Kurt Vonnegut’s Rules for Writers Part II
It’s Election Day…
Ok, now that’s out of the way, let’s distract ourselves, shall we?
Picking up where I left off on Part 1 of our discussion.
Kurt Vonnegut’s Rules for Writers Part II (rules 5-10 but I don’t know how to make the numbers work on this thing):
Start as close to the end as possible.
What do you think about this one? I think it speaks to the concept of jumping into the action, the excitement of your story, not to stick around building exposition and spending time telling us the relationship of your characters, but show us where they are in their lives by the lived-in dialogue. I don’t think I necessarily hold this rule too sacred. I think every writer knows the exact place in the story they need to enter, and that may change with edits or deeper thought, but I don’t know how close I could stick to this with my own writing as I tend to jump and bump around the world.
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.
Now, this one I can get behind. Just because my life is fairly chill, it doesn’t mean my characters are getting through life with the same ease. (Who am I kidding, where’s the ease?) I don’t necessarily write sweet and innocent characters, in fact even the children in my stories can be little dicks, but I am absolutely down for making them miserable. And it is true that the worse the situation, the deeper the characters have to dig to come out the other end. And while they don’t always come out happy, or alive, we do get a glimpse of their grit and fight as they face their darkest days. This makes the characters compelling and, ultimately, whether you like them or not, gives the audience a reason to root for them.
Write for just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
I love it. Mainly for the imagery, but also for the basic fact that you can’t write for everyone. This is fairly easy for me as I’m mainly a horror writer, so I know the audience I am writing for, all the way down to the sub-audience within the genre, as there are different levels of horror. It’s why when I send out query emails I make sure to research the company that I’m reaching out to, to make sure that they have interest or experience with the genre. I think it would be harder if I were a comedy writer, but maybe not, but maybe, because comedy is so subjective that it would seem practically impossible to please one person let alone all of them. Do you think the one person Kurt’s talking about is yourself?
Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such a complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
Nay. Can’t get behind this one all the way. Again, could be a genre thing, but I am a fan of being left wondering, thinking, imagining what the fuck happened and when did it all go wrong. I don’t dig stories that lay everything out or tie up in a neat bow. I want to be challenged and I want to challenge. I think that perhaps Kurt has something deeper at play here, but my brain is honestly so distracted today that I can’t venture too far in to find out.
So you tell me, what do you think about these rules? Which one stick out to as handy or pretentious, impossible or obvious? As much as I avoid following writing rules, I still find it interesting to read what iconic writers have to say, what has worked for them, and really just forcing myself to think about these things aids in the writing process.
I hope you all are taking a few minutes to breathe today, try to write, listen to music, take a walk, watch a movie. Do what you have to do. Love you.