Author: Kurt Vonnegut

 

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was an American writer and humorist known for his satirical and darkly humorous novels. In a career spanning over 50 years, he published fourteen novels, three short-story collections, five plays, and five nonfiction works; further collections have been published after his death

Bio:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Vonnegut

First Lines: Kurt Vonnegut - The Sirens of Titan

Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself.

First Lines: Kurt Vonnegut - Cat's Cradle

Call me Jonah.

First Lines: Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse-Five

All this happened, more or less.

First Lines: Kurt Vonnegut - Breakfast of Champions

This is a tale of a meeting of two lonesome, skinny, fairly old white men on a planet which was dying fast.

First Lines: Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse-Five

All this happened, more or less.

Kurt Vonnegut - Eight Rules for Writing Fiction

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 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. 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.

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 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, Kurt Vonnegut, Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons 1999), 9-10.