Kurt Vonnegut on Creative Writing 101
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.
Kurt Vonnegut is one of my favorite writers. Though deceased I
speak in the presence tense because as long as writers are read they live on
shaping and forming the world. I am not sure what that says if you are still
alive and people have stopped reading what you wrote.
If you search you can find a youtube of him stating these eight
points. I thought that over the next few weeks I would look at each of these
points and how they inform my writing.
Vonnegut does acknowledge that there are many great writers who
violate every one of these points and yet succeed at greatness. There will
always be exceptions.
1.
Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will
not feel the time was wasted.
This is an unspoken and hopefully unenforceable contract between
the writer and the reader. The contract is forged by the information we provide
on the cover, in our bio, on the first page or in a synopsis. The issue is that
this material must be authentic to the rest of the story. If my cover promises
this is to be the new great American novel I better be ready to deliver. If I
claim this story will change lives, I better be ready to change some lives.
With this introductory material I let my reader have some insight
into what they are in for. Am I offering them a laugh out loud experience or a
page turning drama, is this romance or adventure. Early in writing Henry on
Fire I couldn’t answer these questions. I didn’t want to answer them. I didn’t
want to box in or limit my story. After all I was writing the next great
American novel, the second coming of Harry Potter.
In reality I had written a story that just poured out of my pen
and I wasn’t sure what it was. Through critique feedback, rewrites, some
learning about writing and even in selling the printed book face to face I came
to see that Henry on Fire is a middle grade boy adventure where through
experiences in middle school and the alternative world of Altara Henry figures
out who he is.
I can only wonder how the story would have turned out if I had
realized this before I published instead of several months afterwards.
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