Image by Daniele Prati used under CC BY 2.0
Despite passing away in 2007, Kurt Vonnegut remains a giant in the American speculative fiction tradition. His writing is both poignant and politically charged, with masterpieces like the anti-war Slaughterhouse-Five and the surreal Cat’s Cradle. There’s a good chance you read some of his work in high school English, and even if you’ve never picked up a Vonnegut story, your favorite authors were likely influenced by him.
In addition to his many novels, Vonnegut was fond of the short story. He published multiple collections, and in his 1999 book Bagombo Snuff Box, he wrote down eight rules for writing short stories. Much has been made of these rules, but how helpful are they? Writers are often unaware of what made readers like their stories in the first place, so Vonnegut’s own success is no guarantee that his advice will be good. This week, we’ll examine each rule and see how useful it is. We’re only looking at the rules themselves, not anyone else’s interpretation of them. Let’s get started.
The First Rule
Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
We’re not off to a great start with this rule. It’s too vague. What exactly does it mean for a reader to not feel their time was wasted? No writer sets off to waste their audience’s time, so telling them not to do so isn’t helpful.
If we’re in a very generous mood, this could be interpreted to mean you should cut straight to the chase, rather than wasting time on unnecessary setup or worldbuilding. But even with that kindness, this rule isn’t helpful, as nearly every writer thinks all their setup and worldbuilding is necessary – otherwise they wouldn’t have included it!
So even under the best interpretation, this rule has no actionable advice, and it’s especially unhelpful to new authors who don’t yet know how to differentiate between what’s necessary and what isn’t.
Conclusion: The first rule is decidedly useless.
The Second Rule
Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
Oh my goodness, where has this rule been all my life? I was worried after that first rule, but item #2 is making a strong comeback. Characters the audience can root for are really important in storytelling, and yet all too often they are in short supply. Many new authors think it’s cool and edgy to have their entire cast made up of jerkass anti-heroes, but really it’s just tiresome.
If a story has no one the audience can root for, then it’s really hard to care what happens. That’s why A Song of Ice and Fire starts with the Stark family. They have admirable traits that automatically make us cheer for them against their enemies. If Martin’s books had started with just another family of power hungry nobles fighting against other families of power hungry nobles, then the conflict wouldn’t have mattered. Who cares which power hungry family wins?
When the consequences are laid out like that, including someone to root for seems obvious, but it’s not so to many authors. One of the most common problems I see in my clients’ stories is a lack of anyone likable, which makes for a boring story indeed.
Conclusion: The second rule is very useful.
The Third Rule
Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
This is another classic; you’ve probably heard it before. The second clause is a little iffy, but the first is absolute gold. Every character should want something. That is to say, they should have a motivation. This is especially true in short stories, where space is limited and each character must pull more than their own weight.
If you’ve ever encountered a character who seemed to have no impact on the story, then you’ve read an author who’d have benefited from following this rule. It’s a temptation many of us succumb to from time to time. We make a character with a really cool fighting move or hilarious accent, but they don’t want anything. Because they have no motivation, they don’t move the story forward.
Ideally, authors will take this rule one step further: a character’s wants should conflict with what other characters’ want. If everyone in your political intrigue story just wants what’s good for the country, then the only way to build conflict between them is through misunderstanding. That can work, but it also becomes contrived fast. For a more robust conflict, put the characters’ wants in opposition.
Even if authors don’t take that extra step, knowing what their characters want is critical for good storytelling. It keeps the story on task and makes sure the conflict matters.
Conclusion: The third rule is useful.
The Fourth Rule
Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.
This one is harder to judge because while it isn’t vague, it is a little confusing. For one thing, it seems to presuppose that sentences can’t both reveal character and advance the action. I’m here to tell you that in fact they can. At the same time, there are other essential functions a sentence can perform, like giving critical exposition. Though maybe that counts as revealing character or advancing the action? It’s hard to tell.
That’s the big problem with this rule; it’s very specific but at the same time not very descriptive. Taken literally, it seems overly restrictive: There are only two kinds of sentences your story can have, and anything else is a waste. If interpreted more broadly, it seems like nearly every sentence would fall under at least one of these definitions, since “character” and “action” are very broad.
