We have recently discovered that How Not To Write A Novel is being taught at many colleges and universities. If you’re teaching HNTWAN, write in and let us know, we like to keep tabs on these things. To show our appreciation, you’ll be entered in a drawing to win a copy of the new Teacher’s Edition of How Not To Write A Novel, with a richer, more mature subtext.

(Read about the original How Not To Write A Novel Goes To College here, in this HNTWAN ClassicPost.)

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In How Not To Write A Novel, we recommend readers take a look at Fowler’s Modern English Usage for a quick lesson in the use of irony, both the term and the device. Realizing now that not everybody has a copy of Fowler close at hand, as a service to our readers we reproduce here the entry on irony from the first edition of H. W. Fowler’s entertaining and instructive usage guide.

Irony is a form of utterance that postulates a double audience, consisting of one party that hearing shall hear & shall not understand, & another party that, when more is meant than meets the ear, is aware both of that more & of the outsiders’ incomprehension.  1. Socratic irony was a profession of ignorance. What Socrates represented as an ignorance & a weakness in himself was in fact a non-committal attitude towards any dogma, however accepted or imposing, that had not been carried back to & shown to be based upon first principles. The two parties in his audience were, first, the dogmatists moved by pity or contempt to enlighten this ignorance, &, secondly, those who knew their Socrates & set themselves to watch the familiar game in which learning should be turned inside out by simplicity.  2. The double audience is essential too to what is called dramatic irony, i.e. the irony of the Greek drama. That drama had the peculiarity of providing the double audience — one party in the secret & the other not — in a special manner. The facts of most Greek plays were not a matter for invention, but were part of every Athenian child’s store of legend; all the spectators, that is, were in the secret beforehand of what would happen. But the characters, Pentheus & Oedipus & the rest, were in the dark; one of them might utter words that to him & his companions on the stage were of trifling import, but to those who hearing could understand were pregnant with the coming doom. The surface meaning for the dramatis personae, & the underlying for the spectators; the dramatist working his effect by irony.  3. And the double audience for the irony of Fate? Nature persuades most of us that the course of events is within wide limits foreseeable, that things will follow their usual course, that violent outrage on our sense of the probable or reasonable need not be looked for; & these ‘most of us’ are the uncomprehending outsiders; the elect or inner circle with whom Fate shares her amusement at our consternation are the few to whom it is not an occasional maxim, but a living conviction, that what happens is the unexpected.

That is an attempt to link intelligibly together three special senses of the word irony, which in its more general sense may be defined as the use of words intended to convey one meaning to the uninitiated part of the audience & another to the initiated, the delight of it lying in the secret intimacy set up between the latter & the speaker; it should be added, however, that there are dealers in irony for whom the initiated circle is not of outside hearers, but is an alter ego dwelling in their own breasts.

For practical purposes a protest is needed against the application of ‘the irony of Fate’, or of ‘irony’ as short for that, to every trivial oddity:—But the pleasant note changed to something almost bitter as he declared his fear that before them lay a ‘fight for everything we hold dear’— a sentence that the groundlings by a curious irony were the loudest in cheering (oddly enough)./ It would be an irony of fate, according to many members, if Mr Chamberlain were elected to succeed Mr Balfour, for it was his father who dealt the first blow at Mr Balfour’s ascendancy (interesting)./ ‘The irony of the thing’ said the dairyman who now owns the business ‘lies in the fact that after I began to sell good wholesome butter in place of this adulterated mixture, my sales fell off 75 per cent.’ (’It’s a rum thing that…’ seems almost adequate).  The irony of fate is, in fact, to be classed now as a HACKNEYED PHRASE.

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I. Food

arf: (n.) woof, bow wow, yap, bark.; (adj.) woof, bow wow, yap, bark. (vt.) woof, bow wow, yap, bark.

II. Walk

arf: (n.) woof, bow wow, yap, bark.; (adj.) woof, bow wow, yap, bark. (vt.) woof, bow wow, yap, bark.

III. Humping

arf: (n.) woof, bow wow, yap, bark.; (adj.) woof, bow wow, yap, bark. (vt.) woof, bow wow, yap, bark.

IV. Human, entrance

arf: (n.) woof, bow wow, yap, bark.; (adj.) woof, bow wow, yap, bark. (vt.) woof, bow wow, yap, bark.

