Website review: Americanstate.org/vonnegut.html
amandabird discovered this in Writing
•51 reviews since Jan 23, 2006
writing, vonnegut, authors
•americanstate.org/vonnegut.html
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jesuschris10 rated 16 months ago- Of course I love it, its about writing and by Vonnegut. Need I say more?
- mightyaphrodite rated 16 months ago
- From the page: "Be a sadist. Now 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."
- Oquendo rated 16 months ago
- Poo-tee-weet? Arbitrary set of rules for writing ficticion by sci-fi writer Kurt Vonnegut. These rules may work, as may others. So it goes.
- maeve23 rated 16 months ago
- From the page: "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." Hemingway would roll his eyes at that, but I really liked the bit about not making love to the world. Of course, every author has an individual style. Hemingway and Vonnegut are both great authors, of course, but Hemingway does not follow these guidelines. One cannot put too much stock in rules like these.
- nibbler789 rated 16 months ago
- Plenty of people write outside the bounds of "good fiction." These people are called "hacks."
One may think that good writing is something ethereal, inborn or "from the heart", and thus beyond the the pale of some lowly list of rules, but one would be wrong. These aren't the only rules, but they're good ones. Even the Shakespeare is as formulaic an author as any that ever existed...
Making people believe in the mysticism of creation only serves to discourage. It is a skill that can be learned and improved upon with work and knowledge. - Plenty of people write outside the bounds of "good fiction." These people are called "hacks."
- otisagabey rated 16 months ago
- I am stupefied by the amount of idiocy a talented and intelligent writer like Vonnegut puts himself into by writing this shitty list. It should be called, "How to write fiction like Kurt Vonnegut". Why would anyone would care to write like Kurt? Is "being like one's self" too hard to try? (as to "a lot of people who don't follow these rules are hacks" argument. I guess Joyce, Kafka, Woolf were hacks, too. The less you read, the more you think writing fiction may be regulated into a certain set of aesthetic criteria.)
- 0Tangent0 rated 16 months ago
- Read these rules if you want to know exactly how not to write fiction. :S Its because of rules like this that no one ever dares to write anything outside of the boundaries of 'good fiction'. Personally, I feel that it would be better to write something completely original and a bit rubbish than something safe and undistinctive.
- Hillbert rated 17 months ago
- Kurt Vonnegut Eight rules for writing fiction: 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. Now 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. -- Vonnegut, Kurt Vonnegut, Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons 1999), 9-10.
- edgeoforever rated 17 months ago
- From the page: "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."
- GSIK rated 17 months ago
- From the page: "Kurt Vonnegut Eight rules for writing fiction:"
