Kurt Vonnegut: How to write a good short story
- Use the time of a total stranger in a way that they won't feel it was wasted.
- Give the reader at least one character to root for.
- Every character should want something, even just a glass of water.
- Every sentence must reveal character or advance the action.
- Start as close to the end as possible.
- Make awful things happen to your leading characters so that the reader may see what they are made of.
- Write to please just one person.
- Give your reader as much information as soon as possible. Readers should understand what is going on, where and why, enough that they can complete the story themselves.
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