I like my quizzes like my men, deep and meaningful. Unfortunately, this quiz is neither. It’s more of a nod to ‘Jackie’ than the works of Freud. Nevertheless, it will provide profound philosophical insight into your aptitude for writing ‘dirty stuff’.
That is, are you the next E L James?

All you have to do is answer the four “literary” questions below. And your first reaction please, no trying to second-guess the interviewer. This is not the diplomatic service. Ok, imagine the scene you have stopped browsing useless blogs and have settled down to write your novel. You are writing, writing, writing and trying to figure out what happens next in your plot. (Clearly you are not the kind of writer who plans out everything in advance and puts it in post-it notes around the computer. You are more of a spontaneous wordsmith. I approve). Anyways…

1. Your main character is skint. Totally borasic. Poor. Hard-up. etc.
a. She sends her son to market. Son exchanges cow for beans. They grow beanstalk outside the window. Discover giant at the top. Climb up. Steal things including the golden hen. Surreal.
b. She sells her body at the local market. Some time later, discovers man with giant cock upstairs. More sex stuff happens, she rapidly goes off giant cock man and instead does golden showers with the local ‘wood cutter’.

2. Your main character is in love with a gypsy boy.
a. She loves her adopted brother because he is “more myself than I am”. Changes her mind. Marries a friend. Dies slowly. Anorexia? Broken heart? Becomes a ghost. Cue lots of running around in her nighty on the moors.
b. She shags her adopted brother. Incest angst as she changes her mind. Cue lots of sleeping with neighbouring farmers in her (see-through) nighty, yelling “more, more, more”.

3. Your main character is ambitious.
a. With the help of his wife, he commits regicide, he murders his friend, is visited by ghosts. The country is torn apart in violence. Three witches prophesize he will stay in power until Burnham wood trees come walking. They do! Its a brilliant plot twist. Oh yes and the wife goes mad.
b. The wife is utterly sex-mad. Together they hold feasts and mad orgies, shagging from left to right, up and down. Three sexy ladies keep following them around making sexy promises. There is, of course, a handsome fellow called Burnham. More shagging. Everyone is up ‘the duff’. The country is torn apart by naked pics in Vegas.

4. Your main character is a university student.
a. He get involved with a very wealthy family in a heart-felt exploration of Catholicism. He falls in love, perhaps with the brother and then the sister, who ultimately will not marry him, but perhaps most of all with the fabulous place, Brideshead.
b. She gets involved with a very wealthy family in an exploration of S and M (lite) Attempts to change the multi-millionaire from being a stalker-ish cross between Paul Daniels and Julian Assange do not appear to work (sorry have not read books two and three so might have got that wrong) She also loves a fabulous place, the Playroom.

If only it had been tweaked, Brideshead Revisited could have been an erotic bestseller.

Now add up your A’s and B’s.

Mostly A’s: Get thee to a nunnery. I’m sorry neither you nor your writing will amount to anything. Dominate the best seller lists for months on end? I don’t think so!

Mostly B’s. Baby, you’ve got the smut-gene. Filthy nose to the grindstone and you too might sell five million books by Christmas.