When a nobel author claims to be the best

WAIT A MINUTE...!!!!!!!

I just found the way to approach this problem. Here's a first draft for a summary:

This is the story of the creation and of the vanity and insignificance of manking in existence.

I want to clarify this is not an abstract summary but actually the first time I manage to capture the essence of the whole thing without being ambiguous.

As for your comment, I want to stress the fact that the goal is to push this book as the best novel ever written, so I don't need to say it's an exciting story. I need to motivate literary critics to approach it and to validate or refute my claims. I need to create heat and to be able to sustain my claims with solid and reasonable arguments. In this sense, I wouldn't be pushing the story in a conventional way at all. I would be playing the arrogant dude who simply says: "If you want to read the best shit ever, get a copy of my book, period".

Doesn't sound nice? Let's please get over it. I am discussing this as an estrategy.

 

And that is a strategy that will insulate you from any risk of succeeding. It's one that guarantees comfortable, secure, complete failure.

 

I'm listening to any suggestions / ideas.

 

My suggestion: Abandon the idea that you are the best author in history.

 

You're really sending a lot of mixed messages here. In some posts you insist your work is the greatest writing of our time, yet in others you seem to suggest it's all just hollow chest thumping in order to get attention. In some you yearn for money and wealth, yet you also acknowledge that publishers "are not looking at cerebral-deep-innovative manuscripts".

Which is it, exactly? Do you really believe that your work is the greatest work ever, or is all this bravado just a cynical marketing ploy? If so, it doesn't seem to be working. Do you want your work to be perceived as genius high art by the small number of literary critics who could appreciate such a thing? Or, do you want to rake in enough money to make the average person dizzy? Is it both? If so, try to understand that there is very little overlap between commercially successful art, and critically acclaimed art. It does happen, but it's almost always in art that speaks to both groups in different ways, or rather, something that can be appreciated by the masses on a surface level, and analysed by those who care do do so.
The unfortunate reality you need to accept is: the masses don't give a shit about your narrative structure, your numerological symbolism, or any of your theological research. They don't. If you want commercially successful novels, the masses have spoken, and they want to read stories about sexy vampires fighting over some bland girl. Everything you've said about your novel suggests that it'll have virtually no appeal to the mass market. If it's money you want, then you would have been better off spending those five years working at Wal-Mart.

I don't see what's so special about italics for emphisis, drop-caps to denote sections and footnotes for extra info. Italics have been used in all sorts of strange ways; using them for quotes isn't really all that clever of memorable. Drop-caps have been around since ancient times, and can still be found in plenty of books regardless of quality. You can find them in 99c pulp novels, and they seem to have invaded pretty much every news site. I'm pretty sure I've seen them used through out an article to divide it into sections. Hell, even my manuscript has drop-caps[1] at the start of every chapter, adding them through out the chapter isn't really memorable either. As for footnotes, there's nothing special about footnotes. LoTR has footnotes in it, and as good as that book is, the footnotes aren't exactly a selling point, they're just a way of delivering extra exposition.

[1] I don't write in standard manuscript format, but instead, my document is typeset like an actual novel. It's a long story, but in short, I find it more convenient viewing on my laptop, and it's somewhat of a carry over from before I was aware of SHUNN. Reformatting it into SHUNN when the time comes is trivial if you know your way around the software.

 

Also, I'd just like to add, you are far from the first person to make grandiose claims about the quality of your work. Even in the relatively limited time I've spent on these forums, I've seen plenty of other unpublished, unknown authors, who've put the finishing touches on their first manuscript and believe it to be their magnum opus, if not, the world's magnum opus. Who the hell hasn't, no matter how briefly, upon finishing their first serious work, thought it to be the best thing they'll ever produce. It's pretty rare for anyone's first work to be their best, let alone the world's best. Although, at least you're yet to claim that this book is some kind of tome of divine wisdom that will change the world for the better and possibly bring about world peace or enlightenment. At least you're yet to claim that god himself has tasked you to bring this wisdom to the world, like various other authors I've seen.

