How to Turn Good Writing into Crap

There are better ways to get your bestseller

How to turn good writing into crap

 

Everyone wants that bestseller sitting on the shelf of the local library, or at least, propping up the toilet roll in the local pub. And these days, everyone’s looking for new writing, something that’s different, that will get noticed, spread over a dozen newspapers all over the world. So how do you be different in a world of astounding literature? You be crap.

 

Step one: Write. Just write about anything, but make it as good as you can.

 

Step two: Add a character. They don’t have to be majorly important, but make sure they appear a fair few times so the reader gets to know them. If you swear you can’t find anywhere to put them in, just make them run through with a headless chook, happens all the time. Or, make them the headless chook.

 

Step three: Drink some coffee. That is all. If you don’t drink coffee, have some rum.

 

Step four: Take one of your characters, a main one preferably, and kill them off halfway through. Maybe they’ve come down with a disease that’s only contractible in Antarctica; brings into question what were they doing down there. Or, slam a bus into them; quick n’easy, over in an instant.

 

Step five: Cut out the last eight lines of your story. What more could a reader want then a story without the end? And really, it’s just dribble when you get that far.

 

Step six: Pull out a thesaurus. Now that you’ve got the basis of your story, and probably a very good one, you’ve got to turn it into crap. Change every word you can; smarten it up or dumb it down, doesn’t matter, just change it. Taking the previous sentence, here’s an example:

Modify apiece word they tin; titivate the aforementioned awake otherwise tongue-tie the aforementioned depressed, not do substance, impartial amendment state.

Clear as a murky river on a cloudy day right?

 

Step seven: You’re ready with your charmingly crap story. But look, if you still don’t think your writing is crap enough to get published, throw in a purple tomato disguised as a turnip, and it should be nicely crap. Now send it off to a publisher and wait for that acceptance. In the meantime, drink some coffee or some rum, or why not both.

 

And in seven easy steps, you should have yourself a crap bestseller. If you ever get lost along the way and get tempted to put some goodness into it, just throw in a few leprechauns and it’ll be fine. Just fine dandy crap.

Reviews

[Marie]

I will try to keep this in mind, though I don't hope to write a bestseller. Not even a crap one.

[SquinklaPsyOps]

This is the funniest advice and true at the same time, why take it so serious with so much trash out there to compete with, probably the coffee would be the most enjoyable out of the whole ordeal.