Due to a recent comment from a reader, I’ve been thinking about audience and writing.  Audience is difficult to determine.  Who is the audience for a story?  How often do writers think about this?

For my own writing, I don’t worry about it.  The audience is made up of myself.  Perhaps that sounds foolish, or near-sighted, however, I only really know what I like.  If I don’t like my own writing, why bother?  If I write a story, and it engages me, and I love it, then I think it will work for other people as well.  Will it work for everyone?  Of course not.  Are there stories and novels that work for everyone?  Is that even possible?

To further explore the notion of audience, I’m going to list 25 works, and ask readers to reply through the comments, who they imagine the intended audience to be?

1. Pride and Prejudice
2. Great Expectations
3. Blood Meridian
4. Jane Eyre
5. The Catcher in the Rye
6. The Great Gatsby
7. 100 Years of Solitude
8. The Yiddish Policeman’s Union
9. Harry Potter Series
10. The Windup Bird Chronicle
11. Alice in Wonderland
12. For Whom the Bell Tolls
13. Frankenstein
14. Everything Is Illuminated
15. The Brothers Karamazov
16. Sin City
17. Anna Karenina
18. The Unbearable Lightness of Being
19. The Quiet American
20. 1984
21. The Hobbit
22. To the Lighthouse
23. The Bell Jar
24. Leaves of Grass
25. Gilead

If you haven’t read something, then put, “Unread,” next to the number.