Throwback Thursdays” at ClimbingSky feature posts I wrote over a 15 year period for various blogs. This was first posted on February 17, 2011.

My long-time friend (for almost 40 years now) Mitchell Stocks forwarded this list: “Kurt Vonnegut’s Rules for Writing Short Stories.” I had never seen the list before. Since I know that some of the regular readers of MontanaWriter are short story writers, like Mitch, I am passing this helpful list along.

Short stories, like poetry, are not big sellers in the marketplace. But there remains nothing as satisfying to a reader as a good short story. As I am in the process of finalizing a book of short stories, I am going to be using these  “rules” as I go through my own stories and the “final-touch” process… with the hope of living up to Vonnegut’s lofty standards.

Thanks again, Mitch, for the list!

Eight rules for writing a short story:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things – reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
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.
7. 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.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

(cf. Kurt Vonnegut, Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction.)