Know your Audience- How to keep their attention!

The class was given by Rebecca Shelley, author of Red Dragon Codex and Brass Dragon Codex.
The first thing we covered was Know Your Audience - who are you writing to?
When it comes to kids, there are two major types of readers - the reluctant reader and the avid reader:
Reluctant Reader have their brains in the fast lain

• Brains wire for information age- able to process lare amounts of information quickly
• Super Smashbrothers vs. Space Invaders - she talked about how when most of us remember playing games that are slow paced such as Space Invaders these kids are able to keep up with fast paced very involving games such as Super Smashbrothers.
• Twenty-minute TV plotlines - if it is too complicated, they’ll loose interest - it has to keep moving quickly
• YouTube entertainment - Reading should be entertainment
• Intimidated by thick books and large chunks of text

Avid Readers: The Harry Potter generation

• Have developed neural pathways for deep reading.
• Are confident in their reading ability
• Are a growing demographic, but still a minority

Remember they are different audiences and to experiment and practice writing for both.
When writing for the younger audiences the paragraphs have to be shorter.
Focusing on writing for the Reluctant Reader:
Formatting:

• Lots of white space
• Short, varied paragraphs
• Varied sentence lengths
• Proper word choices
• Plenty of plot-moving dialogue

Characterization - for reluctant readers it is like a caricature - in fact she would often refer to caricaturization

• The Mona Lisa vs the Ninja Turtles - She talked about giving characters a only few defining traits that would be memorable.  The example of Ninja Turtles went to how each turtle had a specific color and how it related to their temperment - the read one was the angry one, etc.  - another illustration she made was how it was done in Spiderwick - there are little portraits that tell the kids exactly what the characters look like, saving pages of detail for kids who would be impatient with it.
• Complex characters expressed in digest

Pacing:

• Hook and twist every two to four pages

1. Clear and vital character motivation and emotions - she repeated a few times the ever important “clear and vital character motivation” - going back to the characterization class I wrote about yesterday - Motivations are SO IMPORTANT!!
2. Proper grounding (setting expressed by sensory details through close 3rd person point of view)

Be sure to use ALL five senses - we most often rely on sight and sound, and she stressed focusing on touch, smell, and taste as well.
The reader needs to be inside the character and experiencing their world through their senses. By using all 5 senses every 2-4 pages, and in the beginning of every scene, the reader will be grounded and hooked.

• Twist - something has to change every 2 pages - snappy dialogue, humor, conflict, action, revelation, danger - keep it moving

Physical Action

• Slapstick, battles, chase scenes, etc.
• More action, less sitting around thinking and planning
• Action must be interlaced with setting and character to be meaningful

Cliff hangers: Bait and Hook
She gave the comparison of fishing.  A fisherman waits for the nibble and then jerks the pool, hooking the fish.  The end of the chapter is like throwing the bait in the water, the beginning of the next chapter is the hook so we can reel them in.

• Physical threat cliff hanger
• Emotional cliffhanger
• Puzzle cliff hanger
• Mystery cliff hanger

Write to your strengths and understand you audience:
Recognizing what kind of writer you are will help you find your market.