YOUR LAST
ASSIGNMENT
Rewrite everything.
(Because as every
writer knows,
rewriting is
everything!)
THE END*
Acknowledgments*
Paste flattering photo of yourself here. Tip: Eyeglasses will make you look more intellectual.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR*
WRITE QUICHE’S LETTER TO P.B. HERE.
For more great reads and free samplers visit www.LBYRDigitalDeals.com
SUGGESTED TITLES
The Best Book Ever Written
The Book That’s Going to Make Me Famous
Buy This Book, You Won’t Regret It
Like a Video Game, Only More Awesome
Read and Be Amazed
I Just Wrote This Book, What Have You Done?
Harry Potter and the *
SUGGESTED PSEUDONYMS
Dr. Seuss
Mark Twain
Lewis Carroll
Anne Ominus
Pseudonymous Bosch
“That’s wonderful, honey, but not until you finish your homework.”
—Parent
“If you write about me, I’m going to kill you.”
—Sibling
“Awesome. I mean, don’t expect me to read it or anything.”
—Friend
“Pseudonymous Bosch is the laziest best writer on the planet! Don’t do his dirty work for him. You should feel honored to write his book.”
—(name redacted)
“Not bad… considering.”
—Pseudonymous Bosch
Pseudonisms: Words to live by
You don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time
you write a book;
you have to reinvent the whole car.
Writers don’t get better as they get older;
they just get older.
Don’t learn to write. Write to learn.
It’s all right to have a lot of books on your plate,
but not on your hot plate—it could start a fire.
Remember, when your face is buried in a book,
nobody can see you pick your nose.
Parental Obituary Section
Anne of Green Gables, by Lucy Maud Montgomery—The eponymous Anne is an orphan adopted inadvertently by a couple who wanted a boy. The cause of her parents’ death is unknown.
The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis—Not technically orphans, the Pevensie children are sent to live with their uncle in the country while their parents remain in London for the duration of the war.
Cinderella, folktale—Not an orphan per se, Cinderella is certainly treated like one. Traditionally, her mother died in childbirth and her father only later.
Hansel and Gretel, fairy tale—More literary characters with a dead mother. Their stepmother claims there is not enough money to feed them.
Harry Potter, by J.K. Rowling—Harry’s parents died protecting their baby from the evil sorcerer Voldemort. Harry famously bears a scar on his forehead from that fateful day.
Heidi, by Johanna Spyri—Heidi is yet another eponymous orphan heroine, this one in the Swiss Alps.
Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain—An American classic about a half orphan. Huck’s mother died of unspecified causes. His father is a derelict.
James and the Giant Peach, by Roald Dahl—James’s parents were killed by a rhinoceros that had escaped from the London Zoo.
Little Orphan Annie, by Harold Gray—The comicstrip prototype of the musical star. Her parents possibly died in a car accident after giving her up for adoption. Possibly.
The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien—Hairy-footed Frodo Baggins’s parents died in a boating accident when he was twelve. Later, the hobbit hero is adopted by his cousin Bilbo, hero of The Hobbit.
The Mysterious Benedict Society, by Trenton Lee Stewart—Reynie Muldoon is an orphan whose prodigious mental powers lead to adventure.
Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens—Perhaps the most famous orphan of all time. His mother died in childbirth. His father is gone for no apparent reason.
Peter Pan, by J.M. Barrie—Peter was lost as an infant. When he went back to see his parents, they had a new baby—so he flew away forever.
Pippi Longstocking, by Astrid Lindgren—Pippi’s father was washed overboard during a particularly nasty storm.
Pollyanna, by Eleanor H. Porter—Another famous orphan from literature, Pollyanna remains hopeful in the face of ever-worsening circumstances—including the deaths of her parents. To be a Pollyanna is to be irrationally, even irritatingly, optimistic.
The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett—Colin’s mother, Lilias, fell from a tree in the garden, triggering the premature birth of her child and ultimately her own death. Mary’s mother died of cholera in India, along with Mary’s father and all of the household servants.
A Series of Unfortunate Events, by Lemony Snicket—The Baudelaire siblings’ parents perished in a suspicious fire in this series.
Star Wars, directed by George Lucas—Luke Skywalker’s mother, Padmé, died from an appallingly literal “broken heart” shortly after childbirth. And if you don’t know what happened to his father, well, congratulations.
