Space 3).

So, if you're thinking like me, you can kind of see how these are the opposite extremes. Cater too much to your niche, and a story becomes inaccessible to anyone who isn't there, don't cater enough, and your story blurs into something homogenated and uninteresting.

That's were that subtlety I've been nagging you about these last few chapters comes into play. You can write a broadly appealing story, while giving it niche elements that appeal strongly to the people who are into that kind of thing. Like the Davinci Code (the book, not the movie), you can put Easter eggs and secrets for the mystery lovers, but keep the action and the fun for everyone else.

So like everything else in writing, writing for your target demographic is a balancing act. However, I'd say that keeping your story narrowed to what you want to accomplish is the ideal goal.

Just one last story to hold you over. Many years ago, if you wanted Italian sauce, you could buy Italian sauce. That was the option you had. Everyone in the Italian sauce business had their version of pasta sauce. If you didn't buy that, you didn't get anything. Eventually, one uprising pasta sauce was desperate to get a foothold over the competition. As a result, they hired a guy to determine the ideal recipe for pasta sauce.

The guy went out and made a bunch of recipes of sauce. He made them sweet, he made the chunky, the made them many different ways. He then fed them to panels of people and checked out the preferences. What he realized is something that should be painfully obvious to people now. There was no perfect pasta sauce. Some liked a chunky sauce. Some liked a smooth sauce. Some liked it sweet, some liked it less sweet. As a result, pasta did something most companies do now a days. They created a bunch of products, catering to many different demographics.

There is no special ingredient to make your story the best on Wattpad. Find the niche you want, understand your demographic, and create a story that meets their needs. When you know why you're writing your story, who you're writing it for, and what you're trying to accomplish... you'll find the story a lot easier to write, and it'll perform a lot better on Wattpad. I hope that'll help you out down the line. Good Luck!