Vonnegut’s Rules for Writing
O.k. I know this has been posted a million times on other websites. But these eight rules could really change your life. Or at least your writing. And that makes them the perfect subject for the first real post of Weekly Writing Assignment.
Kurt Vonnegut, rest his soul, was one of the most gifted, brilliant writers of the last 50 years. If you’ve never heard of him, I highly recommend Mother Night (my personal favorite, though not a very typical Vonnegut novel), Galapagos, Cat’s Craddle, Breakfast of Champions, and his most well-known novel, Slaughterhouse Five.
So, without further ado, Vonnegut’s Rules for Writing:
- Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
- Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
- Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
- Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
- Start as close to the end as possible.
- Be a sadist. No matter sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
- Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
- Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
Vonnegut also added:
The greatest American short story writer of my generation was Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964). She broke practically every one of my rules but the first. Great writers tend to do that.
July 23rd, 2009 at 11:23 am
Vonnegut also said a novelist is a person who can sit for a long time.