One of my all time favorite authors is Kurt Vonnegut. I read the book Cat’s Cradle in 10th grade on the recommendation of a friend, (to be completely honest, it was a girl, and I was trying to impress her.) The book had a profound impact on my life, and really opened me up to deeper, more complex books, before that, the majority of my reading was science fiction/fantasy or stock classics, not that there is anything wrong with either of these genres, I still have much love for both, but I was ushered into a world of books that stretched my mind in ways I didn’t know were possible.
Kurt Vonnegut passed away in 2007, a few years before I had my first encounter with his work. I was never able to ask him how to make my writing better, but he once provided some advice in an essay called “Creative Writing 101″ which can be found in the posthumous collectionBamboo Snuffbox. The highlight of this essay was a list of rules for creative writing, which are as follows:
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.
The greatest American short story writer of my generation was Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964). She broke practically every one of my rules but the first. Great writers tend to do that.
These Rules are essentially what shapes modern fiction. No longer are stories written to meet word count quotas, instead, readers are looking for someone who can tell them a story quickly, connect with them, and entertain them. Why should your blog be any different?
Cheers
-Josh
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