Drawing inspiration from your audience

Art by: Christiam Martinez
From: Whispers of Persephone

I enjoy interacting with my audience.  These are the people who have taken a chance on me as a new writer and who have made it possible for me to release books.  I've been fortunate in that my audience has also been vocal about what they liked in the books and what they would have liked to have seen within them.

There it is, that feedback we should all be listening to, 'what they would have liked to have seen'.  What better source of inspiration could we need when we know what our audience wants?  As examples of some of the things I've heard:  a new weapon book (like The Steel Road) that covers a particular region in great detail; random encounters in adventure modules; 'white hat' style necromancers who lay the dead to rest.  After hearing these same three things from several of the people who have been reading and using my books, it seems pretty clear that there is a demand that needs to be met.

You are NOT limited to just feedback from your own titles.  Quite often you'll hear or read something from someone that will give rise to inspiration.  During my latest KickStarter live stream event, the topic of OSR products came up. Having never produced an OSR book I asked questions, received feedback from the audience, and I confessed my own concerns and lack of knowledge in that area.  I was pleasantly surprised when members of the audience provided much of the information I would need.  Now, THAT is inspiring.

Listen to your audience, take the opportunity to learn from them.  Many would call this by market research (of the most basic type), but I like to think of it simply as 'listening'.  People will tell you what they want to see, and you can draw inspiration from that to create new books you may not have conceived of before.

Cherish your audience, listen and enjoy writing for them.

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Thank you for joining me on my continuing adventure in game design, writing and self-publishing. I hope my experiences and mistakes will help you in your own efforts.

You can see my latest book, Whispers of Persephone, on KickStarter at the link above.  I'm hoping to reach both stretch goals ($6500 is our highest), so please do support the campaign if you can and share it with others.

I have also launched my creator page on Drip (which is owned by KickStarter), where I'm releasing subscriber only content.  Subscribers are getting behind the scene glimpses into my creation processes, and will be getting access to play test materials and early drafts.  I am also releasing a monthly PDF containing a character, companion, creature or monster of the month which is also available for subscribers.  This monthly PDF contains all original art and more.  Check it out on my Drip page at https://d.rip/w-s-quinton

Thank you, and I hope you'll join me next time as the adventure continues.