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I happened to be reading through the slackitvist blog, when I came across an interesting link. It was a short list of Kurt Vonnegut's eight rules for writing fiction.
I'm copying them here for reference, simply because they're really good:
Eight rules for writing fiction:
1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things -- reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. Now 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.
7. 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.
8. 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, Kurt Vonnegut, Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons 1999), 9-10.
It amused me to see how many of these rules seemed like common sense to me, and I'm not even a big fan of Vonnegut. Then again, I've only tried to read Slaughterhouse-Five.
I've long been a believer in Rule 6 (I've nicknamed it "the grinder"). I've also heard it described as "Think of the worse possible thing that could happen to this character at this particular point in time. Now, have exactly that happen." It's because stories where life is full of fluffy bunnies and kitties are boring (unless you're talking about the Bunnicula books, but that's because the author has turned the idea of "fluffy bunnies and kitties" on its head). We, as an audience, like our characters to be miserable. Only at the end do we wish that they finally catch a break and get a chance at being happy, or at least less miserable. But even then, we're satisfied if that doesn't happen. If we weren't, works like Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and The Great Gatsby wouldn't be nearly as timeless and popular, considering the protagonists pretty much all die, or are at least ruined, in the end.
Everyone can (generally) deal or function when everything is going right. It's when things get sticky, rough, and just plain bad is when we see what people and characters are really made of.
I'm copying them here for reference, simply because they're really good:
Eight rules for writing fiction:
1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things -- reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. Now 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.
7. 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.
8. 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, Kurt Vonnegut, Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons 1999), 9-10.
It amused me to see how many of these rules seemed like common sense to me, and I'm not even a big fan of Vonnegut. Then again, I've only tried to read Slaughterhouse-Five.
I've long been a believer in Rule 6 (I've nicknamed it "the grinder"). I've also heard it described as "Think of the worse possible thing that could happen to this character at this particular point in time. Now, have exactly that happen." It's because stories where life is full of fluffy bunnies and kitties are boring (unless you're talking about the Bunnicula books, but that's because the author has turned the idea of "fluffy bunnies and kitties" on its head). We, as an audience, like our characters to be miserable. Only at the end do we wish that they finally catch a break and get a chance at being happy, or at least less miserable. But even then, we're satisfied if that doesn't happen. If we weren't, works like Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and The Great Gatsby wouldn't be nearly as timeless and popular, considering the protagonists pretty much all die, or are at least ruined, in the end.
Everyone can (generally) deal or function when everything is going right. It's when things get sticky, rough, and just plain bad is when we see what people and characters are really made of.
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