About Me

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Susie Wild is a poet, writer, journalist, critic, lecturer, festival organiser and editor with 25 years of editorial experience. She is the author of poetry collections 'Windfalls' (2021) and 'Better Houses' (2017). Her debut short story collection 'The Art of Contraception' was longlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize 2011. Her ebook novella 'Arrivals' was released in 2011. She edited the illustrated short story anthology 'Rarebit' for Parthian's 21st birthday. (All available via Parthian Books). She lives by a mountain in South Wales @Soozerama

Tuesday 3 July 2012

Vonnegut on how to write 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 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.

Read more and watch the video at openculture.com: http://www.openculture.com/2012/06/kurt_vonneguts_eight_tips_on_how_to_write_a_good_short_story.html

I am NEVER ever guilty of tip number 6. No, no. Not me.