How to bore your readers
by
Gregory Norris

Being Catty about Jeffrey

In 1988 Jeffrey Archer wrote a story called "Just Good Friends".

It tells of a narrator who wakes up, stretches and looks forward to breakfast.  It bores in this manner for eight whole pages.

But in the final line, guess what?

The narrator reveals she is a cat.  What a clever twist.

So far, so cliched.

The fun part is that four years earlier Jeffrey had judged a short story competition.  He raved about the originality of the winning story by Kathleen Burnett.  In this story, the narrator wakes up, stretches and looks forward to breakfast.  And the twist in the final line is…

Jeffrey’s great crime is not the fact that he plagiarised – no, perhaps I better write “allowed himself to be inspired by” – a story from a competition he himself judged.

His crime is to have chosen such a hackneyed plot as the winner in the first place.

"My Life as a Cat" has become the catch-phrase for predictable stories that have been written thousands of times.  They don’t have to end with the twist that the narrator is a cat.  Some people have spurred their imagination to such great heights that the twist is that the narrator is a dog.  Or even a bird.

My Stolen Legacy

I am a former teacher of the London School of Journalism’s short story course.  Over the past four years I’ve read and commented on over 1,000 short stories.

Not one of them has been a "My Life as a Cat".

I feel cheated.  I am owed "My Life as a Cat" stories.  It is part of my birthright.  I am bereft without them.  What is the point of a famously-cliched plot if no-one writes them any more?

I blame all the bad publicity.  Every writer now knows to avoid "My Life as a Cat".  Through ill-renown this noble form has perished and our nation’s Literature has become like a stricken oak, its kernel rotted and crumbled to dust, its strength impoverished when set beside the grandeur of yesteryear.

Yet hope, that ever-present maiden, doth give us respite from our loss, for new cliches blossom, even as spring’s kindly warmth calls forth green buds to bedeck our barren winter branches.  To replace "My Life as a Cat" we now have…

Spouse Murder

What is the correct response when you discover your spouse’s adultery?

Debrett’s rules of etiquette need to be updated.  Apparently the modern way of dealing with an affair is to go directly to murder. 

Poison is considered by many to be the most acceptable method, deadly poisons being readily available.  Kitchen knives are effective, very little blood being spilt during the attack.  Staging a car crash is also surprisingly easy.

I’m an expert on spouse murders.  Need advice?  Come to me.  I know of at least a hundred spouse murders from the 750 stories I’ve read, and only one of these murderers got caught.

But if you are planning to murder your spouse, watch out. 

There is always a twist.

Mostly you will discover, as you watch your husband writhing in agony from his fatal dose of strychnine, that – prepare yourself for a shock – he wasn’t having an affair after all!  No, he was merely planning a surprise party for your birthday.

Never plan surprise parties.  The odds of survival aren’t good.  Because of the secret phone calls your spouse will assume you are having an affair.  The kitchen knives will be sharpened.  Your last act will be to stagger forward, a Wusthof twelve centimetre paring knife in your back, and you will throw open the living room door to enable the assembled guests to shout "Surprise!" as you fall face down on the Axminster.

Another twist to be wary of, spouse murderers, is the sneaky double-murder. 

You know your wife is having an affair.  You plan the perfect murder.  You execute it with supreme proficiency and gaze down upon her rightfully-slain corpse.  To celebrate you grab a glass of wine from the sideboard and drain it with a flourish.  A sudden pain grips your stomach.  Your vision blurs and a coldness sweeps over you.  Too late you realise – your wife was also into a bit of spouse murdering and she poisoned the wine. 

This happens a lot. 

But always to wine drinkers.  If you skip the wine and celebrate with a pint I think you’ll be alright.

Don’t bore your readers before you’ve even written the first word

Finally I reach the whole point of this article.  I thought I might eventually.

Write something a bit different.  Stay away from the usual themes and plots and places and characters.  Make your story stand out.

Remember: there are some things that have been done many, many times before.

Competition judges and magazine editors despair at the hackneyed stories they are forced to read.  They yearn for something different.  To win, your story doesn’t need to be the best – it needs to be a haven’t-read-that-before.

It’s not just spouse murder that is overdone. 

I’ve read a lot of "genuine" stories about affairs or marriage problems, dealing with the issues in a realistic way.  Some have been heart-breakingly sad, others have given great insight into why relationships break up.  The quality of a few of these stories has been breathtaking. 

But there have been a lot of stories on this theme.  Even the best will be handicapped when it comes to submissions.  The judge or editor will have seen similar stories, probably that same day.

John Ravenscroft has a revealing entry in his diary.  Judging the Cadenza short story competition he says:

“One of the things I've learned is never, ever to write another story about a couple (especially a middle-class couple) having marriage problems. I swear 70% of the stories I've just read were about this…  After 30 'Unhappy Couple' stories in a row – a judge LONGS for something else.”