I can’t ask Vonnegut what he meant, but my gut says his attempted meaning was not to waste any sentences. With the low word count of a short story, every sentence has to get as much done as possible. If all a sentence does is describe some unimportant flowers, it should be revised until it accomplishes more, but that interpretation is hardly obvious.
Conclusion: The fourth rule is marginally helpful at best.
The Fifth Rule
Start as close to the end as possible.
This rule rates similarly to “show, don’t tell.” Most of the time, it’s good advice, especially for new authors. A huge number of stories start too early, and then have nothing to do but kill time until the plot arrives. This can even happen to blockbuster films. Did you know that the original cut of Star Wars featured several scenes of Luke puttering around his moisture farm, doing nothing of importance? Fortunately we were saved from that by the film’s talented editors.
For inexperienced writers especially, it’s useful to start as close to the end as possible. Move your story’s starting point as far forward in the plot as it will go and still makes sense. That avoids the temptation to include all the backstory and setting description that sounds so cool in your head but will bore most readers.
The weakness of this rule is the same weakness demonstrated by advice like “show, don’t tell”; it misses important nuance. Sometimes you have to tell, because showing all the time isn’t practical. Similarly, some stories benefit from a longer buildup. This is particularly true of horror stories, where a slow escalation of fear can work wonders, but it extends to other genres as well. So long as the story isn’t boring at the beginning, it’s a valid choice to start further back than absolutely necessary in order create more suspense or add context.
Conclusion: The fifth rule is quite useful. Just remember that it comes with a strong caveat.
The Sixth Rule
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.
Such an upbeat fellow, that Vonnegut. The good part of this rule is that it reminds us that stories need conflict. Conflict is what drives the plot and keeps readers turning the page. Some authors have a difficult time with this because they don’t want bad things to happen to their characters. This leads to boring stories all round.
On the other hand, this rule seems to delegitimize the entire genre of light stories. Stories need conflict, but that conflict doesn’t have to be about awful things happening to the protagonist. Sometimes we all just want to read a story where the conflict is over something fluffy like who stole the offices’ supply of fairy dust. These stories can be just as valuable as their darker cousins.
Storytelling rules should help authors avoid mistakes and improve their work. While this rule does have some value, it seems to have been written more out of a taste for dark stories. It restricts writers from telling stories that don’t involve trauma and terror. That’s not surprising considering the dark nature of Vonnegut’s work, but it’s still a problem.
Conclusion: The sixth rule is marginally useful at best.
The Seventh Rule
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.
This rule is just hard to parse. Making love to the world aside, the most obvious interpretation is to not worry about pleasing a wide audience. If that’s what it means, then it’s terrible advice. Storytellers of all stripes want as big an audience as they can get. We want to sell more stories, and perhaps more importantly, we want more people to enjoy our stories.
Don’t get me wrong, authors will need to make choices that limit their audience. Including a happily ever after ending will push away readers who find it sappy, and making your story darker will exclude readers who don’t like more intense material. We’ll all have to decide whether some elements are worth shrinking the audience.
However, there are plenty of choices an author can make that will widen their story’s appeal without a downside. People who care about plot will like your story more if the plot is consistent, and no one is going to put your story down because the plot made too much sense. This is something authors should actively think about, and writing to “please just one person” won’t get them there.
Conclusion: The seventh rule is solidly useless.
The Eighth Rule
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.
Wait, should I be concerned about cockroaches eating the last few pages of my story? Is that a common problem writers face and no one told me? Okay, jokes aside, this is just bad advice. Suspense is really important to many stories, as are twist endings. In fact, the vast majority of stories have some kind of twist at the end, even if it’s just a small one. The hero will spare the villain’s life instead of killing them, or they’ll discover a new power at the last minute.
There’s a word to describe stories where you can predict exactly how it will end well in advance: boring. It’s one thing to predict the ending after a lot of careful analysis and guesswork, but it’s another if the book just tells you everything before the climax even arrives. Following this rule, your readers will never get the thrill of not knowing what’s going to happen. For a lot of people, that thrill is their entire reason for reading.
To be completely fair, I have seen authors who withhold vital information in the hopes that it will make a clever reveal. That’s definitely a problem, but the solution is not to throw out the concept of suspense. I can only assume that when Vonnegut penned this rule, he had just read a story where the author didn’t mention that gravity was reversed or something. It’s okay, Kurt, we have other ways of solving that!
