How to Write Good Fiction: Advice from Kurt Vonnegut
Fiction Writers, take note. With his customary wisdom and wit, Kurt Vonnegut here puts forth eight basics of the craft in what he calls Creative Writing 101 — beginning, as all good writers do, with the reader:
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.
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.
* From the preface to Vonnegut’s short story collection Bagombo Snuff Box.
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Kurt Vonnegut created some of the most memorable novels of our time, such as Cat’s Cradle & Breakfast With Champions. His work defies genre boundaries: literary science fiction that is dark and funny, classic and counter-culture, passionate and very, very cool.
————–For more “Tips from the Masters” visit our Associate online writing site at WritingClasses.Com, voted Best of the Web by Forbes and now affiliated to International Association for Continuing Education and Training.
10 Responses to “How to Write Good Fiction: Advice from Kurt Vonnegut”
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February 28th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
[…] Ross presents How to Write Good Fiction: Advice from Kurt Vonnegut posted at WRITING ADVICE & PUBLISHING ADVICE from […]
February 29th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
[…] Ross presents How to Write Good Fiction: Advice from Kurt Vonnegut posted at WRITING ADVICE & PUBLISHING ADVICE from […]
March 6th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
[…] Orna Ross dug up this wonderful list, which I admit I need to internalize more fully: 8 storytelling tips from Kurt Vonnegut. […]
March 11th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
great post - all great posts - thanks
March 20th, 2008 at 6:57 am
It’s called ‘Breakfast OF Champions,’ not ‘Breakfast WITH Champions.’ KTHXBYE.
March 20th, 2008 at 8:54 am
So it is, Isa. Many thanks
March 20th, 2008 at 6:12 pm
GREAT POST. VERY HELPFUL. THANKS FOR SHARING THE THOUGHTS. GOOD LUCK
Thumbs Up to you 
March 22nd, 2008 at 4:06 am
VERY HELPFUL.
March 23rd, 2008 at 2:33 pm
4 and 5 are a load of shit. Every sentance has to reveal character or advance the plot? What about setting the scene? What about adding realism? What about an explanation of what was just said?
And why start close to the end? Wright the story as you want to tell it.
April 17th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
Blog Hopper…
Hi There. I’m blog hopping….