A few nights ago a friend called to chit chat. Yes, even writers have friends. He got talking about books and movies and eventually he got around to “Forrest Gump.” He talked about how only people old enough to know about some/most of those events would enjoy the humor and skill of threading a story through widely known events in recent history. For all of you young-uns reading this, rent the movie, then look up the events. It really was masterfully done. Unless you know about some of those events, you can’t completely appreciate the humor of the movie. You can enjoy it, but not completely appreciate it.
He then surprised me and started saying he enjoyed “John Smith” because it did much the same thing but on a world history scale, not recent U.S. history. He also brought up the point that only people who know some of that history would really appreciate the scope of the book.
I knew this when I wrote it, but him not being a writer and catching onto it was somewhat surprising. Perhaps it is because we are close to the same age and both enjoyed history in school that he enjoyed the book so much? Yes, it is possible he was just fluffing my ego, but it isn’t the first time he brought it up and he read the book several years ago. He’s actually reading several of Ollie’s now because I thought he would enjoy them.
The concept intrigued me though. I never thought about seeking out people who liked “Forrest Gump” because of the way the story threaded through history as a target market for that book. I never thought about reaching out to AARP to see what the advertising options were on their Web site or in their magazines.
Don’t overlook a target market just because your work only shares a concept with it. Sometimes it is that concept which has the greatest appeal.