How To Choose Your Writing Niche

It’s normal for writers who are just starting out to experiment with various genres. If you’re not sure what you want to write, you may try fiction, nonfiction, poetry, or some combination of the three. If you’re new to freelance writing, you may take any writing job offered to you, regardless of your area of expertise, to gain experience. This experimentation is part of the process of becoming a writer. 

However, as you grow in your craft, you’ll need to define your writing niche to serve your readers best. Settling into a niche helps you define your area of knowledge and skill in the publishing industry and become known for your expertise.

If you’re ready to choose your writing niche but feel drawn in multiple directions, consider the following questions to narrow your focus.    

What comes naturally?

Where do you excel as a writer? What feels most natural to you when you arrive at the page to work every day? Many writers find that writing for a particular niche or genre flows more easily. 

When you sit down to work on your own projects, which ones do you gravitate toward? What requires less effort? Consider your natural gifts, and see where they fit in your potential niche.

What do you love?

This may or may not coincide with the same type of writing that comes naturally to you. Maybe you write fiction with ease, but you don’t necessarily enjoy the process of writing novels. Or, maybe you have a medical background and do well writing technical content for medical clients, but you find the work tedious or boring. What do you love to write? What did you like to write before writing became your job? 

Consider what you love to read too. Our reading habits often hint at our writing habits. 

Once you determine what you love, look for how it complements your natural talent and skills. You’ll likely find your niche where your talent and writing loves overlap.

What writing space feels most life-giving?

Where would you like to spend most of your time as a writer? You may like to write memoir, but the level of vulnerability and transparency required could become tiresome. 

Maybe you’re a naturally gifted poet, but you find the poetry niche too competitive for your taste. You may want to write poetry for pleasure and find another genre for which you’re suitably skilled to write on a professional level. 

If you choose to write about faith, consider what boundaries often accompany this space. Are these boundaries acceptable to you? Are you naturally inclined to write in this area? Do you love it? If so, keep writing! You’ve found your niche.

A writer’s niche is refined with experience and growing expertise. Deciding on a genre is your first step. Beyond that, the options continue to narrow as you investigate what you’re good at, what you love, and what space makes you feel most comfortable and free. 

If you’re looking for honest insight and helpful direction to learn how to balance the art of writing with the business of publishing, you’re in the right place. Go behind the scenes with 15 writing and publishing experts to discover what it takes to build a successful writing career, even if you’re just starting out. Click here to sign up for The hope*writers Summit for free!