Creative Writing 101

Since the post with quotes from famous authors the other day was pretty popular, I've decided to do another one. I found these writing rules from Kurt Vonnegut a couple years back, while I was researching a term paper for a class on contemporary authorship. It comes from the introduction to Bagombo Snuff Box. Vonnegut writes:

Now lend me your ears.  Here is Creative Writing 101:

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 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.


All of these rules make sense to me, except for number eight. I think that all stories require suspense. I would ideally want the reader to be furious if cockroaches ate the last few pages, because they were that eager to find out how the story would end.


What about you? Do you have any writing rules that you live by? If so, what are they?