Superman, by Jerry Siegel—The Man of Steel’s parents were scientists who predicted the demise of their own planet and sent him off in a rocket to find an inhabitable planet. What great parents!
The Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum—Dorothy Gale’s parents died of unspecified causes. Perhaps they, too, were blown away.
First Sentences
Here are a few noteworthy novel openers:
NOTICE
Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.
BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR
—Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
One thing was certain, that the white kitten had nothing to do with it:—it was the black kitten’s fault entirely.
—Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass
It was seven o’clock of a very warm evening in the Seeonee hills when Father Wolf woke up from his day’s rest, scratched himself, yawned, and spread out his paws one after the other to get rid of the sleepy feeling in their tips.
—Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book
There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.
—C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.
—Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.
—J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
“Where’s Papa going with that ax?”
—E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web
What do these sentences have in common? Not much that I can see. And yet they all make me want to read more: Is that really what it’s like to be a wolf? What did the black cat do that was so bad? Will I be shot for reading Huckleberry Finn? Will David Copperfield turn out to be a hero or a villain? Are there going to be more bad words in The Catcher in the Rye or is crap the worst one? What did Eustace Clarence Scrubb do to deserve to be named Eustace Clarence Scrubb? And where is Papa going with that ax? I thought Charlotte’s Web was a sweet story about barnyard animals—not a murder mystery!
WRITING TIPS
Ideas: Lie, Cheat, and Steal
Where do I get my story ideas? When readers ask me this, I usually tell them I’m sorry, I don’t know where my ideas come from. There is no method to my madness, just… madness. If they pe
rsist in questioning me, I tell them I don’t have to come up with ideas because everything I write is true. But, I admit, these aren’t very satisfying answers.
In order to get all of you budding young authors off my back, I’ve decided to come up with some helpful suggestions for coming up with ideas. Or at least some suggestions that sound helpful. Here’s what I’ve got so far. Let me know what you think….
1. Lie
Lying is always your first and best option when it comes to writing fiction. Need a subject for a story? Just make it up. Whoever wrote write what you know obviously didn’t know what they were writing. If writers only wrote what they knew, there would be no stories about fairies or dwarves or dragons. No animals would ever talk. Only murderers would write murder mysteries, and only ghosts would write ghost stories. A story starts with an act of imagination. And if your ending is half decent, it ends with one, too. A good liar is a good tale-teller. So, please, tell tall tales. The taller the better.
2. Cheat
Then again, take it from me: it’s very hard to make up something new every time you sit down to write. This is what they call writer’s block, and it results in a lot of hair-tearing, teeth-gnashing, and, of course, chocolate-eating. When you can’t come up with something that has never happened, cheat—use something that has happened. But change it up a little. In real life, it was your brother who stuck your head in the toilet? Well, that’s the great thing about fiction. Now you can stick his head in. So you didn’t actually throw your book at your teacher when he called on you—this is your chance. One word of caution, however: please, please change the names of the people involved. You only want them to suspect you’re writing about them….
3. Steal
When you’re completely drawing a blank, when the wondrous wellspring of your imagination has dried up, when you’ve mined all your childhood memories for golden story-nuggets, then it’s time to commit the ultimate authorial crime: Grand Theft Autho. In other words, steal an idea from someone else. As I once famously said, Bad artists copy. Good artists steal. (Actually, it was Pablo Picasso who said that, but who’s counting?) Maybe you steal from a movie you saw. Or a book you liked. Or even better, a book you didn’t like. But in this case you should change it up more than a little; you should change it up a lot. When I was younger, one writer might have copied another with impunity. Nowadays, with so much information at everyone’s fingertips, you will almost certainly be caught. So make sure that all your words are your own and that you change the context of the idea/event/theme you are stealing. Then you will not be a plagiarist—you will be a master thief.
Say, just for instance, the movie you’re stealing from concerns a friendship between a boy and an alien. Maybe you make your story about the friendship between a boy and a dragon. Oh, shoot, that’s been done. How about a boy and a whale? Oops, that’s been done, too. A boy and a robot…? Oh, well, you know what I mean. In fact, there are plenty of stories to be written about aliens, dragons, whales, and robots. I’ll tell you a secret: there are very few original ideas. (Not even the idea that there are few original ideas is original.) Most writers, even the best writers, steal all the time. In the end, the important thing is not so much where your ideas come from, but what you do with them. But that’s a subject for another essay: not Lie, Cheat, and Steal but, let’s see, how about Shake, Rattle, and Roll?