Either way, I doubt your strategy will work. How many people here are actually interested in buying your work just to find out if it is, indeed, the greatest work ever? Not me, at least, and judging by the other reactions here, not many, if any. The simple reason for this is that no one is really taking your claim seriously, and why would we? You seem to believe that we'll change our minds if you post enough information, but after five pages of this thread, you're yet to convince anyone.
Honestly, though, this is probably a good thing. Successfully convincing people to check out your work in order to figure out if it truly is the best work ever will only serve to set expectations even higher, and considering the up hill struggle you'll already face in being recognised as the best writer ever, the last thing you need is to set expectations even higher.
Critics will pan it for not living up to the expectations, and the masses will have no opinion on it, since they won't read it. Not to mention the fact that people may also be biased against it if they are aware of your boastful attitude. People will hate you for your ego, and this hate will colour their perceptions of the work itself. Is that fair? Of course not, but it's the cold hard truth, so if you think this a practical strategy you might want to take that into consideration.

Or, to put it another way, you're in the wrong genre for financial success, and your boastfulness will only hinder your critical success. You are pretty much ensuring failure on both fronts.

 

Only three posts and I don't know how to approach so many arguments/ideas/objections...

ChickenFreak: I cannot do that. I arrived to that conclusion by logical means and I cannot drop it unless I have rational arguments to convince me that I am wrong. If you think you can come up with some logical reasoning as why I cannot be the best writer, I will listen, or if you can point out a novel that has more virtues than mine. It's not a matter of taste, I don't care if you dislike my conviction. See if you can object to it rather than ranting. The minute you show I am wrong, I will admit being wrong.

Selbbin:

1. I don't care.
2. I do, and I've been sharing my arguments over here in case you missed them.
3. The ability to enjoy a novel is subjective. The valuation of a novel is... still subjective, but a lot less, or do you mean the Nobel is given out of random feelings or that a Nobel winning author can be compared to E. L. James in quality, because that's subjective?
4. Okay.
5. I just want to encourage them to review it.

I have explained why I am seriously considering this (admitedly) shitty strategy: I do not see any better alternative, and I am very sure I will not succeed by remaining silent. Regardless of being shitty, it is still better than nothing. It may work!

Void: I do think in what I am saying but I don't care about fame. I wasn't well informed about the reality of the market when I started writting. I had a great story I wanted to tell, I worked on it over and over, I became passionated about it, I went obsessed with it, and I was sure that I was going to find a publisher in less than a week, because "If I work hard, they will listen", so yeap, I was dead wrong.

I do want people to enjoy my work but I owe a lot to my wife and to my son. I need MY MONEY and I am planning to collect it. Fame? I don't give a rat about that.

Your comments regarding my last explanation of the dynamics of Apotheosis are pretty valid. However, that is just me sharing details. The real weight, so far, is in the seven frameworks and in the structure. I invite you to research all you want. I guarantee you will not find a single piece of literature that can say something like that. No author EVER did such an extensive investigation and turned it into a novel that ended up featuring such as flawless and harmonious structure. What I shared, with all that technicality, is the very definition of perfection, at least the highest degree of perfection ever achieved in literature.

As for your last post, you cannot seriously think I was expecting any kind of support by saying I am the best writer on a forum full of writers, right? And I trust you can see this is no indicative of the probable outcome of this strategy, which aims to people who buy books and don't write.

Difficult to figure it out? Here's an example:

THIS IS THE BEST RESTAURANT EVER, THERE IS NO COMPARISON, COME AND SEE...!

Regular people: Let's see...!
Restaurant owners: You cannot say that...!

 

And you truly believe that regular people will check it out just because you tell them it's the best? I've seen so many restaurants claim that they're the best restaurant in the country, state, city, suburb, etc, that it doesn't even register with me any more. It's like the white noise of advertising.

