In an age when flowery, milquetoast prose and depressing plots unique in their uniformity reign triumphant, writing the Next Great American Novel™ has never seemed like more of an indomitable challenge. Fortunately, this age is also one wherein any aspiring author with a halfway-legible manuscript can be published for a mere fee of ten to twenty thousand dollars. To help you achieve your midlife-crisis induced dream of becoming the next Jonathan Safran Foer, we’ve prepared a helpful guide to help you write the Next Great American Novel™.
DEVELOPING CHARACTERS
Your passive-aggressive coworker is depressed. Your best friend from high school is depressed. Your least favorite Starbucks barista is depressed.
Of course, depression, to them, is merely a synonym for “kind of sad”. However, they’re perfectly happy to identify with depressed characters in TV shows and books. They just would rather not have to relate with their upstairs neighbor who hasn’t been able to gather up the motivation to get out of bed for the past three days and has wished perpetually for the last four years that they were never born.
In any case, making a depressed character the protagonist of your novel is always a good move. In fact, writing any character with an obscure or less-than-obscure mental illness into your novel is a good move. No research is required to begin writing this character; the only tools necessary are a predilection towards elaborate, unnecessary descriptions of the weather—always overcast—and a melodramatic scene wherein your chosen character breaks down into uncontrollable tears after revealing their mental illness to a friend, family member, or partner.
Your character also needs to be unique. This uniqueness obviously doesn’t manifest itself in their personality; instead, it comes in the form of a small quirk in their appearance. Maybe it’s some freckles that come with an unknowable backstory, or maybe it’s a streak of aqua hair, the result of an unfortunate relationship that haunts your character daily. However, this doesn’t mean you should create a protagonist that belongs to an underrepresented minority. Writing about an underrepresented minority is inherently political, and the Great American Novel™ must be able to cater to both the red wine-sipping and dark chocolate-nibbling coastal elites of the New York Times and the deer hunters who watch Fox News religiously. If you think an “exotic” touch is necessary, stick to a white protagonist with “peace” or “universe” tattooed on them in a foreign language.
Most importantly, your character must always be insightful. No good character speaks and thinks like they have an IQ under 150—let’s be real, is Algernon even relevant anymore?—and your protagonist must conform to this standard. The best protagonist is a 21st century Lord Byron with his maniacal inclinations removed and his depressive tendencies cranked up to eleven.
CHOOSING YOUR SETTING
Historical novels are always great. However, if you do choose to set your story in the past, there are a few crucial points to keep in mind. Firstly, the Great American Novel™ is American, so there are few reasons for your novel to take place outside of the continental United States. Preferred locations include New York City and Los Angeles, but a generic, slightly sinister suburban setting is always encouraged as well. If, for whatever reason, you believe wholeheartedly that you need to set your novel somewhere else, make that setting London or another “just foreign enough” European city where a plurality of the population speaks English fluently.
The best setting for the Next Great American Novel™, though, is still the present. The present is relatable™. The present is ever-changing. The present is more depressing than any past setting your mind, however twisted it may be, can conjure up. Except maybe the Middle Ages. (Of course, nobody sets a Great American Novel™ in the Middle Ages because there were no Americans then.)
CREATING A PLOT
The Great American Novel™ is written in media res. For approximately one page and a half. Then, with no explanation at all, the Great American Novel™ turns to the protagonist’s childhood and your chosen protagonist immediately launches into a monologue about the monotony of their life. You will return to the climax of this tale forty-five brief chapters later. (The modern Great American Novel™ is always at least three hundred and fifty pages long and has anywhere from eighty to ninety-five chapters, all of which are around seven pages long and stuffed full of excessive imagery and overwrought metaphors.)
The Great American Novel™ is, at its core, concerned with emotional turmoil. Maybe your protagonist’s marriage is slowly crumbling with every overseas phone call that ends too quickly. Maybe your protagonist has discovered that they were almost given up for adoption as an infant. Maybe your protagonist is out of the good cereal, the kind that costs $4.99 at their local Stop and Shop. It doesn’t matter what kind of turmoil it is; all that matters is how you describe the turmoil. (Which, of course, is through excessive imagery and overwrought metaphors.)
The ending of the Great American Novel™ is always subtly tragic. It almost never concludes with the death of the protagonist, since that would be too concretely tragic. The tragedy of the Great American Novel™ lies in its grey areas. If the protagonist throws a precious memento from their long-lost first love out the window of their audaciously red Porsche—which obviously symbolizes their temerity—should they be applauded or pitied? The Great American Novel™ forces you to interpret that on your own, since the novel abruptly ends after that protagonist watches that dainty lilac handkerchief slowly wave goodbye in the dusty Nevadan wind.
YOU COULD BE THE NEXT GREAT AMERICAN NOVELIST
By now, it should be obvious that writing the Next Great American Novel™ is much more formulaic than it seems. Of course, there are reasons why not everyone can successfully write the Next Great American Novel™. For one, a specific profile exists for anointed authors of the Next Great American Novel™: dark-haired Caucasian males with well-groomed beards who casually cross their legs during live interviews and attribute their success to “just getting lucky” while never mentioning the opportunities they were afforded as sons of upper-middle-class professionals who went to expensive boarding schools and Ivy League colleges. Additionally, your novel will only become the Next Great American Novel™ if it manages to receive an effusive review from a prominent media outlet three weeks before its release to the public. If it doesn’t, the chances of your novel becoming the Next Great American Novel™ are slim (if you happen to be an immediate descendant of F. Scott Fitzgerald) to none (which is far more likely).
If you do happen to fulfill one or both of these two criteria, however, congratulations! Your novel has joined the ranks of gems like The Grapes of Wrath and “that New York Times Bestseller members of your local Homeowners’ Association keep praising despite none of them having read past the third page of the book”.