Kurt Vonnegut was an American writer and author of fourteen books, including classics such as Slaughterhouse-Five, Cat’s Cradle and Breakfast of Champions. His writing is an amalgamation of styles and genres. In his short story collection Bagombo Snuff Box, Vonnegut described eight rules for writing.
Now lend me your ears. Here is Creative Writing 101:
- 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 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.
But the great man also had one very important caveat:
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.’
So you’ve written your book. First of all: kudos. They say everyone’s got a book in them, but not everyone has the work ethic to get that book onto the page. But what about the next step, getting it from the page and into print? It’s often the case that prospective authors find this stage as daunting as the writing process itself.