 

To be honest, even when the praise comes from reputable third parties, it's still barely above white noise. Pick up pretty much any fantasy novel and you'll have at least one cherry picked review claiming it to be the greatest work in its genre, or the next LoTR. The same goes for video games, movies and pretty much any other form of art.

 

So far, you have no rational arguments that you are right--nothing that you have said provides any evidence at all. There is no basis for your belief.

It's interesting that you have changed this to "cannot be." You've shifted the burden of proof. You've made the position that you are the best author in history into the default, and you require that we treat it as true unless we can disprove it.

What if I used that same argument? I am the best gardener in all of history. You must accept that unless you can prove that I CANNOT be that. I have a garden divided into 120 distinct beds, where I grow many dozens of different sorts of plants. I grew tomatoes this year without any added irrigation whatsoever. My zinnia and sunflower border can be described by many scientific and artistic terms regarding color, pattern, and form. I can describe the leafing pattern of some plants in terms of fractals. I can trace the history of many of the herbs back into prehistory. I am therefore the best gardener in all of history.

Pointing out a complete lack of evidence is not ranting. When you make an assertion, you must provide evidence. The bigger the assertion, the larger the requirement for evidence. You have made a huge assertion, and offered no evidence.

I understand that you think that the words that you have provided, the assertion of how long and hard you worked, your showing us that you have used italics, that you have many characters, many plots, and draw from many cultures and religions, are evidence. But they're not.

To disprove an assertion, I need that assertion to be based on something concrete. So far, your assertion has no such basis.

Edited to add: And, again, your belief will ensure failure. If you really did do all those years of work, I hate to see that much work entirely wasted. If you could release your ego-bolstering idea, you might be able to make something of it and truly become an author. But as long as you hold that idea, there's essentially no chance of that happening.

I know, logically, that if you were ready to release that belief, if you were in any way capable of releasing it, you would need to do it on your own. A self-protective belief will defend itself until it is no longer needed, and presumably yours is still needed. I guess the only real message of what I'm saying is that if you ever come to the day when you no longer need it, don't grieve for it and don't think that you've failed. Releasing that belief will be an accomplishment, not a failure.

 

Selbbin: I happen to have a trick under my sleeve.

At the end of the novel I included a pretty original section called "Encrypted Challenges". It is a very short section with seven challenges written in seven different codes for the reader to solve. Some of them offer interesting information regarding the novel while others ask questions, inviting the reader to analyze the novel in search for the answer.

I won't go into the details. There are different levels of difficulties but at the end of the day it is a game, a bonnus feature, pretty much like in DVD movies. The thing is that this aims to motivate the reader to don't throw the book away. He or she will (hopefully) either do a quick google search to find out the answers (little cheater) or try to figure it out by their own means.

So what happens when a few people find the answer to an encrypted code? Furthermore, what happens when the answer is a question? I know a lot of people (most readers) won't care about it, but some will. And those who solve them may want to share the answers over the internet, so they will TALK about the novel.

What about those who do the quick google search? Hopefully, they will be directed to my blog, or to wikipedia, or to a forum in which the novel is being discussed. My goal is to make sure they find MORE INFORMATION over the internet. Little details of prophecies of the Quran that are fulfilled, hidden refferences to Benedict XVII or to Bush, or Nero, or whatever... so they will hopefully feel encouraged to recommend the book to other people. They will talk about it.

In the middle of all that... little pieces of my literary study, without the actual claim, just more information that should find its way into Wikipedia, so in a matter of mere months I may have reached the interest of literary experts.

Sounds like a plan? It is, and it is also another literary innovation of Apotheosis.

Void: I agree, that's why it is kind of dumb to say "The next Tolkien", the advantage here is that I am rising the bet... and I know it's still not such of a great idea, but it's a plan, and I find it preferable to silence. Like I said many times, I think there are huge chances that we (writers) en up selling poorly regardless of any effort we put in our books, so I think we really need to explore ways to provoque reactions, no matter what those reactions are.

