Know Your Reader
September 9, 2026
Ask an author to describe their book and you’ll get ten minutes without a breath: the world, the twist in act two, the thing that happens to the sister, the way the ending recontextualizes the prologue. Ask the same author to describe their reader and watch the pace change. You’ll get a pause. Maybe a demographic — “women 25 to 45,” “fans of grimdark fantasy,” “people who liked that other book.” Sometimes you’ll get nothing at all, just a kind of surprised silence, as if the question had never actually come up before.