by Hank Isaac
When our daughter was eight, she read Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October. Yes, I said, “Read.” The film had not yet been made. Was this book aimed at an elementary school readership? I doubt it. Did she enjoy it? Yes, quite a bit.
My point is this: Writing to a specific demographic is stifling. Presuming a story must have certain elements and not have certain elements for a children’s audience, a teen audience, a male audience, a female audience… well, you get the idea… is foolish. There is no way of knowing for certain what it is about a character or story that will touch an audience. Filmed stories so often underestimate their audience that one begins to wonder if they’re written by accountants who’ve been stranded on a remote island most of their lives.
What’s important to me is to create the characters I want to create and then write their story. If I start worrying about whether I’m going to offend someone or scare someone, both my characters and their story risk being severely hobbled.
