} The Delphic Research Inc. Guide

} on

} How to Write a Novel

}

} Rule 1 Don’t have a short, bald hero who isn’t very interesting – if

} you start with him, you’re just making a rod for your own back.

}

} Rule 2 Before you start, you should decide how fat your book is

} going to be. If it’s going to be a doorstop, you’ll have to fill a

} lot of pages by describing things in great detail as if people had

} never seen them, for example, a door. You can also introduce a vast

} army of minor characters who are briefly amusing but then suddenly

} and inexplicably get killed off.

}

} Rule 3 The longer the book, the shorter the title: one word titles

} for more than 600 pages (e.g. Quagmire), one syllable titles for more

} than 1000 pages (e.g. Quag). Very short books must have long titles,

} such as The Pastimes of the Lost Ephemera. You can get away with

} titles such as this because once you’ve read the title you’ve picked

} up most of the plot and are a good way through the text.

}

} Rule 4 Long books may have happy endings, because in order to have a

} happy ending you have to start happy, get sad and then regain

} happiness. Short books don’t have time for all this, so they start

} miserable and get worse quickly.

}

} Rule 5 Fashion applies to novels as it does to everything else. You

} won’t get far with Tea With Mr Gumblewick even though Sibyl likes that

} sort of thing.

}

} Rule 6 Seamy undersides are all the rage, especially if the overside

} of your underside isn’t very pleasant either. Only one book a century

} gets away with the bright underside of the lovely overside. If life

} was that cheery, people wouldn’t be reading books.

}

} Rule 7 Don’t restrict yourself to writing only about what you know.

} Publishers and editors suggest you should do this to try to stop

} stamp collectors getting their novels published – even though they

} have got snappy, one-word titles such as Unhinged.

}

} Rule 8 The great thing about fiction is you can make it all up

} without doing a lot of research about anything. As long as you have

} one gratuitous fact per page, readers will think you know all about

} nuclear fission, Iceland, or micro-surgery.

}

} Rule 9 All novels these days must have long passages of gratuitous

} sex. These are very difficult to write if you’ve never had any

} gratuitous sex, let alone long passages of it.

}

} Rule 10 (or Cassidy’s Corollary) If you make up the stuff about sex,

} there’s always the danger that you’ll make some fundamental

} biological error that will embarrass you in print forever. This is

} the only time when it’s an advantage to have a short bald hero with

} the sexual magnetism of a face flannel.