Class dismissed.
EAVESDROPPING
Good eavesdropping skills are vital for any writer, whether you’re looking for story ideas, intriguing characters, or just a bit of dialogue. Here are some strategies and techniques writers employ to divert attention from themselves while they listen to other people’s conversations.
Diversion techniques:
Staring into space
Hiding behind a book or magazine
Pretending to listen to an iPod
Places to eavesdrop:
Bus or bus stop
Restaurant, coffeehouse, cafeteria
Outside your big sister’s bedroom door
Things to listen for:
Story and/or character ideas
Dialogue and/or speech patterns
Secrets
CHOOSE YOUR OWN AWARD*
THE OLD-BERRY, SNOB-BERRY &
DARK-CHOCOLATE-DIPPED-STRAWBERRY
AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE IN
CHILDREN’S LITERATURE
(This is the big one.)
ACADEMY AWARD, BEST ORIGINAL MATERIAL
FOR FUTURE ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
(Hey, I’m an optimist.)
LITTLE LEAGUE REGIONAL CHAMPIONS
(Just because I never got this one.)
VALENTINE
(Never got too many of those, either.)
TITLES FOR UNWRITTEN BOOKS
Now that you’ve bestowed upon yourself a well-deserved award, it’s clear that you have a glittering writing career ahead of you. Celebrate by naming all the brilliant books you will write in the future—or that you will think about writing in the future while you are resting on your laurels (and/or while you are beset by a terrible case of writer’s block). Who knows, if the titles are good enough—they might be enough.*
If you are one of those old-fashioned people who think a title should reflect the content of a book, here are some unwritten books for you to name:
A guide to the flora and fauna of your backyard
Title:
A cookbook for cannibals
Title:
A self-help book for moody cats
Title:
A how-to manual for cat burglars
Title:
The next Pseudonymous Bosch book (Seriously, I need a title!)
Title:
A REAL-LIVE READER INTERVIEWS
PSEUDONYMOUS BOSCH*
HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH YOUR PEN NAME?
Pseudonymous is an old family name. Bosch is the name of my dishwasher. (My toaster is called Cuisinart—that didn’t seem as good.)
DO YOUR FRIENDS CALL YOU PSEUDO AS WELL?
Friends? What friends? My rabbit calls me Hey You. My cat doesn’t really talk to me anymore.
WHAT/WHO INSPIRED YOU TO BECOME A WRITER AND WHY?
All my best friends are books (see above), and I’m very competitive with my friends.
WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITE GENRES TO READ?
Mystery—for the questions. Science fiction and fantasy—for the answers. True crime—for professional advice.
WHEN DID YOU START WRITING PROFESSIONALLY?
In writing, I still consider myself very much an amateur. Crime is another story….
TO YOU, WHAT IS THE HARDEST PART OF WRITING?
The part that comes before being finished.
ARE YOU A GOOD SECRET KEEPER?
I can’t tell you. OK, I’ll tell you. No.
LAST (AND MAYBE MOST IMPORTANT), HOW DID YOU DEVELOP YOUR LOVE FOR CHOCOLATE?
Love at first bite?
*DON’T COPY ME! THAT’S WHAT A COPYRIGHT PAGE IS SAYING. JUST AS YOU MIGHT SAY TO YOUR LITTLE BROTHER WHEN HE SAYS HE LIKES THE SAME FLAVOR ICE CREAM YOU DO. A COPYRIGHT IS LITERALLY THE RIGHT TO COPY–AND/OR PUBLISH–A BOOK. USUALLY, THE AUTHOR OF A BOOK HOLDS THE COPYRIGHT. HOWEVER, IN THE CASE OF THIS BOOK, YOU ARE THE AUTHOR AND I HOLD THE COPYRIGHT. IT’S VERY UNFAIR WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT IT. DON’T THINK ABOUT IT.
