In a earlier post, I praised Kurt Vonnegut for his skill with creating intriguing titles. His book, Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction, is no exception.
In it, he lists eight rules for writing a short story:
- 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.
However, Vonnegut qualifies his list by adding that Flannery O’Connor broke all these rules except the first, and that great writers tend to do that.
I hope these rules help you. Write the stuff that only you can write, the stuff that interests you!
P.S. Here’s a hilarious clip featuring Vonnegut sharing his thoughts on the shapes of stories:
Photo credit: mike dialect / Foter / CC BY-NC-SA
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