I’ve written, co-written, and edited over 3,000 story reviews over the last 5 years.
The stories that turn out to be commercial hits all have one thing in common.
The common thread has nothing to do with the talent of the creator, the genre, the size of the marketing budget, or the size of the production company backing the creator.
And if I had to promote any comic, film, novel, or creative endeavor from scratch, I would start with this one mission statement in mind.
Give your audience what they ALREADY Want.
The Golden Rule Of Sales & Marketing
The Golden Rule is small and simple but deceptively powerful because it’s the foundation for every value exchange since the beginning of time. It’s this:
Give your audience what they ALREADY want, where they ALREADY are, for a FAIR price.
Today’s topic focuses on the first aspect of the three that has a direct effect on how well (or not) a story lands with an audience – Give your audience what they ALREADY want.
It makes sense, but I’m continually shocked by the number of storytellers who don’t understand this point or outright fight against it to their own failure.
Success happens when everyone is optimized within a three-way relationship between the creator, the producer, and the audience.
- The creator is a storyteller. That’s you.
- The producer is the entity that mass advertises, mass produces, and distributes your story. That’s a publisher or studio. The producer could also be you.
- The audience is the group of people who are willing to part ways with their money for the story you create.
But here’s the trick. You can’t make an audience want or like something they don’t already want or like.
If you’re supernaturally lucky, you can present a story idea the audience hadn’t considered before that appeals to their nature, but if they know they don’t like the character or plot ‘X’, nothing in the world will change their mind.
People who like Coke can’t be persuaded to like Pepsi.
People who like cats but not dogs aren’t going to be tricked into liking dogs.
People who like superhero comics aren’t going to be convinced that slice-of-life romance comics are a just-as-good substitute.
People like what they like. Get over it and accept it. If not, create at your own peril.
Creating For An Audience Is Restrictive… Or Is It?
This point goes out to creators brought on to work on an existing IP.
“If I have to abide by restrictive rules, I can’t be fully creative.”
Utter horse puckey. Restrictions force the human creator to find unique solutions to problems in the story. When a hero is trapped inside a box, the creator is forced to find novel methods to escape the box when opening the lid isn’t an option.
Audiences feed off consistency in their storytelling, which is how a viewer or reader transitions into a fan.
The opportunity to follow a character’s journey helps the audience members become invested in the stakes and character growth that happens along the way. This growth is the purest justification for the value of canon and continuity.
When a creator is brought on to continue the legacy of an IP, the implied expectation is that the character’s history will be respected. The respect paid serves two functions.
First, respecting the history feeds into the motivations of the characters, which should make the new creator’s life easier because the work to build out the background is already done. Further, the creators that come afterward can simply pick up where the current creator leaves off.
Second, maintaining a character’s history ensures the audience retains its emotional investment in the character.
When you break the canon and continuity, the character’s history and motivations are different. Every decision and action that comes afterward is out of character and no longer motivated by the same mindset. The character may look the same and live in the same place, but it’s effectively a different person.
If you break the consistency surrounding an ongoing story, you break the fandom. Break the fandom, and the symbiotic relationship between the audience, producer, and creator is lost.
Therefore, a creator must create new stories within the rules of the character and world as they already exist, and that challenge should lead to more creative ideas, not less.
“Research has shown that scarcity encourages us to use what resources we do have in more original ways. When you block off the most obvious (and perhaps lazy) connections, your brain must stretch to find new, more obscure ones. These can be a rich source of original creative insight.” (ReviewStudio: Creative With Limits: How Intentional Constraints Help You Work Better)
According to the studies we reviewed, when there are no constraints on the creative process, complacency sets in, and people follow what psychologists call the path-of-least-resistance – they go for the most intuitive idea that comes to mind rather than investing in the development of better ideas. Constraints, in contrast, provide focus and a creative challenge that motivates people to search for and connect information from different sources to generate novel ideas for new products, services, or business processes. (Harvard Business Review: Why Constraints Are Good for Innovation)
Creators Are Caretakers
Sticking with the idea of a creator brought on to an established IP, a new creator frequently feels responsible for bringing something new to the table to put their mark on the legacy of the IP they’re entrusted with.
Yes, that’s a wonderful feeling to have, but as with all things in life, there must be balance.
What is that balance? A creator’s foremost responsibility is to respect the legacy of a property’s past and build something new that is workable for whatever creator comes after them.
If I’m brought in to write a Superman story and completely wipe out his upbringing as a Kansas farmboy, it’s not the same character. Fans will reject it, and the follow-on creator has a big mess to clean up.
If I’m brought on to write a new Star Wars adventure and retroactively undo Luke Skywalker’s relationship with Darth Vader, I erase a key aspect of the emotional impact of the story, and again, the follow-on creator has a mess to clean up.
Does canon/continuity/history create a restrictive set of rules that stifle the new creator’s creativity? Yes and no. Yes, it’s restrictive. No, creativity isn’t stifled because it requires an imaginative, creative mind to incorporate the past into a new present (see the previous section above).
Look at the situation from a reverse angle. If a creator wants to change everything about a character or story’s continuity, they didn’t really love it, and they’re not creative enough to work with it. That’s probably the wrong creator for the job.
The Audience Is Never Wrong
That’s right. The audience is never wrong because the audience is the entity that pays for the story. Not just in entertainment but in sales & marketing, news stories, and job interviews.
When I write a film script for an existing property and completely botch what makes that property special, the audience won’t pay to see the film once word gets out.
If I write sales copy or an ad that makes Product X sound completely unappealing to people who already like Product X, they won’t buy it.
If you apply for a job interview for a plumbing company and your resume says you really want to be a house painter, guess what happens?
The story must match the audience because the audience has to buy into the story you’re telling with their time, money, and attention.
You can’t pick your audience. Only your audience can pick you as the creator.
The Secret To Success: Research
If you want to know if your story will resonate, do your research.
- Talk to the audience to understand what they like and don’t like about your topic.
- Look at the successes and failures of the past to figure out what worked and what didn’t. For example, look at why The Empire Strikes Back is a legendary hit, but The Last Jedi is reviled.
- Easiest of all, become a member of the audience. It’s a lot easier to write a story that resonates if you’re one of the people you’re creating for.
On the flip side…
- Do NOT turn up your nose at what the audience likes. Condescension always bubbles up in the end, and the audience will reject it.
- Do NOT look down on the history of an established IP. The reason the IP persists and has fans is because it resonates.
- Do not make a mess. Another storyteller is always waiting in the wings long after you’re gone. Nobody wants to clean up your mess.
Ultimately, stories are a gift, but nobody wants a gift that wasn’t created for them. When you hear a creator say, “I just create for me,” let that be the only red flag you need to hear and run.
If you found this newsletter interesting, subscribe for more insights like this one each week as I explore what makes stories tick, how to create and edit them for maximum effectiveness, how to use them to navigate this crazy world, and how to imagine new ones to shape our futures.