The Art Of Short Story Writing

Make up to 6 figures with a list of 10 people!

A lot of people find that they want to write a short story, even though they are not a "writer" or an "aspiring novelist." For many people, short story writing is relaxing - it is fun, therapeutic, and enjoyable. Short story writing can be a productive use of your time, and it can be a very fun hobby. At the same time, however, it is not much fun at all if you write short stories that no one reads!

In modern American literature, few writers were as highly regarded as Kurt Vonnegut. From the late 1940s until his death in the late 2000s, Vonnegut wrote critically acclaimed and highly-regarded short stories, novels, and essays. During Vonnegut's writing career, he compiled a list of "rules" that he felt writers should follow when writing short stories. The next few paragraphs summarize these ideas.

Vonnegut's first two rules dealt with the way you should take care of the reader - first off, by making absolutely sure the reader won't feel like you wasted their time, and secondly, that you give the reader at least one character they can root for. From here, Vonnegut stuck with characters next, saying that each of your characters should want something - even if this "something" is insignificant - and then he said that every sentence should either reveal character or advance action. Vonnegut goes on to tell you that you should make awful things happen to your characters, no matter how sweet they are. By doing this, you allow the reader to see what the characters are made of. Vonnegut's next pieces of advice were as follows: start as close to the end as possible, and write to please just one person. The idea in this last one, of course, is that if the one person loves the story, everyone else who loves such stories will love it also.

Vonnegut closes his rules by telling writers to give as much information as you can, as quickly as you can. "To heck with suspense," he said. The reader should always have an absolute understanding of what is going on, is what Vonnegut said.

Of course, Vonnegut admitted that you can break all of these rules and still create a terrific short story. But you could sure do a lot worse than Kurt Vonnegut if you are going to find a writer to take advice from for writing short stories.