Vonnegut on Writing Fiction

" 'Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’ ”
-From Vonnegut's Godbless you Mr. Rosewater


As most people who read the papers know by now, Kurt Vonnegut Jr, quite possibly the greatest satirist in the history of the world, died a few weeks ago. For those who couldn't care less about making use of the gift of literacy via the morning paper, here's an obituary of this saint: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/books/12vonnegut.html?ex=1191988800&en=aa747f8e1cf65243&ei=5087&excamp=OVGNvonnegutobituary

Vonnegut was a uniquely amazing human being, and he knew a thing or two about writing after fifty-seven years in the business. He detested semi-colons, referring to them as "hermaphrodite transvestites that serve no purpose". To this he added, "The only reason to use one is to show you've been to college." Well said sir. Nobody really knows how to correctly use those damn things anyway.

Here are some rules Vonnegut gives for those attempting to write a short story (taken from Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short 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. 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.

Vonnegut admitted that most great writers have broken every single one of the tenets at some point in time. So much for rules.