Another take on Vonnegut's Seventh Rule

I was thrilled to be asked to guest post on www.fictionmatters.com:

I'm intrigued by the concept of Vonnegut’s Seventh Rule, which essentially is to write for one person rather than the whole world. I’ve never really considered writing for the whole world; instead, I find myself writing for my main character. After all, if I don’t tell his story, no one else will. And if I can tell the story to his satisfaction, I’m certain to end up happy with it as well.

(Side note: I’m rather enjoying the fact that Vonnegut would’ve hated that semicolon in the preceding paragraph.)

I think one’s instinctive audience is deeply intertwined with one’s creative process. Every (good) story I’ve written has started because a protagonist popped into my mind, in a sort of reverse-Athena-birthing, whispering urgently that they must tell me about this thing. Or I’ll get a sudden image of this person - who’s never occurred to me before - in the middle of an intriguing action, and realize I must know what happened next. Or maybe I do know what happened next, and before too, and realize that for his sake and mine, I must tell his story, now now now.

There are some great advantages to this approach, in my opinion. My protagonists become close friends of mine, because I take their stories seriously, and they know I’m listening. Writing for them helps me with characterization quite a lot, because they’re driving the story so much that all I have to do is pay attention, and a thousand tiny details come forth with relatively little effort.

It also helps me with developing other characters. Since the secondary characters are all there because they’re a part of the protagonist’s life, I tend to see them from the protag’s point of view. How they respond to the main character, and how he responds to them, helps me understand both people better. The drawback, not surprisingly, is that this can make my secondary characters a bit flat at times. But hey, that’s why we have revision, right? I’m a big believer in getting the first draft down on paper and worrying about making it great on the next go-round or twenty.

Another thing I love about this approach is that the inspiration is all wrapped up with it. Whatever inner emotion makes this character so urgent, so insistent that I tell their story, tends to be one of the main themes. Even better, since that passion is innately contained within their personality, I typically don’t have to put a lot of conscious thought into the character’s motivation. It seems natural that the protagonist’s motivation and the story’s overall themes are linked in a necessary - indeed, inextricable - way. Granted, I may not fully understand that motivation or the themes until I’m knee-deep in the story, but I just keep trusting my main character and in time, all is revealed.

Focusing on telling this specific character’s story to his satisfaction helps me to hone in on the plot, too, even if I can’t see all the way to the end when I first start jotting down the scenes and images that occur to me. If I start to get lost, or bogged down, I can turn to the protagonist and say, “Sorry, what were we talking about? I got a little distracted.” In a very real sense, the protagonist is like a guide leading me along an unfamiliar trail through the forest. It doesn’t feel like I’m making up his story; I’m listening to it, asking questions, and writing as fast as I can.

Okay, mad props to @FictionMatters...

We now interrupt this story for random homage to tweeps & Vonnegut...

So I joined Twitter not too long ago. I'm loving the interaction with other writers, getting to read other folks' blogs, discussing craft & technique etc etc. It's wonderful - a lot like real-life writing workshops, except that you actually get to choose whose writing you read. :)

Anyway, one of my Twitter feeds is @FictionMatters, who deserves some mad props for two things. First, he used Star Wars to analyze successful development of a villain's character, and anyone who can use Star Wars to explain, well, anything is pretty much awesome in my book.

Second, he recently blogged a separate post on each of Vonnegut's 6 rules of writing. Let it be known that I am a HUGE Vonnegut fan. I adore the man. In fact, I started this entire blog because I was so upset when he died, and I needed a place to vent. And in addition to a wonderfully creative and unique perspective, Vonnegut was a damn good writer. So his rules - which I had seen before, sometime in my halcyon days of youth, and then promptly forgotten - are quite useful.

So, not to steal from Fiction Matters, but for my writing friends that aren't on Twitter (join! now!), here is the list. Talk about perfect timing - I plan to use these, especially #4, to help me with my revisions to 'Mississippi'. You can read a discussion of each rule at http://www.fictionmatters.com/.

Kurt Vonnegut's Rules of Writing:

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 sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them-in order that the reader may see what they are made of.