Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Tenets of Storytelling

Vonnegut’s critical tips on writing

Vonnegut’s fifth item of advice is “Sound like yourself.”

Vonnegut’s “Creative Writing 101” Rule #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.

“A story-teller must tell his story in such a way that the reader will not feel that his time has been wasted.”

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.

Vonnegut’s “Creative Writing 101” Rule #2: Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.324