V. Another dog

arf: (n.) woof, bow wow, yap, bark.; (adj.) woof, bow wow, yap, bark. (vt.) woof, bow wow, yap, bark.

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It has come to our attention that certain writers have been using our book to back up the assertion that it is somehow amateurish or unnatural to use a thesaurus. We are shocked and disappointed. Because, first of all, it should not be “a thesaurus,” as if one might choose among thesauruses: there is only the thesaurus, that is, Roget’s original thesaurus. Brilliantly arranged, it is a delight, a book that one opens with a specific purpose and emerges from an hour later, head buzzing with words, and thoughts, and revelations. (It should be noted that the purpose is by now forgotten, but who cares about usefulness, after all?)

To use a dictionary style thesaurus, or worse still, thesaurus.com, is to not use a thesaurus at all; in fact, you will come out of it knowing fewer words than you knew before. Continued use may in fact turn you into a mute husk, innocent of language, a fleshly lump with no discernible intellect–a non-writer! While some might note that this would improve your earning potential enormously, we cannot recommend it, because we would look like hypocrites.

Anyhow, to get back to the point about how we are so horribly misunderstood: depressingly often, people imagine we have said something that is wrong, like that people should never use thesauruses. Au contraire! In fact, whenever you think that something in our book might be wrong, stop. Before you read another word, try to determine where you’ve made your error by retracing your steps. Go back to that morning, or if necessary, the week before. Don’t stop until you’ve discovered the instant when you went off the tracks, even if this means going back to early childhood.

Here is the crucial step: fix your error.

Then relive your life in your mind, pausing occasionally to appreciate how much better it is now, until you find yourself again reading our book. See? We were right all along.

What we said about thesauruses, is that one can abuse them.  So, don’t do that.

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When the controversy arose over French legislation to ban the burqa, we were not surprised, but we were troubled. Like many others, we support the right of a people to maintain their traditional culture. When we see authentic expressions of a tradition challenged by a homogenized modern consensus, we feel we should step up and say something.

This is the Achilles heel of contemporary liberalism. We claim to cherish the rights of the individual, but confronted by behavior the majority finds offensive, our resolve falters.

The French have always been chauvinists. Nothing is more French than insensitive disdain for others. From their very beginnings, the French have been assholes. Surely it is wrong to force them to give up this traditional and authentic cultural expression, in the name of some groupthink masquerading as principle?

There are only 2000 Muslim women in France who choose to veil their faces, a tiny number compared to the 60 million Frenchmen who would rip those veils away, spit in the women’s faces, shout racial epithets, and mince away, beret held high, to eat frogs. We urge you to support the right of the French people to pass down their traditions to their children, and to other people’s children who happen to be living nearby.

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GRRrrr, boys and girls! I’m Jean-Robert, the Genre Bear!

Right now, your body is going through lots of scary changes, so Howard and Sandy asked me to have a talk with you about literary genres.

As you grow taller and different parts of your body start to take on startling and unexpected dimensions, you’ll also find yourself thinking about what genre you would like to write in. You’ll hear things in the street about genres, and the best thing to remember is that all of it is true. But before you start making any big decisions, let me tell you some things that will help you as you learn to move your body in ways that will upset older people.

Today I’m going to talk about “romance.” More books are written about people falling in love than about anything else. In English, these books are called romance novels. But in most Romance languages, any kind of novel is called a roman, not just romance novels. Romance languages are called Romance languages because they come from the language that people used to speak in Rome, before Rome was invaded by the Goths. Although the languages that come from the language of Rome are called Romance languages, the language of Rome was called Latin, and some romance novels have characters called “Latin lovers,” who usually speak Spanish.

The Goths learned to write after invading the Roman Empire, but they did not write Gothic novels. Gothic novels were a type of novel written during the Romantic period, which followed the neoclassical period, which was influenced by the Roman Empire, which is why styles of the neoclassical period are called Empire. Another style of the neoclassical period is the Regency style, and novels set during this period are called Regency romances. Regency romances never have sex in them.

