Kurt Vonnegut – 2

Le otto regole di Vonnegut

 

Dato che ho postato su questo blog alcuni estratti dei suggerimenti sulla scrittura di vari autori (raggruppati sotto il tag: COSE DA TENERE DI CONTO), inserisco anche le otto regole per scrivere fiction di Kurt Vonnegut che ho rinvenuto girando su internet (anche se lo stile di Vonnegut è così personale che credo non sia il caso di imitarlo. Kurt, però, ha anche tenuto numerosi corsi di scrittura creativa e quindi le considerazioni che seguono è da presumersi che siano, secondo lui, di valenza generale).

 

 

Eight rules for writing fiction

 

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.

— Kurt Vonnegut, Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons 1999).