Kurt Vonnegut’s Basic Rules of Creative Writing:
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.
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Greatly misinformed public and bold statements underlining the causes to fight and kill one another without any choice for treaty. It doesn't even come up in the discourse. The words are fight, fuck, and steal. Give nothing to the lesser opponent, no mercy for those in need and slaughter all of the animals. Put everyone through strenuous mental torture until the dialogue is shifted from rebellion to total obedience. Whisper evil things into the sleeping ears of the converted enemy. Everyone, it turns out, becomes an enemy and we are hopeless to find a true cause to this whole evaluation. There is a devil inside each of us, it is greedy and insatiable. This demon is the dark crevasse of the soul with ability to turn the election. Fight or accept, give or take, there is little left to ponder either way. Think of yourself as a fool when you where younger then grow up and into the realization that you are still that same fool in retrospect. While being introspective in coffee shops. Pretending to get all of the necessary work done in a matter of minutes to feel that productive high. Burning neurons in big empty cans. Fire pits and big ocean waves to put them out. This phase change is eternal for the location if the tide permanently rises. (but there is always low tide for a moment.) We are grains of red or blue dust, purple being the decision in between, the bold mediator to transfer secrets between the other colors. Only ever appear purple when together, making so many compromises in order to refrain from allowing the opponent to take offense. There is the over-sensitivity, where no topics are discussed in any great depth, with any great passion, because both people are afraid of offending the other, or the audience of the other. In order to persuade those in between it takes convoluted sentences and points misled away from truth. No memorable quotes it seems. Nothing like the past when murders took place in order to achieve the voting rights we young people neglect. The devil is inside them all anyway. Puppets with no surviving puppeteer. They are without strings though nonetheless hollow shells.
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.
-----
Greatly misinformed public and bold statements underlining the causes to fight and kill one another without any choice for treaty. It doesn't even come up in the discourse. The words are fight, fuck, and steal. Give nothing to the lesser opponent, no mercy for those in need and slaughter all of the animals. Put everyone through strenuous mental torture until the dialogue is shifted from rebellion to total obedience. Whisper evil things into the sleeping ears of the converted enemy. Everyone, it turns out, becomes an enemy and we are hopeless to find a true cause to this whole evaluation. There is a devil inside each of us, it is greedy and insatiable. This demon is the dark crevasse of the soul with ability to turn the election. Fight or accept, give or take, there is little left to ponder either way. Think of yourself as a fool when you where younger then grow up and into the realization that you are still that same fool in retrospect. While being introspective in coffee shops. Pretending to get all of the necessary work done in a matter of minutes to feel that productive high. Burning neurons in big empty cans. Fire pits and big ocean waves to put them out. This phase change is eternal for the location if the tide permanently rises. (but there is always low tide for a moment.) We are grains of red or blue dust, purple being the decision in between, the bold mediator to transfer secrets between the other colors. Only ever appear purple when together, making so many compromises in order to refrain from allowing the opponent to take offense. There is the over-sensitivity, where no topics are discussed in any great depth, with any great passion, because both people are afraid of offending the other, or the audience of the other. In order to persuade those in between it takes convoluted sentences and points misled away from truth. No memorable quotes it seems. Nothing like the past when murders took place in order to achieve the voting rights we young people neglect. The devil is inside them all anyway. Puppets with no surviving puppeteer. They are without strings though nonetheless hollow shells.
