How many times have you been reading a “great” novel and thought to yourself, “This book really sucks! How come I can’t write a great novel?” Well, the answer is simple: You’re an incompetent bandersnatch. But don’t despair, you lousy dumbass, anyone can be a great author is you follow the GRAND RULES OF BEING A GREAT AUTHOR. With my easy to follow steps, the New York Times review board will be so overwhelmed with great literature that they’ll stop teaching people to read just to stop the flow of greatness. Let’s begin students:
Let’s face it, despite that there’s stupid analogies in the word like “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” everybody does it. But how do you pull together a great cover without wanting to drive away people by making it too weird, yet not even pull in one person by making it too boring? Well, this can be best answered through pictures, not text.
Wow, now that’s one shitty book. You can tell because the cover has a guy in black and white AND it’s a painting. Those are both red flags of a shitty book. All books about history are terrible, and they won’t do any good if the main character is some French guy that nobody liked in the first place. You can also see that the way that the publisher tried to distract the reader from “this book fucking sucks” is by showing the continent of Europe. Continents are boring, really fucking boring. This book doesn’t even have a battle in it. It’s just about Napoleon walking around talking about Europe. What a load.
Now that’s a tad too far gone. Look, the main character is a space lizard who drinks “SASS,” listens to music, knows pi to the umpteenth digit, and is named Jesus. That can’t be good, no matter how you look at it. Also notice “and other tales,” meaning there’s more than one. That means that this “Mr. Fish Farnzworth,” or so he says his name is, couldn’t even decide what story he wanted to write: he had to write several of them. Which means that you’ll be reading several half-assed stories, instead of one assed story. Now, that pisses me off, because it means this guy couldn’t decide on one story that is like assholes that write alternate endings to their respective works. What’s the matter, suck dick? Couldn’t make a competent decision about your OWN writing? Look, if you can’t decide how to end your own shitty book, just don’t even write it. He’s also using a pen name. Who else has used pen names? Samuel Clemens, or should I say Mark Twain? Mark Twain sucks, he’s a shitty, shitty, shit. What a shit shank. Shitter ass bastard.
Now that’s what I’m talking about! That right there is a find cover for a fine piece of reading material. That right there will get you dumbass reviews like, “Breathtaking…”, “Stun…ing”, and, “I came in my pants…on the edge of my seat.” You can see that it takes advantage of the amazing effects of collage, shittily done. But that’s the genius part of the whole deal; you can claim you did it like that to capture the art, or something. Now that the most important part of the book is done, the rest is easy! For real.
Millions of people are going to read your great book, but only a few are going to decide how “good” it is for everybody else. Those people are, unfortunately, English teachers. Here’s something we all know for a fact: English teachers don’t know how to be entertained. They’ll read a great book like Catch-22 or they’ll watch a great movie like Star Wars and they’ll just look at you and go, “I liked the metaphor/allusion/illusion/oxymoron/all the dumbass literary techniques the author didn’t do on purpose and just did it naturally because that’s just how the shit goes.” English teachers just hear that something is good or bad and that one opinion spreads like gangrene among Italians. So you have to beat them to it. You have to put so many “literary devices” into your paper that the English teachers won’t know what hit ‘em. The easiest ones to pull of are metaphors, similes, analogies, oxymoron, personification of objects, stealing everyone else’s characters, contradicting yourself, and alluding to the Bible. Let’s look at the introduction to your book now and see how to shove all of them in there.
Thomas walk runned into the room, and he ran around rashly while being careful not to move. He was the swan on the moon, like a dime a dozen. As he wore his designer jeans he felt just like Jesus when he was swallowed by Moses the Whale. He slid into the den while walking into the garage. He sat in the warmly cold armchair, and leaned back while sitting forward into the deep shallow comfortable chair that felt like fucking rocks it was so hard. The chair hugged his sides as breathed, tickling him quickly slow. The chair smiled at him as he giggled, he was like a baby in Australia before being stolen by Dingo dogs and being raped to death in the desert. Thomas turned and punched the chair in the face. Startled completely aware what was going on, the chair reared back and hit Thomas squarely in the circle, knocking him forward four feet backward onto his face onto his arm. Harry Potter walked in and asked while not talking to Thomas about what was going on. Thomas thought that Harry looked just like Judas before he betrayed Noah and was sent to Hades.
