RIP Vonnegut
This is really sad news since Vonnegut was one of my favorite authors.
Vonnegut’s 8 rules for writing a short story:
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.
Vonnegut quotes:
True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.
What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.
Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?
A list of his books (the bold ones are my fave, read one if you haven’t!!!):
1950s: Player Piano (1952) • The Sirens of Titan (1959)
1960s: Mother Night (1961) • Cat’s Cradle (1963) • God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, or Pearls Before Swine (1965) • Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children’s Crusade (1969)
1970s: Breakfast of Champions, or Goodbye, Blue Monday (1973) • Slapstick or Lonesome No More (1976) • Jailbird (1979)
1980s: Deadeye Dick (1982) • Galápagos (1985) • Bluebeard (1987)
1990s: Hocus Pocus (1990) • Timequake (1997)
Posted: 11 April, 2007 in Knowledge/News.
Comments
Comment from Hakushaku
Posted: April 13, 2007 at 8:17 am
Truly a tragedy. Let’s hope he’s relaxing comfortably on Tralfamadore.
My mother was assigned to show him around for a week when he came to visit her college, she’s gonna be crushed.
Amen to his comment about who’s ruling the world, btw. My god one day it’s going to be friggen George Malouf and AJ running the world bank or something. Terrifying.
Comment from che
Posted: April 12, 2007 at 7:32 am
so sad :( ive always wanted to read cat’s cradle and slaughterhouse five… theyre available on wowio!!! hehe