Hello all, and welcome to fiction writing 101. Please take your seats. Coffee will be served during the break. Smokers, please only light up at the back of the building. Everyone, please steer clear of classroom B14 because the Ayurvedic Meditators are in there and they get a little iffy if you make any noise, and believe me, they have a very narrow definition on what constitutes noise. Alright, has everyone found a bucket? Sir, please put your mobile phone away, the WiFi’s not that great here anyway. Thanks.
Have you all done your course reading for today? Great. We’ll start on page one. Can anyone tell me ways in which this book has taught us to make a reader violently ill? Alright, not all at the same time please. We’ll make a list.
-
- Insert major clunks of exposition in the beginning of your book.
- Insert major clunks of sperm everywhere in the book.
- Naming your main character ‘Bones’ works, and not just if he is a porn star or a grave digger.
- Naming your other main character ‘Vanessa’ works, and not just if she’s a porn star or a fifty year old bank teller from Newark.
- Seriously, lay on the exposition as thickly as you can, especially if your book is the sixth in a series of fifteen; at this point you will obviously have a lot of new readers.
- Dominance is always sexy, even if your special lady is not entirely down with it.
- Coherence is not a virtue if your characters are a) drunk b) horny c) dumb d) all of the above.
- It is very romantic to manipulate a woman into a relationship by telling her you’ll murder her family if she doesn’t.
- It is equally romantic to be in love with the man who is trying to murder your family.
- Death is an excellent aphrodisiac; stiffs and stiffies are practically the same.
- Romeo and Juliet desperately needs dumbing down, either deliberately or accidentally.
- Interesting people never discuss the mundane; for example, the weather, holiday plans, dinner, or who’s going to pick up the dry cleaning. Instead, their conversational topics limit themselves to fiery outburst of love and rage.
- When people have these conversations, they automatically lead to either fist fights or sex, often simultaneously.
- All sex is fantastic or fatalistic
- Bodily fluids are exactly as erotic as you might think they are.
- So is likening genitalia to foodstuffs.
- Sleeping in a room at an average temperature while undressed and not covered by bedding will not make you feel cold and you will not need blankets and/or a radiator to warm up. A penis will do.
- When describing parts of the world one has not visited, investigation of these regions is unnecessary.
- Tuscany is basically a rustic collection of cypress trees and yokels who smell of garlic and communicate exclusively via hand gestures. See also point 16.
- If you so happen to be the most successful contract killer in the world it it totally okay for you to be continuously swayed by the throes of passion rather than fulfilling your contractual obligations.
- There is such thing as a magic vagina, literally and metaphorically.
- Sexism is not sexism if your characters don’t think it is.
- It is not necessary to have had sex to realistically write about it. Alternatively, it is not okay for your characters to have the sort of pedestrian sex that, say, an author of erotic fiction might have.
- Penises are akin to garden hoses and vaginas are holdalls. Insertion of one into the other is a cumbersome and time-consuming process.
- There are no other ways of dealing with anger directed at your spouse than emotional manipulation and strangulation.
- If your main character thinks to himself that he is not monogamous though he wants to have sex with only one woman, then your main character is not monogamous.
- Women wear clothes solely to attract men and not for reasons of comfort of because they simply feel like it.
- Likewise, women exclusively go out and get drunk for the sole purpose of helplessly getting rogered in the parking lot so that the male antagonist can swoop in and save her.
- Rape is SO HOT.
- It is entirely possible to masturbate your way through writing a novel. Make sure to clean your keyboard afterwards, though.
Alright, thank you all for your contributions. Next week we will discuss Ernest Hemingway and why bullfighting is not animal torture but a valid expression of one’s masculinity. Samples of Pepto Bismol will be available in the hallway. Please stop vomiting now, and don’t forget to have your parking validated.