{"id":720,"date":"2014-10-01T04:49:31","date_gmt":"2014-10-01T11:49:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/?p=720"},"modified":"2016-06-09T09:58:30","modified_gmt":"2016-06-09T16:58:30","slug":"joseph-oconnor-on-short-stories-1997","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/?p=720","title":{"rendered":"Joseph O’Connor and Kurt Vonnegut on writing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kurt Vonnegut<\/h3>\n

Eight rules for writing fiction:<\/p>\n

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
\n2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
\n3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
\n4. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.
\n5. Start as close to the end as possible.
\n6. 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.
\n7. 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.
\n8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. selves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.<\/p>\n

\"dogdays\"
\n<\/a>Introduction to the 1997 Fish Anthology, Dog Days & Other Stories,<\/strong>
\n by Joseph O\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Connor<\/strong><\/p>\n

What kind of strange creature is a short story writer? I must confess that I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know. A high priest or priest of art? A wounded soul who can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t understand the real world and thus feels a need to re-invent it? A moralist? A spinner of yarns? An entertainer? A prophet? Probably all of these things. Possibly none.<\/p>\n

The single fact I can be sure about is this: writers are watchers. The one and only thing they have in common is an ability to look at the everyday world and be knocked out by it. Stopped in their tracks. Startled. Gobsmacked.<\/p>\n

My favourite short story writer, Raymond Carver, has this to say:<\/p>\n

Writers don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t need tricks or gimmicks, or even necessarily need to be the smartest fellows on the block. At the risk of appearing foolish, a writer sometimes needs to be able to just stand and gape at this or that thing \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a sunset, or an old shoe \u00e2\u20ac\u201c in absolute and simple amazement.<\/p>\n

Another writer I love, Flannery O\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Connor, put it even more strongly:<\/p>\n

There is a certain grain of stupidity that the writer of fiction can hardly do without, and this is the quality of having to stare, of not getting the point at once.<\/p>\n

There is only one trait that writers have in common and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s it. They watch for the extraordinary magic that lies in the everyday. A writer is always quietly looking and thinking. Not willing inspiration but just being open to the world. This quiet looking and thinking is the imagination. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s letting in ideas. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s trying, I suppose, to make some sense of things.<\/p>\n

In that sense, it is important for a writer to be always writing. Even when you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not actually sitting with a pen in your hand. You don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t take days off. You don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t go on holiday from writing. Sometimes you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even go to sleep. If you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re serious about writing then you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re a writer twenty-four hours a day, in the office, in school, doing the dishes and in your dreams.<\/p>\n

Writers have their eyes open. They keep them open all the time.<\/p>\n

Ezra Pound said \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcfundamental accuracy of statement is the one morality of writing\u00e2\u20ac\u2122. Naming things, calling things what they really are. This is all writers can do in an age where language has become debased and sterile.<\/p>\n

James Thurber was a full-time writer. His use of his spare time is interesting:<\/p>\n

I never quite know when I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not writing. Sometimes my wife comes up to me at a party and says, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcDammit, Thurber, stop writing\u00e2\u20ac\u2122. She usually catches me in the middle of a paragraph. Or my daughter will look up from the dinner table and ask, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcIs he sick?\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcNo\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, my wife says, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dche\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s writing something\u00e2\u20ac\u2122.<\/p>\n

The short story is one of the greatest, most challenging, most infuriating forms of literature. They look so easy! That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the thing about really good short stories. They don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t read like they were written. They read like they simply grew on the page. When we read the work of a short story maestro like Joyce or Frank O\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Connor or Richard Ford or Alice Munro or Mary Lavin, we think, yes, there is just a rightness about that sentence, that image, that line of speech. But anyone who has ever tried to write a short story will know just how tough it is to hit that reverberating note, to say something \u00e2\u20ac\u201c anything at all \u00e2\u20ac\u201c worthwhile about the human condition, in five thousand words or less. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hard.<\/p>\n

A short story is a glance at the miraculous. Joyce used a religious word. He called his stories \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcepiphanies\u00e2\u20ac\u2122. A good short story is almost always about a moment of profound realization. Or a hint of that. A quiet bomb. There is a record by the American singer Tori Amos called Little Earthquakes. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a good metaphor for a short story. Often, a good short story will be a little earthquake.<\/p>\n

It is a form that has all the power of the novel \u00e2\u20ac\u201c some would say more \u00e2\u20ac\u201c but none of the self-importance. A deftly imagined and carefully written short story like Karl Iagnemma\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Dog Days, or Frank O\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Donovan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Johnny Mok\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Universe, or Anne O\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Carroll\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Flame, by concentrating on the particular, can say a whole lot about the universal.<\/p>\n

So let us get idealistic for a second or two. V.S. pritchett\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s description of a short story is \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcsomething glimpsed from the corner of the eye, in passing\u00e2\u20ac\u2122. And our task as short story writers is to grab that moment with both hands and invest it with all of the power and humanity and sympathy we can. To develop our skill at language and characterisation and structure and dialogue \u00e2\u20ac\u201c our fundamental accuracy \u00e2\u20ac\u201c for one reason. To tell the truth. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what all the hard work comes down to in the end.<\/p>\n

If we forget that, we forget everything.<\/p>\n

Joseph O\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Connor
\nDublin
\n1997<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kurt Vonnegut 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…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[38,44,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creative-writing-m-a","category-fiction","category-short-stories"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6nhh-bC","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=720"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1332,"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720\/revisions\/1332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}