Finding Your Audience
Once the big question of edification vs. evangelism is out of the way, the Christian storyteller can — and should — begin to narrow their target audience even further.
Now, a common question many storytellers have is why do I have to pick an audience for my story? Why can’t I just write a story for everyone?
While this is a wonderful sentiment and it would be lovely if storytelling worked that way, it is, unfortunately, not going to pay the bills. Yes, Christian stories serve an important spiritual purpose. Yes, storytelling is often an art form, where the goal is to create something beautiful or emotionally stirring. Yes, it is good to have a heart that yearns to share a message to as wide of an audience as possible. However, a story written for “everyone” is a story set up for failure, both monetarily and in terms of how far the message will spread.
Storytelling is absolutely a kind of business. It can be done altruistically with enough funding from a distinguished sponsor, but, unfortunately, the era of the patron-supported artist is long since over. Storytellers and creatives have to learn how to profit off of their story somehow — yes, even Christian stories — in order to support themselves, their families, their employees and hired professionals, and support the story’s growth in sequels, new editions, and new formats. Unless God has specifically called a storyteller not to make a dime off of their story — which could absolutely happen — the Christian storyteller needs to be able to make money off of their creation. And that is not a sin, unless greed begins to take hold!
The first step to making money off of a story is to establish who the intended audience is. To do that, storytellers need to know what drive people to read, watch, or listen to stories. What motivates a person to buy one book and not the other? To go see one movie in theaters and not another? What is it about a story that makes someone spend their hard-earned money on it?
Ultimately, people need a story to do one (or more) of several things:
Relate to Them - it touches their philosophies, backgrounds, beliefs, and emotional states.
Introduce Them to Something New, But Relevant - it seeks to fit in with their current struggles, offering advice or comfort.
Challenge Them - it puts them out of their comfort zone and allows them to experience situations, struggles, emotional states, or intellectual puzzles beyond their “normal”.
Appeal to Them - with the story’s genre, age range, content, aesthetic, tone, or format.
Entertain Them - with styles of humor, intrigue, romance, and/or action that they like.
If a story cannot meet at least one of these needs (but, preferably more), then they are not going to be interested in it.
As stated in previous articles, every demographic has different spiritual, emotional, and intellectual needs and desires. The best way to find out what each one likes or dislikes is to do market research. Look at what the most popular secular stories are in that genre, format, or age range and pull them apart. Try to identify patterns, trends, and fads within a demographic’s interests. Talk to people within that demographic and ask what they would want in a story. Gather information while the story is still in its blueprint stage so that information can guide the craft all the way through to completion and marketing.
Now, Christian storyteller, the question to ask now is: who do you want your audience to be? If this seems like a daunting question, or there is no clear answer, pray about it. Ultimately, every story that you tell is a tool for God’s glory and, if you seek His will, He will provide the wisdom to direct said story. Other ways to find your story’s audience include: asking if there is any demographic that is particularly on your heart, identifying a need or gap in the Christian storytelling community, and determining who would benefit most from the message in your story.
Of course, there is always the story that was designed for one demographic, but midway through its creation obviously suits another. And, occasionally, a story is started without any particular demographic in mind (perhaps a personal project or exercise-turned-work in progress) that eventually needs to have a target audience decided on. However, the best strategy is always to choose the audience before story production has begun to provide a clear direction and to maximize the usefulness of the story’s message for that audience.
