Resource: Kurt Vonnegut's 8 Rules of Writing Fiction

Let’s take a look at the legendary author’s approach to storytelling and see what we can learn from it

I’m not sure if there are many people in the world who would argue Kurt Vonnegut isn’t one of the greatest science-fiction authors ever. His darkly hilarious stories certainly impacted my own work, infusing it with a sense of humor that often challenges literary norms. He toiled in relative obscurity through most of the 50s and 60s, publishing several books and short stories including three personal favorites – The Sirens of Titan (1959), Mother Night (1962), and Cat’s Cradle (1963). But he’s probably best known for his brilliant novel Slaughterhouse-Five, which I’m due to reread for a second time.

You might be interested to know that Vonnegut shared with the world eight basic rules of what he called “Creative Writing 101”. They appeared in the preface to his short story collection Bagombo Snuff Box (1999).

I am not a believer in hard rules in any medium. They’re subjective suggestions that are there to be considered, adapted, and broken as often as is wise – which Vonnegut’s closing thoughts on his own rules make clear, too, as you’ll find.

So, bearing that in mind, let’s check out Vonnegut’s 8 rules of writing…

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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.

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So, what do you make of Vonnegut’s rules? How might you action them in your own work? Personally, I agree with all of them except Number 8…which I find absurd. Utterly absurd.

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