How To Write the Great Modern Novel
By Chuck Faremont

  1. Instead of using the common narrative voice of first or third person, try the more obscure second person singular, or better yet, the first person plural. After all, you want to distinguish your great novel in some way from all those other books written each year. So what if it’s clumsy or difficult to read; after all, you’re a writer and your audience should be grateful you simply put pen to paper.


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  2. Don’t bother writing in a straightforward style that doesn’t call attention to itself and allows the reader to lose himself in your work; instead, adopt a distinctive style–say, one that was popular in the 19th century. Refer to your audience as "dear reader" The only reason no one uses this style anymore is because they’ve all forgotten about it. How clever you’ll seem if you resurrect it for your novel! Don’t worry that it might seem stilted or false; readers that don’t get it are too stupid to be reading your book anyway.


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  3. If your character has dark blue eyes, refer to them as "navy."


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  4. Make yourself a character in your book. After all, you’re a writer, a personality. The audience wants to know as much about you as possible, and they’ll be grateful for every little morsel you feed them about your interesting life.


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  5. Adopt a prose style that allows you to pile on big fluffy adjectives and metaphors in every sentence. No matter that it obscures the story line or that the actual words are meaningless and nonsensical. Use of this style will signal to critics that you are a writer of substance. Besides, it will serve to draw attention away from the fact that your plot line sags by page 63 or that you repeat yourself constantly.


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  6. Fuck execution. It doesn’t matter how you tell the story as long as it’s padded with lofty, meaningless prose (see No. 5). This will ensure that your book gets a fawning review, complete with pull-out quotes of some of your more obscure prose, by a completely clueless reviewer at the Times.


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  7. If you’re writing satire, pick a well-worn topic that’s been done to death and write about it; an in-joke only you and your friends understand. Take for instance, the subject of teaching creative writing to college students and its attending comic trials and tribulations. Remember how hilarious it is when students come to class with their bad prose for critique. After all, the average reader has no experience whatsoever with bad writing, and they will surely find it amusing when you quote numerous passages of bad student stories ad nauseum. Also, don’t bother to write your satire coherently or in broad enough terms so that the average reader can understand the point of the story. Orwell did this in Animal Farm and you know what a piece of shit that book is compared to yours.


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  8. Use all of the above devices to draw attention to yourself; be self-congratulatory wherever you can. After all, as a writer, you’re the star. Literature is merely the catalyst for your personal fame, so plug yourself whenever and wherever possible.


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  9. Don’t bother reading any great classic writers, like Faulkner. They’ve got nothing to teach you, post-modernist child of the 21st century. No one reads those late greats anyway, so why the hell should you? It’s book sales that count in the end; that’s the mark of a great writer.


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  10. Remember to shift back and forth liberally from present to past to future tenses, while simultaneously shifting point of view, whether it serves the story line or not. This will lead critics to believe you’re a master at execution, a maverick with a take-no-prisoners literary style. If you’re unsure about how to do this, simply get a hat and six slips of paper. Write past, present, future, 1st person, 2nd person, 3rd person on one of each of the slips. Drop them all into a hat, and keep picking until you have one of each for tense and point of view. Write a few paragraphs, or a few sentences using this combination. Pick new slips as often as necessary.


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  11. Make sure your book includes a readers guide section that has an interview with you. Discuss at length how difficult it was to write your masterpiece. After all, readers are deeply interested in you and your "process." Tell them in detail all about your muse. Finally, remember to plug your next novel in the course of the interview. If you’re not currently working on anything, make up a title. Later when you do write something, you can always say the first was just a working title.


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  12. Write continuously. That’s the mark of a great writer. No need to pause for introspection or self-reflection. The more you write, the better. Also, pad your stories and novels with excess prose (see No. 5). Super size them! Remember, bigger = better.