How To Write Short Stories

You do not have to be a "writer" or an "aspiring novelist" to want to write a short story. Many people find short stories to be therapeutic, fun, relaxing, 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!

Kurt Vonnegut was one of the most heralded writers in modern American literature. For over fifty years - from the late 1940s to the mid-2000s - he wrote novels, essays, and short stories that were widely-read and highly acclaimed. Somewhere along the way, Vonnegut compiled his list of "rules" for 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. Vonnegut's next pieces of advice were as follows: start as close to the end as possible, and write to please just 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.

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. According to him, the reader should have a complete understanding of what is going on.

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 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.