1. Wikipedia: Kurt Vonnegut →

    inky:

    In his book Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction, Vonnegut listed eight rules for writing a short story:

    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 hell 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 qualifies the list by adding that Flannery O’Connor broke all these rules except the first, and that great writers tend to do that.

And, then, you were all...

  1. colectivoplanner reblogged this from tigs
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    In his book Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction, Vonnegut listed eight rules for writing a short story: 1....
  4. tolgaerkal reblogged this from tigs
  5. tigs reblogged this from merlin and added:
    I think the first one also applies to advertising.
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    (viastevekinney)
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    Orwell’s Politics of the English Language i. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used...
  19. thedaytheytriedtokillme reblogged this from inky and added:
    That first rule is one that we violate all the time around here.
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