Focus: Revealed! How to write the best novel of all time

Want to be up there with the greats when the BBC helps the nation select the greatest story ever written? Then read novelist and critic DJ Taylor's blueprint and await your call from Jeremy Paxman...

Come the spring, the BBC will be unveiling its latest exercise in cultural enlightenment. Following Great Britons, won by Churchill, Great Books will find another clutch of celebrities gamely promoting the merits of classic works of literature in the hope of getting the popular vote. But what makes a great book? What are the magic ingredients? How do you write something that will last long enough to be eulogised on the small screen by Jeremy Paxman?

Since the BBC insists on attempting to evaluate great art on the basis of a popular vote, let us compile our own list of what might be the prime ingredients to produce a "winner".

Titles. Vitally important. A first-class title (Hangover Square, By Grand Central Station I Sat Down And Wept) can often be the making of a second-class book. Locations, real or imagined (Middlemarch, Brideshead Revisited, Winesburg, Ohio) have their place. Biblical touches (The Grapes of Wrath) are not to be despised. Neither are portentous gestures at impending doom (An American Tragedy). Questions, so beloved of the Victorian novelist, are out. As Henry James remarked of Trollope's Can You Forgive Her?: "Yes, and forget her as well."

Writers. By the same token, you the author need to sound glamorous enough to lure the reader past your title page. Franz Kafka. Marcel Proust. Nathaniel Hawthorne. These names have resonance. Where would "Saki" have been had he written under his baptismal names of Hugh Hector Munro? Eric Blair seriously considered calling himself "H Lewis Allways" instead of George Orwell. Good Christian names include George (Gissing, Eliot etc), Anthony (Trollope, Powell). For real intimations of gravitas, bare initials (A S, T S, D H, or even D J) can occasionally pay dividends.

Themes. The best books, Somerset Maugham maintained, are about sex, money and snobbery. Thus, Maugham argued, an ideal opening sentence for a novel would be: " 'You can have me for a million dollars,' said the Duchess." Adultery never fails – without it the English novel from Dickens to Lawrence would scarcely exist – with illicit pregnancy, murder and financial scandal close behind, sometimes all in the same plot. There is a widespread misconception that the "great" English novel is a genteel affair, full of simpering tea-table chit-chat. Not a bit of it. Natural disasters (The Mill on the Floss), suicidal children (Jude the Obscure), grotesque railway accidents (Dombey and Son) and psychotically jealous husbands (Trollope's He Knew He Was Right) are all par for the course. The action should be pushed forward by a series of devices, the stagier the better. A "great book" that doesn't contain a lost will, an overlooked heir, an unexpected revenant or several outrageous coincidences isn't doing its job.

Characters. Strict rules apply, although occasional mavericks have been known to bypass human beings altogether (Black Beauty, Moby Dick, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, etc). The alpha-male such as Mr Darcy or Heathcliff is a sine qua non – not many great books have a balding hero under five feet nine in height. As for the girls, spiritedness and unpredictability (Emma Woodhouse, Becky Sharp, Sue Bridehead) have the edge over maidenly virtue. Nobody liked Amelia Sedley, the milk-and-water female of Thackeray's Vanity Fair, not even the man who eventually got to marry her. Much can be made of precocious children (Paul Dombey of Dombey and Son for example) but generally juveniles need careful handling.

Entrances and Exits. Great books have to start arrestingly – "Marley was dead..." (Dickens); "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." (Tolkien); "I was in bed with my catamite the day the archbishop called." (Anthony Burgess) – and they should end arrestingly as well: "The president of the immortals had finished his sport with Tess." (Hardy); "He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother." (Orwell) – that kind of thing.

Inevitably, all these precepts are regularly flouted by truly outstanding works of literature – my own vote would go to Vanity Fair – which make up their own rules as they go along. But stir all the foregoing ingredients together and, infallibly, a book will emerge that the BBC can call great. Try the extract on the left for starters.

From Wandsworth: A romance, by Iris Colt

"Dearest," said the marchioness, her splendid complexion showing itself to advantage as she surveyed the flood waters rising beyond the window of their Putney mansion, "We are ruined? Has not papa told you?"

Evangeline raised her eyes demurely from the copy of The Weekly Crinoline. "You mean the mysterious gentleman who used to linger over my cradle is...our father?"

"I did not like to tell you, child. You were ever impetuous. And after your disgrace with the butler's boy...But where is your sister?"

"Alas, mamma, she has hanged herself in the pantry, seven months gone. But clutching this piece of paper in her hand."

"Heavens! We are saved. It appears that papa's fortune was not lost in the great banking disaster. You shall marry Lord Fortescue after all!"

"Oh mamma, I cannot! Not for all his blue eyes and stout manly appearance. You must forgive this deceit. But I am married already. And to Lord Fortescue's cousin Cyprian who by chance was rescued from the desert island where all thought him lost ..."

"Then, my child, I have sad news. For I learned only this morning that there is an outbreak of typhus at his lodgings. No, Evangeline, you must restrain your grief." As mother and daughter clutched fondly at one another the silence was broken by the arrival of the marchioness's youngest son, wee Tim.

"My boy. You find us in sore trouble. But where are your brothers? Not outside in such weather I trust?"

"Alas, mamma. Drownded. All of them." (continues)