8 simple rules
I do believe I stole this from someone's FF.net profile, but then, they stole it from Bagombo Snuff Box, so we're even.
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.
--Kurt Vonnegut, Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons 1999), 9-10.
I don't know that old Kurt is the ultimate say in fiction writing, but he sure did come up with some fantastic stories. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. I think I have trouble with most of these in my own writing, though. Possibly that's why I tend to write one-shots and one-shots only-- little scenes or vignettes don't necessarily need all that conflict that I don't know how to create. I do have the desire to write a decently long story, with rising action and falling action and a climax and everything, but it's a daunting task. We shall see.
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.
--Kurt Vonnegut, Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons 1999), 9-10.
I don't know that old Kurt is the ultimate say in fiction writing, but he sure did come up with some fantastic stories. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. I think I have trouble with most of these in my own writing, though. Possibly that's why I tend to write one-shots and one-shots only-- little scenes or vignettes don't necessarily need all that conflict that I don't know how to create. I do have the desire to write a decently long story, with rising action and falling action and a climax and everything, but it's a daunting task. We shall see.