| Thirteen Tips on How to Write a Really Bad Novel – Part One
1. Make sure you’ve got a lot of similar names too. Donald, Donna, Dina, Dana and Danny just feel right together.
2. Explain everything. When your character is angry, just say that she’s angry. There’s no point in trying to show that through her actions when you can just tell that to your reader.
3. Remember that real writers use a typewriter. They don’t like these newfangled computers. A manual typewriter and a bucket of Wite-Out™ are the tools of a serious writer.
4. Fill your book with coincidences, especially towards the end. Nothing beats having the exciting climax occur because the hero bumped into the villain in a small-town cafe when they both had a craving for peach-filled semi-sweet chocolate pie. Did you mention that both characters love the exact same pie? Now would be a good time.
5. Don’t let your character’s established traits get in the way of a good plot twist. Just because your hero is a priest who preaches non-violence (We’ll call him Father Angeltoe) doesn’t mean he can’t be an expert marksman with an itchy trigger finger.
6. Use lots of technical jargon. Don’t worry about whether your reader will understand it, or whether you understand it. Just stick it in. It will make your characters sound smarter.
7. If you are writing a historical novel, don’t sweat accuracy. The reader won’t care. Go ahead and have Napoleon invent the automatic rifle. Who could say he didn’t?
8. If you are writing fantasy literature, make sure your magical animals have never been thought of before. Try a talking armadillo. No, forget the talking armadillo. I want that one for myself.
9. Make sure to add …A Novel to the end of your title. You don’t want people to forget what they are reading.
10. Pile on the adjectives and adverbs. Why have a woman speak when you can have her whisper breathlessly in her lustful, wind-swept voice?
11. Don’t feel as if anything has to happen. Plots are optional. Two people sitting in a room staring at each other is great material, as long as it is handled with plenty of adjectives and adverbs (see tip ten).
12. Exclamation points! Exclamation points! Exclamation points!
13. Don’t sweat the order of the action. If the big football game needs to occur just after the prom, then that is when it should be.
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Write From Karen 