*AS YOU KNOW, THE DEDICATION PAGE IS BY FAR THE MOST IMPORTANT PAGE OF ANY BOOK. IT IS YOUR CHANCE TO REWARD FRIENDS, PUNISH ENEMIES, AND MAKE EVERYONE ELSE JEALOUS AND RESENTFUL. MY ADVICE IS TO FILL IN THIS PAGE LAST, BECAUSE THE PERSON YOU WANT TO DEDICATE YOUR BOOK TO TODAY MAY BE THE PERSON YOU WANT TO FLING THE BOOK AT TOMORROW. ALSO, BY KEEPING THE DEDICATION PAGE OPEN, YOU CAN ALWAYS DANGLE THE POSSIBILITY OF A DEDICATION IN THE FACES OF YOUR SCHOOLMATES AND GET THEM TO GIVE YOU THEIR DESSERTS AT LUNCHTIME.
*HEY, IT WORKED IN THE PAST. AND I’LL TELL YOU A SECRET—TITLES CAN’T BE COPYRIGHTED. YOU CAN STEAL ANY TITLE YOU LIKE, EVEN ONE OF MINE.
*HERE AND THROUGHOUT THIS BOOK, YOU MIGHT
CONSIDER WRITING IN PENCIL RATHER THAN PEN. THAT WAY YOU CAN ERASE YOUR TRACKS, SO TO SPEAK. LIBRARIANS ESPECIALLY CAN GET RATHER PEEVISH WHEN THEY SEE PEN MARKS IN THEIR BOOKS.
**IF YOU HAVE ENGAGED IN ANY CRIMINAL ADVENTURES INVOLVING DUPLICITOUS SCHEMES AND HIDDEN IDENTITIES—THAT IS TO SAY, IF YOU HAVE READ ANY OF MY PREVIOUS BOOKS—THEN YOU KNOW WHAT A PSEUDONYM IS: THE PART OF MY NAME THAT COMES BEFORE OUS. MORE GENERALLY, IT IS A NAME AN AUTHOR USES WHEN HE IS TOO SCARED TO PUT HIS OWN NAME ON A BOOK.
*AN EPIGRAPH IS USUALLY A QUOTATION FROM AN AUTHOR WHO IS OLDER THAN YOU ARE, NOT TO MENTION A BETTER WRITER. SUPPOSEDLY, IT PROVIDES SOME KIND OF INSIGHT INTO THE BOOK YOU’RE WRITING. THE THEME OF YOUR BOOK, SAY. MORE OFTEN, IT’S A WAY OF MAKING YOURSELF LOOK SMART AND WELL EDUCATED.
* FRANKLY, THE TERM TABLE OF CONTENTS HAS NEVER MADE MUCH SENSE TO ME. A BOX HAS CONTENTS. A BOOK HAS WORDS. IT DOESN’T CONTAIN ANYTHING. AS FOR A TABLE, IT DOESN’T HAVE ANY CONTENTS, EITHER; IT HAS… A TOP… LEGS… MAYBE A FEW LOOSE SCREWS. YES, I KNOW, A TABLE OF CONTENTS IS NOT A TABLE AS IN DINNER TABLE; IT’S A TABLE AS IN MULTIPLICATION TABLE. BUT THAT ONLY MULTIPLIES THE PROBLEM. AND MY MATH IS TERRIBLE. I THINK I’LL TABLE THIS DISCUSSION RIGHT NOW.
*WHAT IS A FOREWORD? WHY, IT’S THE OPPOSITE OF A BACKWORD, OF COURSE. AH, BUT THERE’S NO SUCH WORD AS BACKWORD, ONLY BACKWARD. AND YOU DON’T SAY A BACKWARD, ANYWAY. (UNLESS YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT THE BACK OF THE WARD—YOU KNOW, WHERE THEY KEEP THE REALLY CRAZY PEOPLE.) YOU’RE RIGHT; I WAS JOKING. A FOREWORD IS A SECTION AT THE FRONT OF A BOOK WHERE YOU ARE LIKELY TO FIND SOMETHING ABOUT THE ORIGINS OF OR INSPIRATION FOR THE BOOK. BUT THAT DOESN’T SOUND NEARLY AS ORIGINAL OR INSPIRED, DOES IT?
Write This Book: A Do-It-Yourself Mystery Page 9