Conclusion: The eighth rule will actively make your story worse. It goes beyond useless and into the realm of anti-useful. Just put it down and back away slowly.
In the final count, we have two rules that are really useful, two that are sort of useful, and four that are various shades of not useful. That’s not a fantastic track record, but it’s not surprising either. Successful writers often think they must be doing everything right. After all, they’ve succeeded. In reality, many of them succeeded because of their strengths in one or two areas, and in spite of their weaknesses in others. There’s no question that Vonnegut was a talented and prolific writer, but his ability to understand his success leaves something to be desired.
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I completely agree with you on rule 4. Opening lines especially can afford to be expositional or poetic without saying anything about a character or advancing action. “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”
It could be argued that even the famous opening line of Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five” serves to tell us a lot more about the narration than the narrator: “All this happened, more or less.”
Actually, I disagree. The first line in general needs to be the set-up for the rest of the story, so it has to say something about character or action, even indirectly, or establish a reason why the characters will take the actions they do during the course of the story. Take your examples, for instance:
The first line of Pride and Prejudice basically sets up the entire conflict for the book – everyone assumed that because Mr. Darcy was rich, he needed a wife, so every mother in the county who had unmarried daughters started plotting to drag the guy to the altar.
1984’s opening line just established that that world and society was not a place you would want to live in, and the rest of the story goes on to explain why.
A Tale of Two City’s opening line established the time it was set in – namely, the French Revolution – as a time of contradictions and a point in history where both the people in charge and the church were behaving like bastards towards the average person, again setting up the book’s conflict.
Next time you start a new book, keep that in mind.
The point is that they all violate Vonnegut’s fourth rule: “Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.” All of those sentences are expositional and tell us something important about the social setting in a memorable way, demonstrating that the rule is, as Oren put it, “marginally helpful at best.”
1984’s opening line just established that that world and society was not a place you would want to live in
Not really – all it established was that the time of day is reckoned differently. But that’s fine – it intrigues us with this world and makes us want to know more. (Then of course the rest of the book then goes on to make us regret that impulse).
Rules 2 and 3 seem pretty obvious to me, but it can be surprisingly easy to neglect things like that when you get focused on other parts of the story. I suppose one common problem is losing sight of the actual characters if you’re building from archetypes and formulas.
Rule 6: When I was younger, my worldbuilding ended up running into a problem that rule 6 could have helped with: My civilizations didn’t systematic problems to solve, and my characters didn’t get spinach. That said, taking it to “sadistic” levels is a bit much. There is room for lighter fare, as acknowledged in the article. The flipside is that it’s entirely possible to go so far into sadism that no one wants to watch all the suffering. It all depends on your intended tone and your own tendencies. I’m probably too kind most of the time.
To be honest, a stretch in one of the first novellas I wrote and published still makes me cry these days (as I found out when rereading it yesterday). I was pretty cruel to my main character there. But while I agree that you need to push your character into situations which challenge them and look like they’re too much at first glance, I’m not sure you should be outright sadistic.
I’d like to (weakly) defend rule #1 (weakly, mind you). True, as Owen wrote, no one intends to waste the reader’s time, but, darn it, it happens. I’ve tossed more than a few books that have fallen apart structurally, drifted off into useless backstory, displayed no grasp of spelling or grammar. I’m certain none of the authors wanted that. They wanted me to enjoy and appreciate their stories.
So…charitably…I think Vonnegut is saying that in the dialogue between the writer and the reader the writer needs to do their part. (Similar is Elmore Leonard’s “Try to leave out the parts the readers tend to skip.” ) The writer cannot depend only on their own feelings about the goodness of what they’ve written.
One solution lies in the tag question at the end of each Mythcreant blog: “Need an editor?” So, hire Owen or Chris. Or both — to be serious about not wasting a reader’s time.
Thanks for the comment Paul. You’re absolutely right that lots of stories do feel like they’re wasting the reader’s time. I read Dance With Dragons so I should know ;)
And of course, while it is completely self serving of me, I always say writers should get an editor if it fits in their budget.
Leonard’s line is better, I think, in terms of providing what Oren refers to as actionable advice.
