This series follows my process of creating my own children’s book. In Stage One (Planning & Research) I looked at generating ideas, gathering inspiration and current children’s books. Writing A Children’s Book: Stage Two (Audience & Story) concentrates on studying the target audience and developing the first draft. 💖
Writing A Children’s Book is a feature on my blog where I discuss my process of writing, illustrating and self-publishing my own children’s book. The stages follow a personal strategy and should be an ‘inspiration’ rather than a how-to.
When you are writing, creating, sharing or making anything, you need to know who you are talking to. It could be easy to say ‘everyone‘, but chances are you can be more specific than this. The more refined your target audience, the more you can speak to them directly and the more likely you are to have a book that they can enjoy. 🙂
So, how do you figure out who the target audience is? And what details do you need to know about them?
My process involves logic, research and looking at census statistics (in Australia).
Who is it for?
I am writing a children’s book that focuses on empowering young girls to dream of the future. Right away I know two things. 1) children and 2) girls. However, there is also another significant market. The parents! A young girl is not going to buy the book herself, so there has to be an appeal to the parents, who can see the moral value.
My target audience is young girls aged 0 to 5 years and parents of young girls aged 25 – 38.
I have created four personas that examine the demographics (name, age, location, etc.) and psychographics (personality, interests, etc.).
To create the personas I used logic (to consider interests that would be relevant to children and parents), research (to target the best development age for girls) and examination of census statistics (for detailed data on Australian residents).
When conducting research into the current market (Writing A Children’s Book: Stage One) it revealed that 40% of examined books appeared to be targeted towards boys or had a male character. 36% showed to be for both male and female, while only 24% for girls (or a female character).
These results prove that there is a significant market gap for books targeted towards girls.
Writing the story can seem a bit intimidating at first. My method involves breaking it into smaller tasks. These include writing the moral, purpose & intent, further ideation on job fields, looking at the page structure and writing the first draft.
Moral, Purpose & Intent
Promote a positive and empowering message to young girls enforcing the reality that they are strong, smart, kind, creative and amazing women who can work in many professions. Implemented through the use of text and imagery that showcases a diverse range of women working in industry-specific fields (such as creative, health, education, etc.).
I created a mind map with a selection of workforce industries. Each industry could be part of the series.
I selected the creative field to be the feature of this book. I created a mind map with many different artistic jobs.
Top 20 Favourite Creative Jobs
I selected my top 20 favourite jobs from the list. Because I am still developing the story the list may be modified and updated.
- Fashion Designer
- Food Stylist
- Graphic Designer
- Makeup Artist
- Web Designer
I created a diagram of the page structure which provided a visual reference to pages within the book. The diagram presented an example of page types and how the selected number of jobs affected the total pages in the book.
The First Draft
I created the first draft by writing simple sentences that focused on expressing a name and occupation. The first draft does not have to be perfect 💖. I wanted to concentrate on the core features of each job in a simplistic way that I could build and develop over time.
- My name is Florence I am an actor, and I act in plays.
- My name is Holly I am an architect, and I design houses.
- My name is Alice I am an artist, and I create paintings.
- My name is Emma I am an author, and I write stories.
- My name is Summer I am a blogger, and I convey my life.
- My name is Ella I am a craftsperson, and I craft toys.
- My name is Ava I am a dancer, and I perform ballet.
- My name is Chloe I am a director, and I direct movies.
- My name is Paige I am a fashion designer, and I produce clothes.
- My name is Eliza I am a food stylist, and I style desserts.
- My name is Ivy I am a graphic designer, and I contrive logos.
- My name is Scarlett I am an illustrator, and I draw characters.
- My name is Kathie I am a makeup artist, and I transform people.
- My name is Sam I am a musician, and I compose music.
- My name is Lara I am a photographer, and I capture photographs.
- My name is Tanzi I am a poet, and I construct poems.
- My name is Grace I am a shoemaker, and I fashion shoes.
- My name is Frankie I am a tattooist, and I imprint tattoos.
- My name is Charlotte I am a typographer, and I innovate fonts.
- My name is Mia I am a website designer, and I build websites.
In the second stage of writing a children’s book, I was able to focus on the audience and develop a specific target market. I also generated further ideation and decided to focus on creative jobs. Finally, I wrote the first draft which captured the core function of each occupation. So far I am happy with the progress I have made and look forward to diving into the next stage. 😃
- Do you think the selection of jobs shows enough diversity in the ‘creative’ job market?
- Do you think I have selected the right target market (0 – 5 & 25 – 38 years)?
- Do you have any thoughts or suggestions on the first draft?