Reach Out and Touch

Remember the old song with the words, "Reach out and touch somebody's hand. Make this world a better place, if you can?" It was something like this. Today, I am going to leave you some ramblings on reaching out and touching the reader.

There would not be much fun in writing, if no one ever picked up our books and read them. We would tire of reading them ourselves and being our only audience. We want people to like us. We want to build a fan-base. We would dearly love to see fans create web sites dedicated to us, but will they?

Pick and choose from the things below. Think about these kinds of things as you write.

• Who is your book meant for? Is it just a child? Do you want a parent to read it with a child and the two of them enjoy it together? What is the book really meant to do?

• If it is for a child, what do they want in a book or story? In the same light, if it is for an adult to read to a child, does this change the way you put it together?

• What is the Number One Thing, when it comes to your audience? WHat is top-most of what you want the book or story to do? What do you want the result to be?

• What can you do to surprise your reader? What can you do that is unique to your book? Is there some way that you can make your book offer something that no other book has for the reader?

• How can you you put it together and make it do what you want it to do? How is the story going to read? Will it be rhyme? Will it be told through a story?

• What will you do to insure that the reader turns the page? Read, Read, and Read and see how others keep you reading.

• What do you want your readers to feel, when the book has been read? How do you want them to react?

Most importantly, write, write, and write.

I will add to this, later. Got to run.