There we go, got one great book going right now. Just keep that up for about 300 pages and you’ll be a best seller in no time. But there are two more key components to being a great author, and once you master those, I might as well call you “Jack Patty.”
Here’s the ticket to draw in everyone. No one wants a main character that’s a white male who jumps around saying how he doesn’t have any problems. No, people want a woman who’s got just about every disability and is a member of every minority group. Anything that’s largely represented won’t do. If you do have a white character, you have to make them an evil corporate executive, and if there’s a male character, you have to exaggerate every single stereotype about males there is. Now we’ll show how Thomas, who is clearly not a female, is no longer the main character, and will be replaced by a much more suitable protagonist.
Katrina walked into the Synagogue, hoping she wasn’t late for her Jewish sister’s marriage to the Mormon Spaniard, Lacy. Of course, her sister was a lesbian because she had learned from Luther Von Evil, owner of White Corp., that all men were completely evil bastards. She hurried in and sat next to her blind, deaf, paraplegic, pirate Eskimo mother who had Downs Syndrome, and waited for the ceremony to start. The African American church had offered to sing for her sisters wedding, and their hip hoppin’ soul groove was enough to make anybody want to dance and praise Allah, or whoever their respective lord was. Soon the ceremony was about to begin ahead of schedule thanks to the scheduling done by women and the exclusion of all men. The Russian Buddhist woman, who was manager of a successful business, a talented organ player, and woman, began to play. The Confucian Egyptian schizophrenic was dressed as a female pharaoh to commemorate her heritage (no one argued because they were all women and therefore smart and tolerant), was the minister. Suddenly Thomas ran in farting, holding a football with unwashed hands that had been used to not put the seat back after using the toilet, playing cymbals because he was completely unaware of the situation, and getting the carpet dirty. All the females chuckled politely, because Thomas was such a male.
There, that ought to win over everybody everywhere. And males can’t complain about books that are prejudice against them, any wife who reads this book will see to that. Now for the final touch.
No one wants to have an actual badguy; they all want some asshole that only seems to be a badguy. Make your antagonist a victim of society, or have some tragic deal happen to them. A popular one is to have abusive parents or better yet have them be killed. Whatever works, just make up bullshit that will make people think twice about their judgment of them. Oh, but make sure they have a horrible death so those who are still pissed off will be satisfied. You can pass it off with some stupid reason that no one will care about. Oh, and make sure that you don’t use more than one word to describe people talking or someone’s going to get confused.
”We’ve finally got the documents,” cried Katrina. “We can finally prove that Luther Von Evil is the one publishing the prejudice paper, ‘Stupid Ignorant Male Paper That Has Blonde Jokes In It.’”
”Yes, you have won,” Von Evil cried coldly, “Yet again my life spirals down from grace! And all I wanted was to be happy!”
”What do you mean!,” cried Katrina! I mean, cried Katrina. No exclamation.
“GWHOLG!!!,” furiously cried Katrina’s mother, in Eskimo.
“You see, my story is a sad one,” cried Von Evil. “I used to live in the McRape Circus.”
“You mean!?” Katrina confusedly cried.
“Yes, everyday, for four hours in the morning and six at night, I was raped,” Von Evil cried.
“My god!,” ka-cried Katrina.
“By elephants,” Von Evil cried warmly.
“Huh? Oh, that sucks,” cried Katrina.
“And that’s how my parents died. One night after they had beaten me with monkeys, they were raped to death by elephants,” Von Evil cried whilst dancing. Suddenly a giant bat appeared grabbed Von Evil. He flew high into the sky, and dropped Von Evil into a blender factor filled with explosive bullets.
“My god!” Cried Katrina. “It’s a good thing that he once laughed at an ethnic joke at African’s expense, or I might feel sorry for him.”
Congratulations. Now you’ve written a great book that everyone will love forever. Well, I can’t spend all day giving away my hot writing tips, so good day citizens. And may you sacrament ye to roxorboxors@hotmail.com
~Willbo Baggins