/lit/ - Literature

>>22523960

dont try - bukowski

>>22524472
Lol rule #6 shits on everything Pynchon or DFW ever wrote.

1Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.
5Start as close to the end as possible.
6Be 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.
7Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8Give 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.

Vonnegut's 8 rules for writing fiction

why would anyone want to follow a set of rules? just tell your story

but please don't skimp on punctuation unless you're at least half as good as cormac mccarthy

>>22525359
All of them do except #3.

>>22525380
>8Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense.

What do you guys think of that? Either as readers or writers.

>>22526803
Bullshit. Infodumps have their place but it's not during the first few chapters. Dostoevsky is a perfect example of someone who starts his novels with chapters upon chapters of family histories, tirades and flashbacks and while most of this is relevant later and important to the overall plot/theme of the novel, it makes for a miserable experience. Most of his long works don't actually start until 100-200 pages in which would be absolutely insane if he wasn't Dostoevsky.

>>22523960
I have never read or watched anything that adhered to all these
especially
>No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right.

>>22525359
what's with bullshit rules like this that make no sense whatsoever and often involve their proponents not actually knowing what an 'adverb' or 'passive voice' is?

>>22523960
ryoujikishi or whatever his name is should take notes

>>22525359
I never understood his vendetta against the adverb until I started reading the sort of 1930s-50s pulps he grew up on. He's not entirely wrong.

>>22528249
I've read King's book on writing (the only Stephen King book I've read lol). The book is largely useless, but it did direct me to a book that's useful (The elements of style by Strunk and White).
With that said, he's not wrong. Really bad writing is littered with adverbs. You can't, and shouldn't, remove all adverbs, but you should definitely cut them out where their absence won't be missed.

>>22524472
>midgets who turn out to be the parents of a two-hundred-pound wrestler
sounds pretty funny desu

>>22525380
>>22524472
>>22523960
you guys are posting this ironically, right? as in, you know these are shit?

>>22523960

>>22526878
Couldn't agree more about dostoyevsky but that's not how vonnegut does it (except in Galapagos and Hocus Pocus, his two worst)

>>22523960

I was actually rereading this book earlier today. It's stuck in my mind ever since I first read it and informed my view on the Aesthetics Question ever since.

>>22523960
What's wrong with Chinamen?

>>22523960
>>22528245

Earlier Japanese detective stories (and Western mysteries that broke out in Japan/Korea) often trend more towards the commandments since their genre fiction traditions are more focused around, "honkaku", mysteries which are meant to be realistic. There are heavy influences from Doyle but keep in mind that while Doyle resonated greatly with Japanese audiences, Neo-Confucian fiction has a history of this feature in some form. Ironically a lot of modern Japanese novels (and yes, anime/manga) actually drastically try to depart from Neo-Confucian storytelling, more emphasis on melodrama and struggle in mysteries than the natural/orthodox solving process. Although obviously exceptions exist (Umineko would be a famous/infamous example). There's been a revival of this genre that was originally more a feature of the early-mid 20th century in Japan. Although they do occasionally break #5 since you can imagine they have very specific impulses towards the Chinese. The Honkaku Mystery Writers club has published anthologies for several years now.

>>22529775
Could just be he was racist against Chinamen, but I've seen that it's because books at the time would constantly use Chinamen as easy villains which resulted in a lot of detective stories being extremely predictable and boring.

>>22529877
>>22529775
Shitty detective stories used to use a chinaman as an excuse to have someone do something completely out of the ordinary. Eg:
>who would murder this blameless old man? Why, a chinaman, because normal human motivation does not apply to those inscrutable Orientals
>but the suspect was in a sealed vault with no means of entry? But a Chinaman can creep into any place, no matter how tightly secured, because the laws of physics don't apply to those wily easterners
>but there was no sign of foul play? Ah, a chinaman has access to forbidden oriental poisons which baffle the finest scientific minds of the west
Basically bad copies of The Sign of Four