Plots to Avoid

What are the other plots that readers have seen time again?  From the 1,000 stories I’ve read, I would be wary of:

I’ve read some terrific stories that fit into these categories.  Great writers can create wonderful stories, even though the plots are somewhat commonplace.

However, it is inevitable that a story with a commonplace plot will be held back.  It competes with similar stories to win a competition judge’s heart.  It arrives at an editor’s desk hidden within a flock of its brethren.

Why not decide to write something special instead?

Getting boredom down to a T

It’s not just familiar plots that can bore readers.

Tea is a real problem.

A scientific analysis has proved 99.84% of short stories by English writers contain tea drinking.

My only explanation for this tragic fact is that writers sit at their computer.  Their stories dry up.  They stare mournfully at the screen.  They console themselves by getting up and making themselves a nice cup of tea.

When they come back to their desks what do they write about?  They describe their characters getting up and making themselves a nice cup of tea…

No more tea.  Or coffee.  I’m begging you.

Cut the Cat

It is well known that there are more sheep in New Zealand than people.

But did you know there are more fictional cats than real cats?

Short stories are littered with cats.  A really boring story can manage to squeeze in a least a dozen cats.  And describe their various health problems.

This might be a compensation mechanism, the instinctive desire to write "My Life as a Cat" stories being rechanneled into creating fictional cats.

Or it might be the same mechanism as tea.  Our gallant author struggles with a story, laid low by writer’s block, until in strolls Fluffy to save the day with a purr.  Fluffy’s arthritis fills half a page and the story is rolling once more.

I cry from boredom when I read yet another story featuring a cat.  I cry.

Is all the World a Cafe?

There are one or two places along a typical High Street that haven’t become a Starbucks yet.

So why do the majority of short stories use a cafe as a setting?

It is hard to write a good cafe scene.  How can ordering a cappuccino be made interesting?  How can dialogue with a waiter keep a reader’s attention?  How can a description of the chairs and tables be made noteworthy?

There is an infinite number of great locations on Planet Earth.  There is only one boring one.  So why does everyone keep writing about cafes?

Perhaps it’s like climbing Everest.  Writers are lured by the challenge.  They want to be the first person in history to write a cafe scene that isn’t utterly and unreservedly boring.

None have succeeded in the three or four hundred attempts that I’ve seen. 

I’m not joking about the numbers.  Yes, really, the majority of the 750 stories I’ve read contain a cafe scene.

I’ve never once been inside a real Starbucks.  But I know the detail of their interiors better than I know my own home.

What’s in a Name?

25% of women in fiction are called Sarah.

It’s a nice name.  It’s fairly common in reality.  But not that common.

There isn’t one overall leader for men’s names in fiction.  But if you want to bore with a commonplace name then choose John, James or Mike.

And a Good Job Too

Here's a tip if you want to write routine stories.

Remember that fiction seems drawn to certain occupations. 

In reality, the bank manager is near extinction, confined to a handful of breeding pairs in a nature reserve.

In fiction they are thriving.  A character can be described as a bank manager and nothing more needs to be said.  A decent crop of bank managers can be culled from any pile of short stories.

A lot of female characters still find work in the typing pool.  It’s from before my time – can anyone fill me in on what a typing pool actually did?  Was it as glamorous as it sounds?  Was necking, petting, running, bombing and splashing prohibited?  Or did people just type?

Can you create a unique occupation for your lead character? 

Something that has never been seen before? 

It might be enough to make your story stand out from the commonplace crowd.

Two for the Price of One

Returning to Jeffrey Archer and his plagiarised "My Life as a Cat" story, there is a certain something that makes Jeffrey stand out as the greatest genius of our, or indeed any, time.

In 1986 an author called J. K. Randle published an anthology of stories and anecdotes.

He naively sent Jeffrey Archer a copy, hoping Archer might help promote it. 

One of Randle’s stories tells of a Nigerian finance minister who threatens the manager of a Swiss bank with a gun, demanding to know the names of the bank’s Nigerian customers.  Only when the manager maintains secrecy does the finance minister open an account of his own.

Jeffrey’s "My Life as a Cat" story was included in his 1988 collection "A Twist in the Tale". 

In this collection you will also find a story called "Clean Sweep Ignatius".

Much to the surprise of J. K. Randle, this story tells of a Nigerian finance minister who threatens the manager of a Swiss bank with a gun, demanding to know the names of the bank’s Nigerian customers.  Only when the manager maintains secrecy does the finance minister open an account of his own…

Stealing the plot of one story is an act of admirable bravado.

Stealing the plot of two stories needs the sort of brilliance that we are blessed with only once in a generation. 

Jeffrey Archer, we humble mortals who have to invent our own ideas salute you. 

We bow before your infinite talent and acknowledge your literary genius. 

And we pray that you do not happen to stumble upon our stories, particularly the ones included on this website.

Any questions?  Lost and confused?  Feel free to email me at gn@gregorynorris.com.