Saturday, January 31, 2009

stealing saturdays: 1/31/09

Posted by little erin at 1/31/2009 01:06:00 AM

i "stole" this week's SS from here, but who knows where it was originally posted!



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. Now 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 heck 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.

 

Labels: ,

4 Comments:

  1. Joanne said...
    Feb 1, 2009, 10:07:00 AM  
    As someone currently marketing a fiction manuscript, I can see the truth in these, some of which are famliar. Number 5 is a new one to me, but I can see the value in it, keeping the story sharply focused. It's making me consider if I have done that in my work!
    little erin said...
    Feb 2, 2009, 4:11:00 PM  
    i think number 5 might be the one i slightly disagree with. usually what i sit down to write changes quite a bit, so it would be quite hard to start as close to the end as possible!
    Christine said...
    Feb 2, 2009, 8:47:00 PM  
    I don't like the ending to be predictable. If I know how the end is going to be, I might as well let the cockroaches have a go at it.
    Oats said...
    Feb 4, 2009, 2:41:00 PM  
    One of his other comments, I can't remember which book he included it in; NEVER under any circumstance should you use a semi-colon, they are useless.

    :)

    I don't agree, but I do remember it because I use colons, semi-colons, hyphens/dashes a lot. But then again, they are tying together broken thoughts, and upon their completion goes back to rule #4.

Post a Comment



Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)