Other romance novels have sex in them, and they are still called romance novels, unless there is a lot of sex, and then it is called erotica. If it has even more sex in it, and less romance, it is called pornography, unless it is literary fiction, in which case it is just called fiction. Literary fiction is a genre of fiction which is not genre fiction. All the literary fiction that was ever written is called Western literature, and the first Western literature was written by a man named Homer, who was blind.  Western literature does not include westerns, which are a genre of fiction set in the American West, and always have cowboys and sometimes have Indians. Americans write westerns, and lately a lot of Indians write novels. Novels written by Indians are always literature.

So, remember, boys and girls, it’s perfectly natural to want to experiment with genres, and it probably won’t make you go blind, or at least not for a very, very long time.

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Two, actually.Look for the Spanish language edition of How Not To Write A Novel from Seix Barral  in April 2010, and the Italian edition from Corbaccio in October 2010. Assuming you were waiting to read How Not To Write A Novel in Spanish or Italian.  For English-speaking peoples we still stand behind the hearty Anglophone values and jolly Saxophone humor of the original, while at the same time enthusiastically welcoming our Romance brethren into the How Not To Write A Novel family.

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We found this review on the website for Chinese Paladin Online, a popular role-playing game. Translation by google. 

Veteran point of writing fiction writers can not afford to make mistakes 

Love written by authors who have big dreams, but I take infinite pains taken to the famous publishing house knew just dart back edge, automatic return.Where exactly the problem? Difficult book to write the novel, the representative of the worst in 1969 is none other than Seoul American writer James (John Kennedy Toole), because no one is willing to publication of his novel “The fool alliance” (A Confederacy of Dunces), the last suicide. 4 to sell his mother did not give up, and finally a book. God knows well received book, the 1981 Pulitzer Prize. 

“This is not to write fiction” book video 

The bloody lessons of the former, the young people to write the novel can not miss the two veteran writers: shadow writer米泰玛(Howard Mittelmark) and Newman University Writing (Sandra Newman) jointly co-authored the book “fiction is not the case write “(How Not to Write a Novel), the burden of proof that fiction can not afford to make the 200 error, a listing on the Web Bookstore, got the British bestseller list. 

Typically an essential element of bad novels that according to the book are: the circumstances of absurd or unintelligible muttered; role annoying feature; full of cliches and the author of bias. “Writers need to do is to keep readers page.” Priority cases, regardless of emotional move, or move about reserving intellectual aspirations, can not wait to let readers know how the next.Benign circumstances such as redundant, no one to see through the follow-up to put the development of justice, and no injuries removed. 

[Read more →]

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While there is no sure-fire formula for a good novel, there are mistakes you should avoid. That is the principle on which our book was based. But every rule has at least one tutelary genius; an author who triumphs despite - or because of - having run roughshod over it. Ulysses is baffling, over-written, and plotless. Tristram Shandy takes a long time getting started (the hero isn’t born until Volume III). Others include:

1. Candide: Almost every writing guide will tell you that the plot should be driven by the protagonist’s actions; s/he should not be passively batted around by fate until fate’s arms tire and the happy ending results. Of course, that is Candide in a nutshell.

2. The Brothers Karamazov: Here Dostoevsky continually halts the plot while one character after another recounts his dreams, concept of sacred love, or the plot of a long prose poem he wrote as a teenager. Not only does Dostoevsky get away with it, his most celebrated passage is the bit about the prose poem.

3. Lolita: Writers should avoid using obscure words or ornate prose purely for the sake of using obscure words and ornate prose. If those writers are writing in a second language, they are likely to be headed for a humiliating garble. In Nabokov’s hands, though, words like “leporine” and “matitudinal” are a sensual pleasure.

4. To the Lighthouse: It is easier for the reader if the novelist does not hop merrily from one person’s point of view to another, from head to head like a summer cold, guided by mere proximity. Unless you are Virginia Woolf, in which case this creates a fascinating compound view of life, sort of like the spider’s-eye view in old horror movies.

5. Watership Down: The vast majority of aspiring writers should not write a 500-page novel from the point of view of a rabbit.

Reposted from the Times.

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  Penguin’s UK edition of How Not To Write A Novel will be available on January 29. Although the text will be unchanged from the US edition, time and context have made the UK edition even funnier and more!!! useful, so you’d be well-advised to stock up on both. Don’t believe us? Check the book section of the Times, where you’ll find us extensively quoted.  

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