*The following on lifehacker: From Vonnegut's "Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short 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. 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 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.
Vonnegut qualifies the list by adding that Flannery O'Connor broke all these
rules except the first, and that great writers tend to do that.
No comments:
Post a Comment