Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Tenets of Storytelling

Creating a solid, memorable character arc requires several important ingredients: Start out with a clear idea of who the character is at the beginning of the story. What does he care about? What does he believe? How does he behave in certain situations? Open with the character beginning from a place of imperfection or incompleteness. Usually (but n

Kurt Vonnegut wrote a letter to a group of high school students and assigned them this homework: Write a poem and don’t show it to anybody. Tear it up into little pieces and throw them into the trash can.

Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing.

Hence Vonnegut’s seventh rule: “Pity the readers”: Our audience requires us to be sympathetic and patient teachers, ever willing to simplify and clarify.37