The way Vonnegut phrases it is more like an aspiration than a rule.
I have strong Opinions on Rule 8
This rule is not good as a rule, it does not work for all stories. It is a tool, and as I will say repeatedly, you may use a tool, you may not use a tool, but never throw away a tool.
First off; “The Thrill of Not Knowing” is overrated, overdone, and has reached the status of a cargo cult. It is only one mode of storytelling and yet in the 21st century we move to make it the only one. Spoiler culture reaches a fever pitch and storytelling is the worse for it.
Side tangent; Spoiler culture has turned storytelling into a more solitary activity. not entirely, but just more so than before. We don’t share stories as much. We don’t excitedly recount a story we read or saw, we tell them to go see it themselves, or even apologize for wanting to share our passion. This is immensely depressing.
the thrill of ignorance is short lived, and only ever lasts the first viewing or reading. It is effectively absent entirely in classic stories that are so ingrained in culture that we know them by heart without ever having picked them up ourselves. We know Scrooge is redeemed, we know Captain Ahab dies, we know the Greeks sack troy, Odysseus gets home, and the one ring is destroyed by Gollum. If having the reader know the climax ahead of time truly ruined a story to such a degree that this rule would “actively make your story worse”, then no classic literature would be classic
Now, you might say being told in the story is different from being told by “culture” at large, but I say it is not significantly different. the reader will have an outline in their mind in either case, and the basic knowledge is largely unaffected by the source. the source may set how likely I am to believe given information, but for now I will assume a reliable source.
There is in this way an advantage to putting it in your story. You will have more control over how the information is presented. This is a tool. You don’t always need to use a tool, but never throw them away.
Being told the climax, and even every plot point ahead of time, is not the same as being shown it. “Seeing” it unfold is the experience that draws people back to classic stories. Consider, If you read a synopsis, do you feel you have fully experienced the story? No. Reading or watching the story is a distinctly different experience.
Corollary: Reading a synopsis is a distinctly different experience from reading or watching it’s source
I do not advocate “throwing out the concept of suspense”. it is a tool. Never throw out tools. BUT you don’t need to always use them. You can have a story with no suspense. there is more to a story than it.
If done correctly, it is sufficient for a good story, but NOT Necessary
This IS a point where I disagree with it as a “rule”, because I do not believe it should always be done this way. BUT it is wrong to say you should NEVER use this rule.
Now it may be argued that if you know the story there is no motive to go forward.But to this I will again point to storied that get re-read, and read despite foreknowledge. But, so as not to retread old ground again, I will also say that this problem is easily solved with the application of a good Hook. You should have a good Hook anyway. IT will draw a reader in, make them want to read or watch, to see it all happen. Seeing what happen is only one attraction, of many. Simply seeing it happen is another, and the more important. If a reader or watcher whats to see what happens, but don’t care to see it happens, then they feel drawn in against their will. the frustrated cry of “I don’t like any of this, but I have to know how it ends”. That you got them to sit to the end is no accomplishment, nothing to be proud of. You convinced someone to torture themselves because the feeling of an unfinished story is just a little worse. Aim for them wanting to see it happen, long before seeing what happens.
Back to hooks, you can use your story synopsis AS the Hook. If you present it in just the right way it can sink that hook in deep
“I want to see a generational preparation to evacuate the human race”
“I want to see Jupiter moved by massive engines, and its gravity used to tow earth”
“I want to see an enemy fleet get sucked into Jupiter after being tricked into an EMP blast that disables engines!”
“I want to see all that happen”
Lastly, If your reader already knows WHAT happens, they can focus on WHY it happens. Not just in-universe, but meta-textually. Why did you write things to happen this way. What are you trying to say? Even if your goal isn’t to say anything specific, stories always say something. Let your reader explore that question. Skip them wondering what happens, and let them immediately ponder why.
If you use this rule, your writing will not be made worse. It may be made better if you use it wisely. Do not back away slowly from it, or run away. Approach it, pick it up, and see how your shiny new tool can be used. Maybe you won’t use it, maybe you will. But don’t throw it away
There are two types of stories: stories where suspense comes from not knowing what is going on (but in this case, the viewpoint character/characters shouldn’t know, either) and stories where suspense comes from what the characters do with that knowledge.
