How To Write Short Stories

You do not have to be a "writer" or an "aspiring novelist" to want to write a short story. For many people, short story writing is relaxing - it is fun, therapeutic, and enjoyable. Writing short stories can be a great hobby, and can enable you to use your free time in a productive manner. At the same time, however, it is not much fun to write short stories if no one will read them!

Kurt Vonnegut was one of the masters of modern American literature. With a vast collection of novels, short stories, and essays that stretched over 50-plus years, Vonnegut's work was highly acclaimed and well regarded. During Vonnegut's writing career, he compiled a list of "rules" that he felt writers should follow when writing short stories. These ideas are summarized in the next few paragraphs.

Vonnegut's first two rules deal with the reader: firstly, that you should make sure the reader will not feel their time is wasted, and secondly that you give the reader a character they can root for. Continuing with characters, Vonnegut says that every character should want something, even if it is only something small, and every sentence should either reveal something about a character or advance action. Vonnegut next implored writers to do the following: Make horrible things happen to your characters, even if they are kind and sweet. In this way, the reader can see what the character is made of. He advises writers to start as close to the end as they possibly can, and to write to just please one person. To understand this last one, realize this: If you write to please one person, and that one person loves your story, then all others who have similar tastes to your "one person" will love it also.

Finally, Vonnegut tells writers to give as much information as possible as quickly as possible. "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 allowed that it is entirely possible for someone to break every one of these rules and still write great short stories. But if you are going to take the advice of someone when writing short stories, you could certainly do a whole lot worse than Kurt Vonnegut.

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