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.

At the Very Beginning, There Was Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut gets credit for this entire blog, little though he'd want it, were he still alive. Am I the only one still mourning Vonnegut's death? Surely not. I bet John Irving's still pacing his halls, if no one else.

When I heard the news, I felt like I'd been punched in the gut. I focused on finishing the new Pynchon book as fast as possible, so I could start 'tribute reading' all the Vonnegut books I had. (Neither easy tasks, by the way. Have you seen the new Pynchon? It could stop a bullet! Likewise, tribute reading a prolific writer like Vonnegut is not a task for the faint of heart.)

So now, a week or so and a Cat's Cradle, Deadeye Dick, Player Piano and introduction to Breakfast of Champions later (with many more books yet to go), I am forcibly struck by the absence of the love letter I never wrote to Kurt Vonnegut. It was the force of this realization that drove me to start a blog, so I could tell the online world how much Vonnegut meant to me, since I never told him while he was alive.

Vonnegut is probably doing triple axels in his grave right now, assuming they buried him wearing ice skates and he's somehow magically online reading this post. I can just imagine him: "Good Lord! Why are you cluttering up the collective consciousness with odes to an absurd, deceased writer?" Maybe he'd quote a relevant Bokonon poem, or maybe he'd just say, "Hi-ho."

Regardless, here it is:

O Greatest of Kurts,

This letter's been a long time coming. Half my life ago, my hands cracked open the cover of "Breakfast of Champions", and when I closed the book again, I was changed forever. I suppose part of my love for you will always be the fourteen year old who was so astonished to find that somebody else out there found the world as funny and pathetic and hopeful and sad as I did.

I think that's where your greatness lies - and don't scoff, because you truly are a great writer. Your books are incredible, the way you interweave humor and pathos, effortlessly, naturally, with a brutal harshness and a sweet poignancy.

It is remarkable. It is, in fact, purely Vonnegut.

Maybe that's what I admire the most - that your style can't be imitated, and you imitate none other. Maybe it's the honesty that shines through your work, even as you protest that everything you say is untrue. Maybe it's the kinship I feel reading your mockery of mankind's pretense that we're better than human, and your celebration of the fact that we are, after all, only imperfect, blundering, frail, self-delusional humans.

Really, that's all we need to be. Thank you for pointing it out, again and again and again. Thanks for all the laughs, the sorrow, the catharsis. Thanks for being you. I can't imagine a world without you, but thank god you wrote all you did, because even after your death, you are still in the world with us.

I love you, Kurt Vonnegut. You are greatly missed.