Recently I ran across Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Basics of Creative Writing. These 8 basics should be the foundation for novel writing 101. Unfortunately many novels break the rules. Some break the rules and create a successful novel; others break the rules and do not. In my view a novelist who breaks too many of these 8 
basic rules, risks writing a poor novel.
1) Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that the person will not feel the time is wasted. In other words, give the reader something worth reading.
2) Give the reader at least one character to root for. In my previous blog posts I talked about even making your villain’s likable or at least not totally evil. How about your other characters? Is there someone I want to succeed in their quest? My least favorite popular book at the moment, Gone Girl, does not do this. In my view there is not a single character worth rooting for. When that happens, by the end of the book, I think, “So why did I waste my time reading that!” Ergo, number one and two violated.
3) Every character should want something even if it’s just a glass of water. Wow! This one was an eye-opener for me. Every character in The Clock Strikes Midnight has different wants and needs. My new project may not be as obvious. Something for me to check out.
4) Every sentence must do two things–reveal character or advance action. This one is very hard. Currently I’m writing a short story. They, more so than novels, must adhere to this tight principle. Nonetheless, if you write paragraph after paragraph without revealing character or advancing action, you violate number one again!
5) Start as close to the end as possible. Okay, I have to admit, I don’t start my writing this way, but that’s how I end up (after much editing and re-writing). In fact, The Clock Strikes Midnight not only began at the end of it’s first draft, it did so with a different protagonist.
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. I do find myself doing this. It’s strange to take a character and imagine bad things happening. Think about Tom Wolfe and Bonfires of the Vanities. My gosh, could anything else bad happen to that luckless character? Nonetheless the brilliant writing of Wolfe kept me reading. Why? I liked the character and wanted to see how he’d handle each disaster.
7) Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, you story will get pneumonia. Here Vonnnegut is talking about targeting your reader. We all want to believe everyone will love our book, but in reality we cannot write for everyone.
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. Okay, who am I to disagree with Vonnegut? But I must say, I do. Perhaps he’s talking about a different kind of suspense.
Your thoughts?
Do you adhere to Vonnegut’s 8 basics for creative writing?
BTW, the answer to the crossword clue in my last post (breaking and entering) was gerund. How clever is that?
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Hi, Joan,
Thank you so much for sharing these. I really need to be reminded of them as I edit the draft of my latest novel.
I agree with you disagreeing with Vonnegut–lol. There is a huge element of suspense in some of my books, and to give it all away as soon as possible would defeat the point. All in all, of course, excellent observations from one of the masters 🙂
Thanks, Matt. I’m still a bit baffled by the suspense one. I thought about giving it a try in a short story and seeing how it worked. Sort of creating suspense by telling all? Interesting.
Hi Joan,
Dare I admit – I’ve not read a Kurt Vonnegut book. I usually don’t care for “classics” or the realist – modernist writers because so much of their work is depressing and I’m often depressed enough as it is.
1) I hope I don’t waste the reader’s time. That said, this in part depends on the reader’s tastes in reading material. If my book isn’t what a particular person enjoys reading, they will consider it a waste of time, while the next person might like enjoy my genre and thus will be more likely to think it well worth their time.
2) This I totally agree with. 🙂 Like you, I’ve read books where there was no one I could get behind, or even find appealing. I didn’t manage to finish those books. (See #1)
3) Every character? Do we really need to know every single character that intimately? There are characters in my book that we meet briefly, they play their part, leave the stage and aren’t seen again. Do we have to know their needs/wants? A waitress in a cafe where the main characters for that scene are having lunch. Do we need to know what the waitress needs or wants – other than to take their order? Perhaps, every characters needs/wants should at least be implied but doesn’t need to be expressly stated? We know a waitress needs/wants to take the customers orders but we don’t need to make an issue of it.
4) This is another one that I’ve heard often and don’t get. Describing a scene gives a sense of place, it doesn’t reveal character or advance action. (Although some people say setting is a character.) Does this statement mean we should never describe a bit of scenery? Or the weather? That can make for flat stories.
(Statements with “every”, “never”, “always” and the like usually seem like hyperbole to me.)
5) I think what he’s getting at here is to not let your story get draggy. I think that’s a good thing.
6) Hmm . . . yes to a point. There seems to be a tendency in some books and movies to push this too far. There are books I’ve quit reading and movies I’ve quit watching because tormenting the lead character(s) got to a point where it was annoying and frustrating.
Although . . . maybe it’s because the writer didn’t follow #5 and so the story got too dragged out.
7) Yes. No one can please all of the people all of the time.
8) This one needs balance. There are times I’ve read books where there’s too much information up front and it becomes an info-dump. Other times I’m a third or more into a story and still have no good grasp of what’s going on. Neither makes for a good read. (See #1)
Do I adhere to these basics?
If I do it is without a lot of forethought. If I’m trying to think about all of this sort of stuff while I’m writing I can’t write. All the concern about “Am I doing this right?” totally freezes me up. I just write, and if I need to fix some of this my editor or my husband/beta reader let me know. 😉
Good post, Joan!