Kurt Vonnegut’s Rules for Writing Short Stories
- 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 how 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 hell 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.
Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction, 1999
Not just one of my favorite authors, but one of my favorite people. A humanist and a Luddite, brilliant writer - armed with humor, insight, and humility. Irreligious, yet talked frequently of God. Wary of technology and progress that comes in the sake of a larger sense of humanity and community, ardent believer in the importance in the health of the soul.
In the Venn diagram of personalities we’re mainly independent spheres with little to some overlap, but the areas of overlap are of the heart and of significance. The desire to create something from nothing…something that can’t be bought or sold (rather to say, something no one might be willing to pay money or barter for)…for the sake of bettering one’s self or the selves of others is the highest regard of a person.
Time to write. Time to create. Time to attempt to make the world better.
The world largely won’t care or budge, but that’s not the point.
