The Audience and Why they Matter

Apr 30, 2018

While reading The Dream Thieves, I was reminded of our conversation in class surrounding who the audience is made up of. Though this book is written for teen readers, there seems to be a particular subset that it is precisely meant to address. For me, the audience that is being reached are those who would classify themselves as angsty teenagers, and as someone who once identified under this label I still have a hard time understanding and liking the characters within this book.

Part of this apprehension to liking the characters is just because the book takes less action pact way to get the message across. The Dream Thieves focuses more so on the relationships and tension between character rather than the action that surrounds their everyday lives. Audience members who view themselves to be full of teen angst are more likely to understand and better identify with characters as they focus on character development, and better showing how each of the main characters has their own flaws. The audience, wherever they might be in their experience in life, will be able to understand the characters through the flaws depicted in work.

By writing in such a way, Stiefvater is able to access a segment of the population that thinks in a certain way. Corresponding to the angst-driven teenage fandom, she is able to secure an audience and focus on character development rather than the action scenes we have seen in more modern young adult literature. Though I do not find this work compelling, and would not have sought it out on my own accord, I acknowledge that, as with any story, there is a specific audience that will understand the characters and authors should focus more on their voices than the critics.

8 responses to “The Audience and Why they Matter”

foulonni

April 30, 2018 at 2:02 am

I agree with OP that selling any type of work requires the author to continually think about the audience they are writing for. For Stievater to best interest her “angsty” teenage audience, she needed to first write angsty characters into her novel, and my lord are there some angsty characters (*cough* *cough*, Ronan). I really liked that Stievater concentrated on character interaction over action, and I actually think that was a stylistic choice to help her reach her audience. No matter how “angsty” you might be, I doubt that you were totally OK with Ronan’s self-destructive drag racing, alcohol consumption, and just general meaness when speaking with his friends. Without any backstory (which for Ronan really doubles as personal growth), Ronan just seems like an entitled, self-destructive bad boy. Which I understand that some of the people that read this book might just accept/enjoy outright, but I feel like the people who enjoy these books really like the backstory of their bad boy characters. We naturally gravitate towards the tragic backstory because it makes us empathize with the characters and want them to succeed. I totally changed my thought process about Ronan when I found out that his dad was dead and his mom was… a dream thing? Adam, though not a bad boy, with his struggles with money, Blue getting disrespected and left out everywhere, Adam being dead, there’s a lot to route for there. I think Stievater focused on character backstory because it helped people connect to her characters, and gave those angsty teens someone that they could see themselves in.

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kedam07

April 30, 2018 at 6:55 pm

I feel similarly towards this book, and it’s clear that the author knows who she is writing to. After watching some of her interviews/talk, it’s clear she knows her audience, and they really appreciate her. With the rise of social media a lot of authors can find their niche audiences, and this blog post also made me think of how recently a lot of YA authors use social media as a tool to interact with their specific audience. Now it’s much easier for readers to find what they want and “The Dream Thieves” is one of these books that teens seek.

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akaron

May 3, 2018 at 10:00 pm

I think that while the audience of this book is most certainly teenagers and maybe even angsty teens, that is not the only audience that can enjoy this book/series. It does make a lot of sense to have focus on character relationship and troubled angsty teen characters for readers to relate to, but as someone who is not, in fact, an “angsty teen” I still enjoyed the book a good amount and part of the fun is watching these characters making such bad decisions and learning from them, but also books that are character driven sometimes end up being more interesting than ones that are plot driven (only sometimes though) and in the case of The Raven Cycle, having the focus on the characters as they navigate the supernatural seems to work fairly well. My main point here is that while each book has its target audience, there is still room for people outside of those groups to enjoy said book, which ties into ideas of crossover readership.

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kaitlynegp

May 11, 2018 at 4:12 pm

I think that your evaluation of the audience is great and it really forces us to realize the role and power audiences have, especially in an era where access to authors/creators is easier than ever through social media, email, etc. It would be fascinating to see how the online community influenced the development of this series as a whole, especially as readers clamor for certain relationships (etc) and how Stiefvater responds. She has already demonstrated an extremely active role in her relationship with her fans (allowing/asking them to tag her car!), so it can be assumed that not only does she write these stories with them in mind, but that she actively caters to the readership. However, how does she balance keeping her audience happy with maintaining a hold in wider readerships in general, and potential future audiences (beyond the first generation of readers)?

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malyschm

May 13, 2018 at 12:28 am

I feel like you really highlight the fact that some authors are much more receptive to what their audience wants, and cater to those desires. When Stiefvater published this series, she was well established as a ‘dark teen fantasy’ author through her other books, and had already established a strong readership for her dramatic style-‘Dream Thieves’ is just an extension of providing the audience with more materials. I appreciate that while there is an audience for the content, authors will continue writing material for it, but my questions is more about what processes do most people experience to puts them in a mindset to actively seek out such dark fantasy?

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emilycollins7

May 13, 2018 at 8:21 pm

Even though I really enjoy character driven novels, I wasn’t a fan of “The Dream Thieves.” I just didn’t find myself liking or relating to most of the characters. However, I do think that Stievater did a good job of catering to a teen audience by creating angsty characters that teens can relate to and learn from. I wonder what I would have thought of the book if I had read it a couple years ago as a younger teen.

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poamek

May 14, 2018 at 8:37 pm

Similar to the poster above I also wonder what I would have thought about The Dream Thieves if I would have read it as a more angsty teen. In our discussion about audience, in this book in particular, we found that these angsty teen readers have a lot of power, especially because of fandom and the power of the internet. I think one can tell when a book is marketed to this particular fandom/angsty teen audience and I did feel this way about this book. In reflecting I find it similar to how I would feel re-reading a John Green book like ‘Looking For Alaska’– some parts of the angst can just be a bit much and cringy for the more adult reader. However, I don’t believe this makes a book a bad text, just perhaps not meant to be read for me in this time in my life.

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ethanmakulec

May 18, 2018 at 12:08 pm

I agree that this work is certainly targeted at mostly “angsty teen” readers, but as an earlier comment mentioned, I don’t think it is necessarily exclusive to any other audience, merely somewhat restrictive.

When your audience is all people with a heavy degree of personal emotional investment in the fates of your characters, you are forced to appeal significantly to them, that is, if you want them to buy your book. Thus, your characters are constantly in emotional disarray and full of cheesy tragic origin stories, because if you allow their problems to be resolved, then all the real angsty teens lose interest since the emotional disarray of real life rarely ever resolves for good.

Any other audience then is forced to sit through a constant stream of emotional trauma and cringe-worthy angst that they do not identify with as heavily. There is a spectrum of emotional disarray that we all lie somewhere on it, but this type of work targets a very extreme end of that spectrum that it leans into very hard, so as to ensure continued readership from such angsty people

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