A Working Guide to Discovering Who Your Novel Is Really Written For
This is a drafting tool, not a marketing document. It works best between the halfway point of a first draft and the beginning of a second, when enough of the book exists to have opinions about and not so much that changing course means starting over.
Complete it in one sitting if you can. The first answer is usually the honest one, and the value of the exercise comes from the friction between sections rather than from any single page. Where two sections contradict each other, that contradiction is the finding.
Work in pencil. Return to Sections 3, 7, and 9 after every major revision.
Estimated completion time: 90 minutes for the first pass; 30 minutes for each revisit.
Section 1 — Your Story at a Glance
Write these before consulting your outline. What you can recall unprompted is what the book is actually about.
One-sentence premise (protagonist, want, obstacle, cost):
Three-sentence synopsis (setup, turn, stakes — no proper nouns beyond two):
| Field | Answer |
|---|---|
| Primary genre | |
| Secondary genre | |
| Estimated final word count | |
| Intended audience age range | |
| Series or standalone | |
| Point of view and tense |
Check: Does your one-sentence premise imply the genre you named? If a reader could hear it and guess wrong, note why here:
Section 2 — Your Reader’s Emotional Journey
Complete each prompt with a feeling, not a plot event.
- When my reader opens this book, they hope to feel …
- By the end of chapter one, they should feel …
- By chapter three, they should feel …
- At the midpoint, they should feel …
- During the climax, they should feel …
- On the final page, they should feel …
- One week later, what they remember feeling is …
Reflection: Read the seven answers in sequence, ignoring the manuscript. Do they describe one continuous experience or two adjacent ones? Where does the line break?
Section 3 — Emotional Promise Audit
Rate the current draft from 1 to 5 on delivery, not intention. A 5 means a stranger would name this as a defining quality of the book.
| Promise | Score (1–5) | Scene that proves it |
|---|---|---|
| Wonder | ||
| Suspense | ||
| Comfort | ||
| Hope | ||
| Romance | ||
| Mystery | ||
| Humor | ||
| Adventure | ||
| Fear | ||
| Justice | ||
| Catharsis | ||
| Intellectual challenge | ||
| Belonging | ||
| Courage |
Your top three, ranked:
- (Primary — this one governs the ending.)
Diagnostic: If you could not name a proving scene for your primary promise, the promise lives in your intentions rather than in the draft. Note the chapter where it should appear:
Second diagnostic: If more than five categories scored a 4 or 5, the book may be attempting too many contracts at once. Which two are you willing to demote?
Section 4 — Comparable Titles
Complete at least five rows. Favor titles published in the last five to seven years. At least one entry should be honest about what makes your book unusual rather than what makes it respectable.
| Comparable title | Author | Shared readership | Shared emotional promise | Where your book departs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
The comp sentence. Write the recommendation a bookseller would give, using two of the above:
“If you liked ______ and ______, this is ______.”
Check: Would a reader who loved both comps recognize your book within three chapters? If not, one of the comps is aspirational rather than accurate. Mark it.
Section 5 — Reader Persona
Invent one reader with enough specificity to be inconvenient.
| Field | Answer |
|---|---|
| First name | |
| Age range | |
| Occupation or life stage | |
| Favorite genres | |
| Three favorite authors | |
| Reading frequency | |
| Preferred format | |
| Where and when they read | |
| Last book that kept them up late | |
| What that book did to earn it | |
| Why they picked up your novel | |
| What they would tell a friend | |
| What would make them stop at page thirty |
Finish the sentence:
“If this reader described my novel in one line, they would say …”
And the harder one:
“The thing this reader will forgive is ______. The thing they will not forgive is ______.”
Section 6 — Genre Expectation Checklist
Expectations I am fulfilling on purpose. Write five specifically enough to be checked by someone else. (“Satisfying ending” fails this test; “the mystery is solved using clues given to the reader before chapter twenty” passes.)
Expectations I am breaking on purpose. For each, answer the follow-up.
| Expectation broken | How a reader knows it was intentional | Chapter where the signal appears |
|---|---|---|
Warning check: If any “how a reader knows” column references your notes, outline, or a planned sequel rather than the text itself, the signal is not in the book yet.
