Lots of folks have painstakingly tried to write all sorts of guides to writing a bestseller or a perfect novel. How-to guides are quite abundant. But I thought I should try to write a guide on how to write a bad novel. How does one go about that? Let’s find out.
1. Choose the least believable, most cliched, overused plot you can imagine, then make it twice as complicated.
2. You must have a love story. Love sells. Sex also, but that’s not so easy to write about. Let’s just write about love, shall we? She must be an incarnation of Aphrodite, and he must look like chiseled into perfection by the gods themselves. Something like that. Of course, they should be star-crossed lovers. Something is always ruining their love story.
3. Use lots of adverbs. Try to be as poetic as possible. Everything can be a metaphor.
4. Characters. You need to think real hard about their names. Try to come up with memorable stuff. And add as many characters as possible, at least three of which are identical.
5. Make the story as long as possible. Write, write, write. Add dialogue that doesn’t do anything for the story, write about your character’s daily routine, one that does not propel the story forward.
6. You need a happy end. Be as Pollyanna as possible. Optimism is going to save the world one day.
7. Tell, don’t show. Readers are stupid creatures, so you’ll have to explain everything to them. Don’t let them imagine stuff, because they’ll screw up. They’ll screw up every damn time.
8. Don’t be vulgar. You’ll be sent straight to hell for this. Use nice words. Be as PG-13 as possible. Not only no one dies in your novel, but they don’t even get as much as a paper cut. It’s all so beautiful it becomes kind of pink.
Ah, my first draft was perfection!
LikeLiked by 4 people
Lol, love It!
LikeLiked by 3 people
Okay, I was literally laughing out loud as I read this list. Thank you!
LikeLiked by 4 people
That was the point. Thank you for laughing, Tracy.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I wanted to be sure you knew you’d achieved your goal. Even though I was laughing aloud, I knew you couldn’t hear me. 🙂
LikeLiked by 2 people
Lol, thank you.
LikeLiked by 3 people
If I were to write one at this point, it would be bad.😳
LikeLiked by 2 people
Ha!
LikeLiked by 3 people
and ladies and gentlemen.. we have a BEST SELLER..
LikeLiked by 3 people
Bravo
LikeLiked by 3 people
Thank you for this.
LikeLiked by 4 people
OMG, that was so funny! An entertaining post 👏🏼🥂
LikeLiked by 3 people
1. That makes Postmodernism into a Guffaw. 2. The notion of love is made stoic, yes a grappling with emotion. The moot point is how to romanticize decadence? 3 Aristotle made metaphor as a genius and you that of a buffoon. Well done. 4 Character: imagination is not worth it …caution there slide into a hyperbole. 5 Your argument does not address streams of consciousness. Joyce was a heavy weight of it. 6 That sounds very fairyish. 7 Imagination 8 Imagination is irony redefined. 8 Even DH Lawrence and James Joyce was once labelled as smut. Quite an impressive writing. Anand Bose from Kerala
LikeLiked by 3 people
Trolls these days. Pretending to be smart and stuff…
LikeLiked by 3 people
Wha ha HAAA!! Thanks… I had a great laugh!
Mind you… maybe, just maybe I’m guilty of one of those points… but should I admit it?
LikeLiked by 2 people
I do love an adverb or seven… But check out Wattpad for chiselled billionaire bad boys a-plenty!
LikeLiked by 4 people
Ha! Let’s hope nobody follows this advice.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Some just might.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Yikes, I had a friend in high school that wrote like this 😩except that perfect, chiseled hero was always the guy she was dating🤢
LikeLiked by 1 person
Well said!
LikeLiked by 2 people
9. On the last page—make the entire plot, setting, and conflict be just a dream that your main character had. Your readers will let out a sigh of relief and think, “Thank goodness THAT never happened.”
😉
LikeLiked by 5 people
Ahahaha…. Yes. The “It was just a dream” cliche.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Love this post! Very funny!
LikeLiked by 3 people
It just makes me think twilight and 50 shades of grey haha
LikeLiked by 3 people
Hahaha… There are plenty other bad novels too.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I know. It’s just those where the ones that came to mind.
LikeLiked by 2 people
A very amusing, and yet helpful post! What an original approach. You can learn just as much from a ‘how not to’ guide as a more conventional ‘how to’ one. I can think of a few established novelists who could learn a thing or two from this post.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Indeed, Alli. I think that how not to do something is a valid approach. After all, we all learn a lot from failures and mistakes, maybe more than we do from succeeding.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Absolutely – couldn’t agree more. It’s the failures that pave the way for success.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Love this
LikeLiked by 3 people
Ha I like this, very unique!
LikeLiked by 2 people
Love it! Now I know what I am doing right 😛
LikeLike