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?
i fear it has nothing to do with my writing, but now at least i’ve got something to aim for…
