- Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
- Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
- Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
- Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.
- Start as close to the end as possible.
- 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.
- 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.
- Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell 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.
I take solace in the fact that the course of history was never changed by the many but by the few who risked exposing facts by written word reminds me always that the Pen Is Mightier than the Sword. When the self righteous is poked into undying rage the real personality explodes like dynamite and the self proclaimed veneer vanishes into thin air like the mist from dawn. Let the chips fall where they may.
“The idea that sex is something a woman gives a man, and she loses something when she does that, which again for me is nonsense. I want us to raise girls differently where boys and girls start to see sexuality as something that they own, rather than something that a boy takes from a girl.”
— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
LAND FOR SALE
My Online Radio
Wednesday, April 2, 2014
Writing tips from Kurt Vonnegut
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment