Raymond Chandler on good writing

[Doghouse Reilly No.452981]

When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.

When I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split.

The challenge of screenwriting is to say much in little and then take half of that little out and still preserve an effect of leisure and natural movement.

The flood of print has turned reading into a process of gulping rather than savoring.

The English may not always be the best writers in the world, but they are incomparably the best dull writers.

[Anonymous No.452995]

Kurt Vonnegut's eight rules for writing a short story:

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 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.
7. 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.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell 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.

[Anonymous No.453061]

Read Strunk. He's funny.