A mystery story (and that doesn’t only apply to crime stories) is based on keeping knowledge away from the audience and viewpoint character for a long time and revealing it bit by bit.
A lot of action stories get their tension from the audience knowing what is happening, but not what the viewpoint character will do against it.
If you write a mystery story and tell the audience on page three what the solution to that mystery is, you destroy the story.
If you write an action story and tell the audience on page three what the solution to the problem will be, you will make them wonder about ‘how will they do that.’
A pity Vonnegut didn’t follow his own advice then. With the exception of rule 8, I can’t find an example of him following his own rules. I managed about half of Slaughterhouse Five–it was a school assignment–before hunting down a copy of the Cliff Notes for the book.
To me, rule 1 always reminds me to deepen the theme and make the story mean something, so I find it pretty useful. And I read rule 7 as “If you let too many outside opinions and trends change your story, that can suck the life and originality out of it.” That one person to please; I think of them as the author, or the author’s imagined reader. I got a lot out of Vonnegut’s rules when I first started writing, they really helped me a lot. This article was interesting because it showed just how important subjective interpretation is to determine usefullness. One person’s trash can be another person’s gold, I guess. :)
I like your interpretation of rule #7. I always read it as ‘if you try to please everybody, you will please nobody.’
‘if you try to please everybody, you will please nobody.’ – Exactly. That’s a great, succinct way to put it.
Rule #8 seems counter-intuitive, but after reading Vonnegut, it’s clear he follows it himself. In my opinion, at least, Slaughterhouse Five and Cat’s Cradle were both almost suspense-free. But he can get away with that because he isn’t writing conventional stories.
Perhaps Rule#1 is that your story should having meaning. You are using the time of a stranger, give them something worth reading.
Yeah I think that’s the intent. I just don’t imagine a lot of writers were setting out to give people something that isn’t worth reading.
Although I agree its phrasing is bizarre, I really couldn’t disagree more about rule #7; I think it’s tremendously important. My interpretation is “Know who your audience is, write for them, and don’t lose sight of them. If you go too much out of your way to cater to every audience, you’re likely to lose focus and the story will suffer.” When this is disregarded, you end up with things like “Howard the Duck” and “Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.” The former is a confused mix of things like a talking duck and puns that would make a grade schooler groan with a shocking amount of sexual innuendo and the threat of a human-anthropomorphic duck sex scene. During production, the film’s producer was asked by several confused people about who the movie was supposed to be for; she dismissed these concerns by explaining, “It’s for whoever enjoys it.” …which turned out to be basically no-one. That’s what can happen when you don’t have any audience in mind.
“The Phantom Menace” is what can happen when you try too hard to appeal to a variety of audiences at the expense of consistency and quality. Trying to draw in young kids, there’s a crazy race scene with the enthusiastic kid protagonist competing against silly, cartoony aliens, then within minutes, trying to suit older, more mature sensibilities, we see the inner workings of the Galactic Republic as the senate decides whether to appoint a committee to investigate a trade union’s illicit blockade. The trouble is, there’s really no overlap in who would enjoy those two scenes. The film could have been more tonally consistent and consistently enjoyable if it focused on just one of those audiences at the expense of the other. Potentially it could have toned down both elements in order to keep both audiences, but probably neither would enjoy it as much than if it catered to them specifically.
“Shrek” is a rare example of it being pulled off successfully; it has enough sly wit, semi-subtle innuendo, and sarcastic humour to be enjoyable by adult audiences, but remembers that it’s for kids and remains sincere and focused in that regard. That style has often been imitated, but usually fails because the broad appeal is forced. Most of the live action “The Cat in the Hat” movie is boring and unappealing for older audiences, interjected frequently by unsubtle adult jokes and references which make it inappropriate for its supposed target audience.
Unless sales are one’s primary focus, I even disagree with the assertion that all writers want as wide an audience as possible. If I were making up a bedtime story for a child, they’d be my audience, and I’d focus on what they would enjoy. I wouldn’t think about whether or not lower middle class Norwegians or Libertarian voters over 50 in border states would like it; it’s not for them. If those people enjoyed it, I’m glad they did, but if they don’t, I don’t care as long as it satisfied its intended audience. I’d rather create something which some people absolutely love than something which most people find “okay.”