A Letter of Reassurance About Knowing Your Audience

When I worked at a bookstore, one of the job’s most fundamental aspects was finding the perfect book for a customer in the shortest amount of time. This process ensured that every customer could continue with their busy lives one (or a few) books happier as quickly as possible. Part of accomplishing this task required getting to know the audience. It involved questions such as: Do you like thrillers or romance? Happy endings or sad ones? Are you looking for something a little bit different? More often than not, the customer had read a book they enjoyed and were looking for another one that was exactly like it. Many, many times, this meant relying on the infamous trope.

A trope refers to a particular theme or idea that reoccurs so often in literature that it has become commonplace. Connoisseurs of specific genres learn to recognise tropes at first glance. As a Young Adult Fantasy writer, I have become familiar with Chosen Ones, Love Triangles, Epic Quests, Orphaned Protagonists and an entire bevy of similar-sounding, signature staples of the genre. Some tropes lose favour over time, such as the Damsel in Distress, while others remain so consistent that many readers do not even realise they are tropes, such as the Battle for Good vs Evil. The truth is that tropes are an unavoidable and constant reality of writing.

As writers, we are told to avoid clichés. They are boring. Predictable. Overdone. As a self-published author, this advice becomes even more critical. Being as original as possible can be an asset that helps you stand out when competing for sales. After all, self-published authors often do not have entire marketing teams behind them like traditionally published novels do.

For this reason, it can be disheartening when your work starts to feel bogged down by tropes. There have been moments where I have lost faith in my current draft because I feel like everything I have written has been done before. My published YA Fantasy, The Dragon Child, has an Orphaned Protagonist who is also the Chosen One and fights in a classic Battle for Good vs Evil, some of the very same tropes I have already mentioned. These are probably only a few of the tropes to which my story can be reduced. But here’s the secret: tropes can be the very asset that draws readers to your work.

Having worked in a bookstore, I can tell you that many readers look for comfort in the stories they are familiar with and will often try to find that comfort in similar stories. Some romance readers will only read books with a Happily Ever After. Some horror aficionados cannot resist the classic Final Girl. Readers will actively search for the tropes that will bring them the most joy when reading. As a result, certain tropes start to trend and become selling points in particular genres.

Don’t believe me? Just consider the rise of Vampire and Dystopian novels in the Young Adult fiction of the early 2010s, all of which shared similar tropes. In the span of a few years, the Love Triangle alone grew so much in popularity that it soon became overused and consequently died, but even today still finds its niche in some audiences. Including popular tropes in your novel can be an effective means of drawing in an audience and selling a story. I am personally a sucker for any book labelled as Enemies to Lovers or the Villain Gets the Girl. Yet, as with all things, tropes should be used with caution, and this involves an essential skill that every self-published author must learn: knowing your audience.

What does knowing your audience entail? For starters, you need to establish your novel’s age group and the genre you are writing in. Content included in Paranormal Erotica would definitely not be appropriate for Middle-Grade readers, nor would it always appeal to someone who enjoys Regency Romances. Although there is often overlap in age groups and genres when it comes to reading and writing, defining your target market makes it easier to sell your book, and you are more likely to find the right fans for your stories.

Once you have established your target market, look at what books are the best-selling in your genre. Traverse the endless realms of Social Media and see what novels are trending. If you like reading within the same genre that you write, read those best-sellers. Try to identify the reoccurring tropes. Don’t try to copy them (readers can tell from a mile away) but see what elements of your own writing might appeal to those same audiences. Understanding your audience and the tropes that your audience enjoys helps you learn how to communicate with them. If you can establish a relationship with your audience, you could have fans that follow you for the rest of your career.

At the end of the day, if you want to make money as a self-published author, or even a traditionally published author, you must consider writing as a business. With any business, you are selling your product to a particular target market. The best way of selling that product is to find out what your target market likes (and dislikes) about similar products. You will find more success by finding the perfect audience than by trying to shove your novel into a space where it does not quite fit. The good news is that there is an audience for everything – and I mean everything. Your job is to determine your audience and learn their language.

I am not here to tell you to sacrifice the integrity or originality of your work. Readers like similar stories, but not the same stories retold over and over again, and although writing is a business, it is also an art. It is a place to revel in your creativity and what makes you unique. Instead, I am here to tell you that, in reality, your work probably contains a few tropes, some that you might not even be aware of, and that everything becomes a trope eventually. Most likely, there will be stories similar to yours, but that’s okay. You can use those tropes. They can find your audience.

I once had the privilege of meeting a world-renowned Fantasy writer, and I asked him what I can do to make my work more original. At the time, I was terrified that my story was too similar to just about every other book that came out when I was a teen. The author laughed and told me I was adorable. Then he kindly responded that every story has already been done before, but nobody can tell your story better than you. He said that establishing my voice mattered more than whether my story was original. So here I am to tell you that you don’t need to be afraid of using tropes if it’s ones that you particularly like. Nobody will use the trope the same way that you will, and there will be audiences who love your voice regardless.

Using tropes can even be fun. Consider ways that tropes can be subverted. Consider how tropes can cross genres. There are always ways to surprise your audience. Self-published authors, especially, have more freedom to play with reoccurring themes. All it takes is writing to experiment and explore until you unravel the unexpected ways to tell classic plots. Once again, it is all about knowing your audience.

Here is another secret: there are no rules in writing. You have probably read an armada of authors’ advice about improving your writing. You have likely scanned endless lists about writing rules and what to avoid in your novel. Most of those lists will tell you to avoid any plotline that involves even a hint of a trope. But when it comes to the story that you want to tell, you get to decide what does and doesn’t work.

The best writing advice I ever received was that it is okay to break the rules but to break the rules successfully, you must know them well. Knowing your audience, means knowing the rules of your genre. When you know the rules, you know how to effectively write a trope that does not feel stale or clichéd. The difference between an outdated or revolutionary trope is how well it is executed. There are tropes I swore I would never read again, only to find them amongst some of my favourites in the hands of skilled authors.

So, here is your permission to use tropes. Or don’t use them. Or find ways to subvert them. If you are going to use tropes, learn how to use them well and how to sell them to an audience. Be rest assured that there will always be an audience for your trope. Even if that audience is only you. And that’s okay.