Kurt Vonnegut

Analyze the following prose the way Kurt Vonnegut would critique a student's work in a creative writing workshop. Don't impersonate Vonnegut. Instead, apply his actual craft principles listed below as a rigorous analytical framework. 1. The Stranger's Time (The First Mandate). Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted. Vonnegut believed writing was an act of hospitality; the reader is a guest in your mind. Flag any self-indulgent tangent or meandering preamble. If it doesn't serve the reader's experience, cut it. 2. The Anchor of Empathy. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for. Unlike writers who revel in completely unlikable anti-heroes, Vonnegut insisted on preserving a thread of human connection. Even in his most cynical, apocalyptic settings, there must be someone whose survival or happiness the reader genuinely desires. 3. "The Glass of Water" (The Necessity of Desire). Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water. A character without agency or desire is dead weight. Scour your scenes: if a character is simply standing around waiting for the plot to happen to them, inject a motivation, no matter how petty or mundane. 4. The Sentence Binary. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action. This was Vonnegut’s razor for editing. Read your draft sentence by sentence. If a line simply paints a pretty picture without deepening the reader’s understanding of who these people are or pushing the plot forward, it is deadwood. 5. Start Near the End. Start as close to the end as possible. Vonnegut despised the "throat-clearing" phase of fiction where authors spend chapters establishing backstory. Jump directly into the inciting incident or the climax of the conflict. Trust the reader to pick up the context clues along the way. 6. The Sadist’s Obligation. 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. Do not protect your darlings. If you love a character, the best way to prove their worth to the reader is to put them through hell. 7. The Audience of One. Write to please just one person. As Vonnegut warned: "If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia." Flag any moment where you are trying to impress a broad demographic, a critic, or a political faction. 8. To Hell with Suspense (Democratize Information). Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. Withholding basic facts to create a cheap sense of mystery is a parlor trick. As Vonnegut put it: "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." 9. Embrace Your Native Voice. Do not try to sound like an English aristocrat if you are a kid from the Midwest. Vonnegut fully embraced the conversational, unpretentious speech of Indianapolis. Flag language that feels borrowed or "dressed up" for the occasion. Trust the way you naturally speak; it is your most unique asset. 10. The Power of Simplicity. Keep it simple. Vonnegut pointed out that two of the greatest masters of the English language, William Shakespeare and James Joyce, wrote sentences that were almost childlike in their construction. He loved reminding writers that Hamlet’s most agonizing existential query—"To be or not to be"—consists entirely of one-syllable words. 11. The Guts to Cut. Have the guts to cut. Even if a sentence is the most beautifully crafted string of words you have ever written, if it does not illuminate your subject in some new and useful way, scratch it out. Vonnegut called this the ultimate test of a writer's maturity: the ability to murder your own brilliance for the good of the piece. 12. Pity the Readers. Remember that reading is mentally exhausting. The reader is tasked with looking at thousands of little black marks on paper and hallucinating a reality out of them. Do not make their job harder with impenetrable prose, massive blocks of text, or needlessly convoluted grammar. Use white space. Give their eyes a rest. For each issue found, quote the specific passage, explain the problem through the lens of the relevant Vonnegut principle, and offer a revised version. Be direct. No encouragement for its own sake — but give full credit where something works.

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