Aspiring authors are sometimes willing to shell out thousands for writing workshops and MFA programs, but according to Kurt Vonnegut, the late political sci-fi penman, there are only eight tips you need to craft a good short story.
These tips were originally compiled in his 1999 book, "Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction," but were made into a YouTube video last year and are making the rounds yet again, perhaps because his newly published novella is a recent hit. They are as follows:
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.
Do you agree with Vonnegut's writing opinions, or are you more inclined to side with C.S. Lewis or Jonathan Franzen?
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