Audience Awareness In My Dream Job

This week’s blog prompt asked that, with the learning objectives for this course in mind, what have I learned to is applicable to my future dream job. Well, it didn’t say “dream job” but I’m paraphrasing. 

My future dream job is to be an editor at one of the big four publishing houses in New York, City, or an assistant editor, or something in an editorial position. I’m not greedy, I just really want to help shape the future of literature. I want to see a more diverse selection of literary characters, especially in the science fiction and fantasy genre. With these dream goals in mind I think Audience Awareness is one of the most important things I’ve learned in the completion of this course.

 There is a serious debate going on in the video game community regarding equal representation and the over sexualization of female characters in video games. Game creators are coming under heavy fire for not having Audience Awareness in the fact that at least half of all game players are women and are feeling unsatisfied with female representation. Similarly, the science fiction and fantasy genres fail to be more inclusive in their representation of minority and disabled characters.

The number of minority character in the science fiction and fantasy genre is growing but it’s still not enough. The science fiction genre itself was created by a woman and most of its first contributors are women (ex: Mary Shelley). Even the first full-length novel is credited to a woman, Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu, and yet female heroines are sorely lacking in numbers especially considering the power female fans have in making or breaking a book’s success. Just look at the Twilight Saga. I, personally, despise that series. It has so many interesting and unique elements and they were executed so poorly that my hands shake with rage at the mere thought and yet the saga’s popularity is undeniable. All because of its female fans. Go figure.

 Appealing to the female demographic was an imperative part of Twilight’s success. What’s more, the ratio of men to women in the world favors women so why doesn’t the science fiction and fantasy genre mirror this by publishing books that appeal to the demographic more likely to make books popular? Personally, it makes no sense to me. The only reason I even want to work in the publishing business, the only reason I even pursued a Bachelor’s in Creative Writing and then a Master’s, was because I had the good fortune of picking up a medieval fantasy book with a strong, female heroine I could identify with by Tamora Pierce in the sixth grade. I went on to consume every Tamora Pierce book I could find because, while her heroines dealt with epic struggles and had mighty battles against bad guys, they also dealt with the things every girl coming into her own deals with. They dealt with puberty, misogyny, racism, discovering their sexuality. That’s the kind or representation that is missing from the science fiction and fantasy genres in a broad scale.

As a fan of science fiction and fantasy I am connected to the community in a way that allows me to speak with and understand what they, as an audience and consumer, want to see more of and it is this Audience Awareness I want to bring to my future dream job.