Why Your Ideal Reader Is Not Just Anyone as Illustrated by Disney's Mulan (1998)
Say what you will about Disney’s Mulan (1998). It’s not for everybody; it heavily westernizes a famous Chinese legend; and it has some pretty dated jokes about cross-dressing being emasculating.
But as someone who grew up during the Disney Renaissance, this film just so happens to be one of my top favorites. The animation, the girl power, the duty, the honor, the epic score from the late Jerry Goldsmith—I love it.
And I love it even more now because as an Author Accelerator-certified book coach and MFA graduate, I get to use it to explain why if you happen to be writing a novel or any other book, your ideal reader is not, cannot, and will not be just anyone. It also means that your ideal reader is not, cannot, and will not just be everyone.
Allow me to explain.
If you’re planning on writing a novel, currently writing a novel, or have just written a novel, chances are that you are wondering how to get your novel in as many readers’ hands as possible. This means that you’ve probably had the following thought pop into your head at some point:
I want everyone to read my book, so I should write it for everyone!
To be fair, this is a very nice sentiment. What writer doesn’t want their book to be widely shared and read across all sorts of age groups and audiences? More readers means more money, usually.
But here’s the thing: You’re not just writing any book for anyone. After all, how many times have you read a book and thought it just wasn’t for you? How many movies have you sat through only to wonder why you sat through them and wasted so much time?
Maybe it was something about the writing style or the content or the overall vibe. It just wasn’t your cup of tea. Somewhere out there, someone will read your book and go, “Yeah, no. That’s not my style,” and that’s perfectly fine. You shouldn’t be giving your time and attention to them anyway because that’s not who you’re supposed to be writing it for.
Instead, you should focus on the specific ideal readers that actually matter.
Case in point, Li Shang’s army is down to their last cannon. He tells Yao to hold his fire, waiting for Shan Yu and his army to retaliate.
Yet not only does Shan Yu recover, but his army of hundreds—perhaps even thousands—of soldiers comes rushing down the snow-covered mountain on their horses. Things are looking bleak, and Li Shang commands Yao to aim for Shan Yu so that they might cut the head off the proverbial snake.
To Li Shang’s credit, this is what most people—and most writers—would think to do when trying to achieve their goals. Everyone wants Shan Yu, the bad guy, to die. Everyone wants him and his army to be stopped. Wanting to aim the cannon at Shan Yu is the equivalent of wanting everyone to read your book.
It’s the clearest, most direct, most obvious choice.
But it’s also the wrong one.
When Li Shang gives the order to Yao to aim their last cannon at Shan Yu, Mulan is fearful of the oncoming wave of soldiers. There’s no way that her tiny army can face Shan Yu’s massive one. They’re outgunned and outmanned.
Yet when she sees the reflection of the ice-covered mountaintop in her father’s sword, she knows what she needs to do. She takes the cannon away from Yao, rushes forward, lights the cannon within “three feet” of Shan Yu, and fires.
“You missed! How could you miss? He was three feet in front of you!” Mushu cries as he launches toward the snowy peak, but Mushu is wrong. Mulan didn’t miss Shan Yu because that’s not where she was aiming.
Rather than going for an easy target or the target that everyone expects or trying to use one cannon to get at everyone, Mulan lit the cannon and aimed it at a specific point on the mountain for the greatest impact, sweeping Shan Yu and his entire army in an overwhelming avalanche.
That is why your ideal reader is not just anyone. It’s a specific person or group of people that will resonate with your novel in such a way that it creates an avalanche of influence through word-of-mouth, book reviews, or other promotions. You want your ideal reader to feel so seen, so heard, and so understood that they then tell other people about your book. You want them to become your die-hard fans so that there’s a greater chance that their friends and family can be die-hard fans.
A Court of Thorns and Roses is not for everyone. It’s got romance and fey magic and all sorts of weirdness, but I’m willing to bet that you’ve heard of the book because someone you know has mentioned it because someone else mentioned it to them and so on and so forth.
Harry Potter was not written for everyone in mind either. It was written for preteen boys who loved it so much that they wanted their parents to by the rest of the books, and then parents and older teens became obsessed with it.
And as much as I don’t want to admit it because she’s one of my favorite writers of all time and I literally want everyone to read her work (die-hard fan here), N.K. Jemisin’s novels aren’t for everyone either. There are people out there who have never even heard of N.K. Jemisin even though they’re interested in speculative fiction from BIPOC voices, and I’m doing everything I can not to just buy a copy for them so that they can read it.
Anyway, my main point here is that your book is the cannon, your ideal reader is the mountain top, and their impact is what causes the avalanche. Don’t worry about people who don’t like your book. Don’t worry about people who you think might like your book. Spend your time writing the book you want to write, and then find the people who you know for sure who would love it. Forget the haters and the naysayers, and find your people.
And if you want to know how to find your people, well…I’ll tell you in a separate post.