Section 7 — Audience Drift Assessment
Complete per act. Use the traffic-light system: Green = consistent, Yellow = needs review, Red = significant drift.
| Axis | Act I | Act II | Act III | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tone | ||||
| Pacing | ||||
| Language register | ||||
| Nature of central conflict | ||||
| Violence and intimacy threshold | ||||
| Humor style and frequency | ||||
| Emotional payoff type | ||||
| Thematic emphasis |
Compressed reading exercise. Read only your act openings and act closings in sequence, skipping everything between. Record what you notice:
Three-chapter test. Give one chapter from each act to three readers who have not seen the rest. Ask each to name the genre and intended reader.
| Reader | Chapter given | Genre named | Audience named |
|---|---|---|---|
Convergent answers mean the book is holding. Divergent answers locate the fracture. Note the fracture point:
Section 8 — Beta Reader Alignment
Recruit for match, not for kindness. A reader who never touches your genre cannot tell you whether the conventions land; a reader who reads nothing else cannot tell you whether the book opens a door to anyone outside it. Include at least one of each.
| Reader | Genre familiarity | Matches persona? | Biggest takeaway | Favorite scene | Confusing scene | Would recommend? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
The recommendation test. Record each reader’s one-sentence description verbatim. Do not paraphrase and do not correct them.
Variance analysis: Where the five sentences disagree is your positioning problem, stated in data. What do they disagree about?
The deleted scene test. Remove your three favorite scenes from one reader’s copy. Note whether the absence was flagged:
| Scene removed | Noticed? | What that tells you |
|---|---|---|
Section 9 — Craft Consequences
Audience decisions become craft decisions here. Fill this in after Sections 3 and 5 are complete.
| Decision | Your answer | Justified by which reader trait |
|---|---|---|
| Average chapter length | ||
| Chapter endings: closed door or open window | ||
| Sentence register: lean, layered, or mixed | ||
| How much the narrator explains | ||
| On-page violence threshold | ||
| Intimacy threshold | ||
| Profanity threshold | ||
| Humor style | ||
| Ending shape: resolved, open, or costly |
Consistency check: Does any answer above contradict a scene you have already written? List the offending chapters:
Section 10 — Developmental Editor Preparation
- ☐ I can state my audience in one sentence without using the word “everyone.”
- ☐ My genre is defined by my dominant emotional promise, not my content list.
- ☐ My emotional promise is consistent across all three acts.
- ☐ My comparable titles are accurate rather than aspirational.
- ☐ At least three beta readers match my reader persona.
- ☐ At least one beta reader does not, deliberately.
- ☐ My opening chapter attracts the reader my ending is written for.
- ☐ My ending fulfils the promise made in the first three chapters.
- ☐ I know which scenes define my audience and which are negotiable structure.
- ☐ I know which expectations I am breaking and where the signal appears.
Final Reflection
Complete in full sentences. These become the raw material for your query letter, your back cover copy, and your first conversation with an editor.
- My ideal reader is …
- They will finish my novel feeling …
- The strongest evidence that my book fits its audience is …
- The clearest sign of audience drift in the current draft is …
- The scene I am most afraid to cut, and why …
- Before publication I still need to …
Appendix A — Worked Example
A completed fragment, for reference. Use it as a calibration tool for specificity, not as a template to imitate.
Premise: A retired naval cartographer is hired to map a coastline that has been redrawn three times in a decade, and discovers the surveys are being falsified to hide what the tide is uncovering.
Primary emotional promise: Intellectual challenge. Secondary: Wonder, then justice.
Comps: Two contemporary literary mysteries with maritime settings, plus one older adventure novel that accounts for the book’s appetite for technical detail.
Persona — “Margaret,” 58, librarian, reads nightly in print, annotates: Picked up the novel for the cover and the first paragraph. Will forgive a slow first hundred pages. Will not forgive a solution she could not have reached herself. Would stop at page thirty if the cartography turned out to be decoration.
Craft consequence: Chapters run long and end on open questions rather than cliffhangers. The narrator explains almost nothing twice. Violence stays off the page; the threat is institutional.
Drift finding: Act III scored Yellow on tone — the antagonist became a conspiracy rather than a bureaucracy, which raises stakes but abandons the promise that made Margaret start the book.
Appendix B — Quick Reference: Common Drift Patterns
| Pattern | Early symptom | Usual cause |
|---|---|---|
| Comedy into grief | Jokes thin out after the midpoint | Author grew more serious than the premise |
| Cozy into graphic | A single explicit scene raising stakes | Sagging middle solved with shock |
| Literary into action | Prose register drops in act two | Plot pressure applied late |
| Worldbuilding abandoned | Descriptions shorten sharply | Quest structure crowding out setting |
| Romance into tragedy | Relationship stops developing | Theme overriding contract |
| Standalone into series bait | Unresolved threads multiply in act three | Sequel planning leaking into the draft |
Ready for a Second Opinion?
A developmental editor can identify audience drift long before readers do. Ford Mountain Publishing’s developmental editing service provides actionable feedback on genre alignment, reader expectation, pacing, and emotional consistency, so that revision happens once rather than three times. See our Services page for more details. Bring this completed workbook to your consultation.