Kurt Vonnegut's Eight Rules of Writing

In this video, I'm unpacking Kurt Vonnegut's Seven Rules of Writing.
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[@davidbell9222]

One of the best "thinker" writers. He pushes a reader to stop and think beyond the words and question their views or reality.

[@leogidy]

SO IT GOES

[@authortaraeast]

HA! 🙂

[@scottjackson163]

Wow, you sure are poised and articulate in how you present your material.

[@authortaraeast]

Thank you! It's not without effort!

[@thumper8684]

It is touching that youpicked Kurt Vonnegut. I feel like he is a natural successor to Mark Twain in his humour and his humanity.

[@authortaraeast]

He's a fantastic writer isn't he? There is so much we can learn from him (and other literary giants no longer in the 'new release' section).

[@JSTNtheWZRD]

I literally just said that, then saw that you wrote it too. The comparison to twain. Good show!

[@_angstlust_]

Even the mustache!

[@levyvagas8643]

I first read Vonneguet when I was 20 and still enjoy his work to this day. Great video. It is obvious to anyone who’s not a narcissist(let me make snippy mean comments & tell myself I’m not a loser) the generous effort deriving from a kind place. I think it has the perfect amount of words. Keep up the good work. MEAN PEOPLE SUCK.

[@ghostmantagshome-er6pb]

1:58 I love it! My biggest snag writing is feeling like a lying phony. I can daydream it ,but on paper I am a total fraud.

[@buzzcrumhunger7114]

I'm enjoying watching the cat while listening to you.

[@rene.rodriguez]

That was amazing. Liked and sub’d. Thanks for sharing!

[@authortaraeast]

You're welcome!

[@PoetryETrain]

Great advice, video, and channel... Subscribed...

[@philosophicsblog]

I thought your book was "He Dies Every Time", and I thought of South Park's Kenny. Still, I was not disappointed. Love Vonnegut.

[@authortaraeast]

LOL!!! I kind of love that :-)

[@68kristjan]

Thank you, really inspiring, I´m off to write. Ps the puppy is lovely.

[@authortaraeast]

Oh, I am so glad that you found this inspiring! That is the entire point of this channel :-)

[@AlifHarsanPradipto]

Not expecting you to bring that 80000 words book up 🤣 Great and concise video about Vonnegut! 👍

[@authortaraeast]

Hi Alif, thanks for taking the time to comment. I am so glad that you enjoyed the video, thanks for watching!

[@HAL-nt6vy]

Very nice! I am studying writing currently in order to advise my 14-year old daughter. But, perhaps I'll try more writing myself.

[@authortaraeast]

That's so wonderful that you want to support your daughter in this way! If you're thinking of starting a writing practice yourself, I cannot recommend highly enough Natalie Goldberg's non-fiction books (Writing Done the Bones, Thunder and Lightening, Wild Mind). I also did a video that cover's Nat's rules of writing. :-)

[@hglundahl]

do you have any video about writing rules related mainly or equally to essay writing?

[@BrendanGasparin]

Great talk. Liked and subscribed! I'm looking forward to checking out more of your content.

[@authortaraeast]

Fantastic and thank you!

[@marshall1864]

Hitchcock said more or less what Vonnegut (and you) say, but in a way that, I think, explains one of the rules better. Paraphrasing: Suspense, he said, is not withholding information from the reader. Rather, it is giving the reader information before the character gets it. (Is that faded Aussie I hear?)

[@authortaraeast]

That's a fantastic point, thanks so much sharing. And yes, my accent is a bit weird. I am Australian, lived here my whole life, but for some reason have always spoken with a bit of a Canadian twang. I put it down to having speed and drama lessons when I was super young, must have messed with my pronunciation!

[@marshall1864]

@@authortaraeast I a different hemisphere, and era, you'd have a mid-Atlantic accent. Luckily you look nothing like Dean Acheson.

[@authortaraeast]

@@marshall1864 a transatlantic accent, I like the sound of that. :-) While I look nothing like Dean Acheson, the man does have an impressive moustache!

[@marshall1864]

@@authortaraeast I, too, look nothing like him. Or his moustache. And though I live in the mid-atlantic part of the U.S., I don't have a mid-atlantic accent, which is a different mid-atlantic, if that makes any sense--which it damn well shouldn't. Where in Oz are you?

[@heywilbur]

Re: Hitchcock, true....

[@ibtissam5376]

I like ure sense of humOur lady

[@mauionamission]

Greetings! I was wondering who made the cover for your book?

[@authortaraeast]

The cover is amazing, right? Her name is Jessica Bell and here is her website: www.jessicabelldesign.com/

[@mrnice7570]

Before sending manuscripts to publishers , what legal protection do you have that its your intellectual property? I.e. do you need to protect it someway

[@NeonPixels81]

Great video but the background is messing with me head - its echoing like you're inside but the windows and paneling look like you're outside, I cannot get my head around it haha

[@authortaraeast]

I'm so sorry! This video was filmed a long time ago and I did not have my audio figured out. The background, for your understanding, is a veranda that has been 'built-in' to become a sunroom. So, its an inside room that looks like the outside of the house!

