Vonnegut's rules for short stories

[madrchsod]

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. 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.
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.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0399145052/downandoutint-20

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from http://boingboing.net/
Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things

[EFerrari]

1. LOL!

:rofl:

[CrazyOrangeCat]

2. Love it.

[InvisibleTouch]

3. I agree with most of that.

Come to think of it, every time I've hated a book or movie, it almost always violated rule #2.

#6 has also been described to me as, "Pick the viewpoint character who suffers the most without dying." (And even that, you could get around, IMO.)

#7 I completely agree with. Write first and foremost to please yourself. If someone else likes it too, that's a bonus.

#8 I don't think is a hard-and-fast rule. Depends on the effect you're trying for.

Anyway, good post!

[kimmerspixelated]

4. Thanks for posting these great rules!

[MedleyMisty]

5. I know a lot of people who could use that advice

Most of the amateur writers I hang out with on the net seem to think that the way to tell if a story is good is to count the number of adjectives, and the story with the most adjectives wins.

[LynzM]

6. Awesome!

:rofl: I love it!

[BlueIris]

7. Hee. Thanks for this.

Sniffle.

[DarkTirade]

8. I didn't learn #6 for a long time, which is why some of my early work is rather...

well, boring. :) Conflict drives drama, without it not only does it keep the the characters from shining through, but in addition, the reader isn't entertained.

[HCE SuiGeneris]

9. Kurt Vonnegut had no equal

in my sphere of influence...