I don’t write fiction. But if I did, I’d follow Kurt Vonnegut’s advice. To tell you the truth, some of his rules apply to writing anything at all. Like blogs for example.
Kurt Vonnegut’s 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.
Procrastinating as usual, I found this site, that is essentially a web fridge with word magnets which one can arrange to one’s liking and make a poem. Somewhat encouraged by Vonnegut’s rules, I came up with this.
Do you think it’s easy? Why don’t you try it for yourselves and let me know what you came up with?
January 8th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
that’s just brilliant! excellent stuff
i fear it has nothing to do with my writing, but now at least i’ve got something to aim for…
January 8th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
well, nr 7 is for all of us, and i think nr 2 too
January 8th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
I love you
I love all that you share.
Love Jeanne ^j^
January 8th, 2008 at 8:44 pm
I wrote:
Abuse the earth and you will never get artichokes!
I’m not a good writer of nonsense, I guess
Thanks for those 8 rules! I absolutely loved them and will follow them religiously
January 8th, 2008 at 11:29 pm
A fellow “procrastinator” here, reminding you that you were not procrastinating by playing with fridge magnets, you were farting around. One of Vonnegut’s most famous quotes gives us license, “We are here on this earth to fart around…” And I trust Vonnegut in the quality of self-effacement he had, the kind of vunlnerability that invents its own strength out of the knowing that it doesn’t know. I think you have that, from what I’ve read of your posts so far. So you have a new fan (thanks to Hattie). Unless you are the one that keeps messing up my fridge magnets Far from light when eye does close; Infinity changes between is & was!
January 9th, 2008 at 8:54 am
I’m liking those rules. They make sense to me. Now I wonder how my writing stnads up to them.
January 10th, 2008 at 2:54 am
Thank you for the reminder of the rules. I am going to use this!
January 10th, 2008 at 4:47 am
Chlo! I was just coming to your site to tell you to put up something new and then here is all this deliciousness. Sweet, I say. So glad I didn’t have to put my foot up your ass.
I suppose you can be forgiven since you been through earthquakes and taxi drivers going all brit brit on you. Pretty insane. Glad you are ok. But are you ok? Have I missed something?
Re: KV words of wisdom
Sounds a lot like the rules of good acting. Amazing how little there is of it. I did however watch a fantastic film last night - 3:10 to Yuma. Christian Bale is delectible. Definitely one of the best films of 2007. Not to be confused with the original 1940? version which I accidentally netflixed and believe me was not happy when I popped it into my dvd player. But all is well in the world.
The end.
xo
k.
January 13th, 2008 at 2:58 am
LOL - I think Life follows Kurt’s 8 rules most excellently, don’t you?
January 25th, 2008 at 2:59 am
i love the pictures on your site esp the one in this post. do you take all of them yourself? they’re gorgeous.
thanks for the hugs comment. it really meant a lot
i want to try to work on that piece and maybe make it a full length work.
August 23rd, 2008 at 7:08 pm
Thank you Chloe, and thank you Google! I was looking for these exact 8 rules of writing fiction by Kurt Vonnegut. But I couldn’t remember that it was 8 rules or that it was by Vonnegut. All I could remember was that one of the rules was “Start as close to the end as possible”. So I entered that exact phrase into google + the term “writing” and your blog post came up. Fantastic!
I only mention it to illustrate that you never know how people are going to find your content.
Thanks again, this was exactly what I needed to help me finish my project.