The Idiot’s Guide to Writing an Idiot’s Guide
Find a niche subject, one that no one’s written about before.
Get some experience in the field, enough to get your foot in the door.
Condense the main activities of the subject to a one-page list.
Voilà! You have your contents page.
Now write an extensive bibliography
of related titles that you never actually read, except for, well, the titles,
contents, first page, indices, and anything in bold that might have looked vital.
Now that’s the majority of the book written. Well done!
Time to make this sandwich,
with a tedious repetitive writing style that you can fill the book with.
Now this middle section, or the ‘content’, is far less important;
the chances of anyone getting this far are more slender than, well… the content.
So employ your tedious repetitive writing style ad infinitum,
ensuring that you take great care to over-explain every single item,
and ensure you refer back constantly to everything that you’ve already written.
Chances are, if it’s obvious,
that it’ll neatly fit in
with your tedious repetitive writing style
on the subject matter
on which you are claiming some ‘expertise’ with reminders in each chapter
of your experience in the field
which will justify the purchase
to anyone who might have bought it.
To further validate your repeated
I am an expert in this field, honest! chorus,
use a thesaurus…
Look to find a source for greater vocabulary!
Try to extend your lexicon!
Attempt to increase the wordlist that you utilise!
Remember your idiot reader is the type of person who will let a text wash over them rather than scrutinise or analyse.
Give them something to help visualise.
Drop in an illustrated quote from a famous Greek thinker like Euripides or Aristotle,
one which adds some gravitas to what is essentially inane filler twaddle.
This is an idiot’s guide, so remember to:
repeat,
repeat,
repeat.
The language should be simple.
The sentences short.
And remember this is an idiot’s guide, so:
repeat,
repeat,
repeat.
Do: Include a dos and don’ts list.
Don’t: Have too much narrative text that isn’t separated.
Do: Separate large blocks of text.
Don’t: Not have a dos and don’ts list.
Do: Repeat the dos and don’ts list with a summary.
Don’t: Not repeat the dos and don’ts with a summary.
The dos and don’ts list should then be summarised with a small piece of narrative text.
Once again, the sentences should be short.
The midsection of each chapter should employ language that is full of vacuous diction, words and phrases that can be seen on the page but don’t really register in the brain; sentences that are so long, that have
so many clauses (the majority completely unnecessary) that they fill up the chapters nicely, because, remember, you are writing for idiots with only a passing interest in the subject, so these sentences should only come in the middle of paragraphs, where the reader won’t notice that they are excessively long; this way it’ll appear to the reader that they are being presented with a lot of information, getting value for money, and reading a text that has had a lot of effort put into making it comprehensive.
Final sentences can be short.
•Split up the text with bullet points
•Take up a lot of space on the page with bullet points
•Fill up the book with bullet points
At the end of every chapter say exactly the same thing in a summary section, in a different font, so that the reader knows at a glance that a summary is happening.
Include a dos and don’ts summary using bullet points.
Remember this is an idiot’s guide, so repeat, repeat, repeat,
repeat, repeat, repeat,
repeat, repeat, repeat,
repeat, repeat, repeat,
repeat, repeat, repeat,
repeat, repeat, repeat,
repeat, repeat, repeat.
In conclusion, if you have little or no imagination, have barely a trace of integrity, care not for artistry, are motivated solely by the making of money, then why not waste your life, the small amount of writing skill that you possess, the world’s natural resources, and your gullible readers’ time by penning the perfect idiot’s guide?