How to Write an American Novel
Luke McGowan-Arnold is an African-American novelist from Rockford, Illinois. He is based in Philadelphia. He writes about Black people, American subject formation, subcultures (on and off the internet), and popular social movements.
protagonist
some racially ambiguous ass negro...You...also known as the Author. Not me. You are the Author. It is hotly debated whether you are racially ambiguous but you keep the ambiguity in for the plot.
the conflict
The conflict can be related to drugs, a war, over-sleeping, a bad bitch, getting lost on the subway, sneaking into Comic Con, racism, white middle-class art critics, Twitter trolling addiction, clout chasing in the lo-fi hip hop scene, patriarchy, dodging bullets during a school shooting or anything else you desire.
You as the Author aren't seeking to make a point about conflict but rather to depict it. Authors shouldn’t be prescriptive. In addition, conflict in America has a certain type of hyper-reality because it’s American so the conflict has to be flashy but since you writing literary fiction, it has to be mundane as well.
It's hard to make conflict mundane so you should introduce a romance subplot or something to do with sibling relationships being hard to navigate emotionally. Does that make sense? It makes sense to the Author. If it doesn't make sense to you, you are likely too stupid to understand the book.
the plot:
Meandering. It has little purpose. You write it with the intention of the whole thing being confusing.
There's multiple conversations that are basically the same. The characters get fucked up, go to a Vince Staples concert, flirt with women on Tinder, sleep a lot, ride bikes, shoplift, and argue about the role of elections versus guerrilla warfare as an effective political strategy.
Plot is something that genre writers think about...you are writing literary fiction so it's okay if nothing ever happens. The reality is that nothing ever happens in real life so hopefully readers will connect. Like your homie said, your audience is everyone.
side characters:
The shy nerdy girl with the glasses and the butterfly locs that you wanna date but it's unclear if you gonna date but you wanna date though cause she's low-key really fucking fine,
Your main man/homeboy/bestfriend/side-kick who should have his own book but you are too self absorbed, your weird creepy ass landlord uncle, the professor who insists if you spent less time reading Malcolm X and more time studying you could finally get into that master's program, that Communist rapper who loud on Twitter but when you met him on the train he didn't have shit to say,
Your white (or Black depending on the book) momma, the white friend who plays R&B guitar in your band but is totally normal outside of that (he just really likes Daniel Caesar), that nerdy ass nigga who runs through the hallways of your high school like a Naruto character, one of the lesser known members of Odd Future,
A big part of storytelling according to the writers you watch on YouTube is that the plot should follow what your characters desire. This don’t make a whole lotta sense to you. Cause on the real, not a lot of people in life know what they really want. We vacillate.
Some days you fantasize about fucking an IG model, some days you wanna watch One Piece all morning, some days you want to ignore your boss, and some days you wanna rob a yuppie. We’re not writing genre-fiction, we’re writing literary fiction.
The characters don’t seem real or motivated but a lot of people you know in real life aren’t real or motivated.
Like half of our population spends their free time watching other people stream their lives. Characters are flat because people in life are flat. People need to stop critiquing your writing. The haters can and should get the fuck outta here with that “character driven narrative”.
You have no clue what that even means.
the setting:
Well, obviously a city. You can't set an American novel anywhere else. The best bet is a city that's some combination of Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and New York City. Those are the best cities. However, at certain points during the novel your character can take a trip to Atlanta or Portland as a side-quest activity for 300 extra XP.
Various scenes are set in a variety of different urban locales such as the Asian food spot, the train, a park named after a Black historical figure, the public library (main branch), a fancy restaurant where your bourgeois ex tells you it's over, the Gucci store as it's getting looted by some young niggas after the pigs kill another Black person, an overlook next to a large body of water, your kitchen, the 21+ music venue where you get carded every time despite being 24 years old, and that dorm room where you got head for the first time.
climax:
You should go read the book. Ah wait, it's not written yet. Well, just thinking now, the novel will have
to involve a situation that is equal parts funny and violent. That's how life is. Funny and violent. Maybe you get bit by some dude at a party. Or you decide not to rush the police line and end up in jail. Maybe you finally talk to the baddie on IG and she ends up telling her man and he in your DMs acting fucking crazy. Who knows? It has to be violent and funny though.
what the critics say:
“The Author shouldn't be writing about race.” - A Black critic (who only fucks white people)
“The Author is a fucking idiot. I knew him in college and I swear to god he wasn't that woke back then. All of that feminism in the book is just virtue signaling.” - One of those professional POC-types and former college classmate
“Wow the Author is such a wonderful smart Biracial man and he really captures what it means to be caught between two worlds.”- Kami's Book Reads on YouTube...she's biracial too...this is a bad review
“...” - a white critic who couldn't be bothered to read the book cause it didn't meet Twitter’s hivemind hyper-ironic autofiction “meme as literature” standards…only white people can be avant garde and funny these days apparently…niggas need to stick to writing trauma porn.
“The Author is a petty bourgeois class traitor who has abandoned the working class to pursue professional pursuits and black nationalism. ” - the local Marxist Academic who you parodied for 10 pages in the 3rd section of the novel
“My nigga published a book.” - Your homie since 8th grade (he not gonna read it though, he only reads manga, romance novels, feminist literature and gun manuals)
“I liked the book but the sex scenes were a bit much.“ - your mom who bought six copies
“The women could have been written better. Also, was that scene where you cum on that girl's leg while y'all are watching Justice League based on (name has been redacted for political purposes)?” - your Lesbian friend in Brooklyn who was the only one who read the three different drafts before publication.
Okay, that's it. That's the perfect American novel. You have the tools, now go execute. New York Times Bestseller List and Four Point Four Star Reviews on Goodreads await!
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