ChikenFreak: I did posted arguments. If you tell me all that stuff regarding gardening, I would tell you that "if you're telling the truth", you're probably right in your conclusions.

If what you want is to read my novel, first, you don't know Spanish (most likely). Second, I'm not aiming to share it over the internet. Third, you're not a literary expert to arrive to "the truth". So that's why I told you before that we're just two guys on a forum, talking.

I would suggest you to play like this: think about the top 3 books you ever heard of. Now think about how those books could compare to what I said. Then tell me, if what I said were the truth, would Apotheosis be (most likely) better or worst than those three books?

Selbbin (again): Yes, the whole industry is full of shit.

 

You could try writing fifty-thousand shades of grey, which is "shades of grey" written fifty thousand times over an exciting 400 page adventure exploring the crucifixion of Christ, the meaning of Life and the concept of Bearing Witness. In it you could explain the true meaning of the Holy Trinity, and have some detailed essays on the psychology of Benito Mussolini and the History of Mankind from 100,000 to 2015.

"Exciting story that details 102,015 years since Homos appeared"
-Stephen Fry

"Pretty good."
-J.R.R Tolkien

"I haven't read it, but this is the best author ever."
-9 year old child

"This novel had to be separated into 100 books. We're bankrupt!"
-Printers

 

Deserved the Nobel price? What is this, the Grammys? It's sad that people are still pulling off a Kanye West on the world.

 

Xeno, if you read on, OP is that person on FB.

 

No. If every single thing I say is true, those things don't do more than bump me fractionally above the casual gardener. It doesn't make me the best gardener in all the world and all of history. It doesn't make me the best gardener in my small town. It makes me an enthusiastic hobbyist.

Re the three books: Your book sounds like it's competing with an encyclopedia, a sort of Where's Waldo of factlets about humanity, with some fiction mixed in. So, yes, I believe that my three favorite novels would beat it.

I think, actually, that if you have an interesting and engaging writing style, you might do better to find a theme in all of that research that you've done, and write something in nonfiction. If there's that much material, you might be able to find a number of themes, and write a number of books. I'm thinking of Margaret Visser's books--she's written a book on the concept of thanks and gratitude, and another one on "Space, Time, Mystery and Meaning in an Ordinary Church", and one on a particular set of foods and how they touch our history, and another one on eating etiquette as, again, a lens on human history.

That could be a way to use all that research. Even if you turn up your nose, it could be a way to produce a sufficiently marketable work to get published, to get you a name while you try to get recognition for your more experimental work.

 

You're mistaken here. You are equating elaborate structure with virtues. They are not the same thing at all. Readers are not, in general, interested in structure. They are interested in fascinating characters and the amazing stories they participate in. You remind me of the many young fantasy writers (including some members of this forum I won't name) who devote their whole time to world-building and establishing innovative magic systems, yet neglect to come up with characters to populate these worlds and make stories happen.

Once again, you are overly proud of the wrong feature of your novel. You may think your structure is the very definition of perfection, the highest degree of perfection ever achieved in literature (how do you know this, by the way? Have you read all of the world's great literature?) but hardly anyone reads literature for perfection of structure. Heck, perfection of structure depends on the writer's intent, doesn't it? A Lamborghini may be a great high-performance sports car, but it makes a very poor dump truck. If the customer wants a dump truck, the Lamborghini is the opposite of perfect. It's useless.

My point is that your idea of perfect is probably not the same as mine. And neither of ours will satisfy a third party. We're not aiming for the same goals, so our definitions of perfect are not the same.

I think I'm pretty safe in saying, though, that the vast majority of readers want to read about characters they can identify with, or at least understand. They want to understand the situations the characters are in, the choices the characters have to make, and how these things cause the story to move forward to a satisfying conclusion.

 

There are many games and puzzle books out there. This isn't going to be the thing that brings you to fame.