How Can I Make My Fiction More Unappealing?

Fiction Every Bit as Appealing as Protose

Early in my fictional career as a literary writer, I established milestones that would build my confidence on my way to publishing success.

The first milestone: profoundly impact at least one person with my fiction. I achieved this milestone quickly. A short story that I had written for a creative writing workshop had profoundly affected one of my classmates. The short story, “Pendanticia, the Uncensored Adventures of a Dictionary Editor”, caused my classmate, a recovering alcoholic and active drug addict to relapse, resuming a life of unpaid parking violations.

For the next several years, a time period that spanned decades, I could not reach my second milestone: publish one short story in a publication, any publication, esoteric literary journal to ezine edited by a fourteen year old bull frog. I had always known that my fiction would not have mass appeal. I would be a niche writer with limited appeal. I slowly realized my appeal was more limited than I had at first estimated.

I now understand the miscalculation. By increasing my target audience from one person to a handful of people, my goal had moved in the wrong direction. After writing fiction that one person would read, I should have been writing fiction that no one would read.

It is with this revelation that I will continue writing my National Novel Writing Month story. I was already well on my way to meeting this objective. It would be a Moby Dick allegory. It would feature zombies when everyone is tired of zombies. I had completely discarded any semblance of a plot and all characters would be -1 dimensional.

However, I am concerned that these measures will not be enough. I am afraid that someone may still want read this novel. Perhaps, an individual that doesn’t speak English or someone with a pathologically poor sense of self. So, I appeal to you. How can I make my fiction more unappealing?