How to Write the Great American Novel

Video Transcript

"Hi this is Laura Turner and today I am going to talk with you about how to write the Great American Novel. If you are a novelist you probably want to be the greatest novelist that there has ever been and therefore you want to write a Great American Novel. I don't know, however that novelists who wrote great American novels knew that they were going to be Great American Novels while they were writing them. My best piece of advice for you if you are looking at this question before I get into more details is just to write something that you are more passionate about and something that is going to deal with issues that you think need to be tackled. But if you really are set on writing the Great American Novel as it is follow these next pieces of advice. What do you have to say about America that has not yet been said? What needs to be said that has not been written about before? In order to figure this out of course you are going to need to read all the Great American Novels that have ever been written and figure out what you can lend to this tradition. Next what is most important to you and to this country so tie in what is most important to ordinary people to with what is most important for the country as a whole. What is the country's biggest problems and what are its biggest achievements and virtues? Think about how to tailor your story to actually tackle these issues in it. Next define characters that help you capture the spirit of America and what you want to say about it and of course the spirit of the place you are going to set your story or your novel of course and think about how the region that you select for your novel is going to reflect the problems in the trials of America today so think about what region you are going to be writing about and finally you must be very specific about all these things in order to be universal, in order to make it accessible to all Americans and really detail a story that is going to tackle the most important issues of our time, that is a really big undertaking and good luck with it."