[@ericheine2414]

Publishing is easy. If you're any good they will come looking for you. Find an editor that loves you. Don't join a book club. And don't join a Writers Workshop. Have enough living experience that you have something to write about. There's only one rule- 1)Never stop writing and right 4 or5 books the same time. That way if one freezes the others keep moving. Master the short story.

[@BookClubDisaster]

I dropped out of my writer's workshop because I started to think it was going to turn me into a more cautious writer. I'm at my best when I'm daring and not worried about what strangers might think.

[@jasoncraig606]

Yikes. I'm off to write!😂😂

[@BookClubDisaster]

@@TondersWonders I wonder how many books now considered classics wouldn't get published. Would Simon and Schuester jump all over Naked Lunch!??! Or Last Exit To Brooklyn??

[@BookClubDisaster]

Hey I'm a fuck up with a heart of gold! Can I have your number? But seriously.....I thought of an exception to the "have at least one character readers can root for". American Psycho. I don't recall a single redeeming character in that but of course that can also be viewed as a flaw in the book despite its success. Also I think my book, which I'm editing right now before throwing it to the wolves of readers/agents, pretty much follows these rules! I especially think the rule about writing for an audience of one--yourself--is so important. I've gotten to the point where I kind of like my book and I'm a harsh self-critic. Does that mean others will love it too? I have no idea. But that's all out of your hands no matter which way you write anyway.

[@authortaraeast]

So glad this video prompted those thoughts for you. To every writing 'rule' there is also an exception, such is the example of American Psycho. This is why we have to take every piece of writing advice with a grain of salt.

[@finzenberger]

raymond chandler eg had *two* rules: first, getting every day to your desk and sitting there for say four hours. secondl, not to do anything but writing during that time, the writing of letters (perfectly applicable to e-mails etc) or checks being forbidden. these rules are all very fine for a certain kind of writing which would please the market, the narration with fictive characters. there are other kinds of texts and ways of writing and there are experiences outside the middle class and being the best in writing class. just sayin, with due respect to craft and writing classes. wishing you the best.

[@Ggdivhjkjl]

What was strange about your times?

[@ErnieCT1987]

Yer funny. 😄

[@halfpastnews4999]

I can understand what most women are saying (tendinitis) HOWEVER, I did understand what you said, Tara East-- You spoke as if you wanted people to get your message.

[@Charles3x7]

Dude, you are juggling like four accents at once, and it is totally bamboozling me

[@authortaraeast]

I know, and I'm sorry. I have the MOST confusing accent!

[@Charles3x7]

@@authortaraeast lol not a problem!

[@GlennC789]

I don't mean to be unkind, so I hope I can justify my comment on the basis of constructive criticism, but I can't get past the irony of having two-and-a-half minutes of my time wasted before we get to rule number one, to write such that the reader doesn't feel their time is wasted. Please, for the love of god, get to the point! I see somewhere around 12,000 people have watched at least part of this video. According to math, that is enough time wasted for somebody to have written an entire novel of their own!

[@acr08807]

@GlennC789 You took 100 words to say "Please get to the point before the two minute mark."

[@levyvagas8643]

You don’t mean to be mean, but you did anyway. do you feel stronger now? Can you pass for powerful?

[@GlennC789]

I would rather pass for helpful. I can't escape the instinct that what you write seems a lot like projection. @@levyvagas8643

[@bryanoldenburg9870]

I love your personality Tara East (but don't like the personality of Kanye West). So a few rules seem to be in conflict. Do away with the backstory, yet give the reader as much info asap. Hmm...

[@authortaraeast]

Thanks for the comment! Glad you liked the video.

[@Ihsaan_ASMR]

If you know that people are busy why don't you get straight to the point

[@levyvagas8643]

If you are bored, don’t watch. You didn’t mind wasting the time writing a mean comment.

[@Ihsaan_ASMR]

@@levyvagas8643 what's mean about my question

[@levyvagas8643]

@@Ihsaan_ASMR The fact you have to ask answers your question. It not just you but others also. She is simply providing content from her home with limited equipment and experience. Her primary motivation seems just to share a relaxed conversational moment with the viewers. Some of you are critiquing her as if she’s giving a dissertation for a PhD at Harvard. Chill the #### out.

[@Ihsaan_ASMR]

@@levyvagas8643 you're the one who needs to chill apparently

[@levyvagas8643]

@@Ihsaan_ASMR Apparently is a very big word.

[@JSTNtheWZRD]

What other concerns? Strange thing to say. Its America, i take the absurdity as it comes.

[@ColonelFredPuntridge]

The worst piece for all-despicable characters is the opera _Rigoletto._ The characters are all horrible people.

[@SculptExpress-gv8jp]

Haha, people are fickle and horrible but get away with it … with the sound of music.

[@babyirene3188]

It’s hard to imagine a book as horrible as Netflix. .)

[@authortaraeast]

:-D

[@choimdachoim9491]

Kurt would not approve....excessively wordy. That equals time-wasting to "strangers." My Rules For Writing" are simple: 1. Write when I feel like it. or, when I can't stop. 2. Keep my writing books open, accessible and with a pen clipped to the first blank page. 3. Always remember that I'm writing to write, not to be a professional Writer. I apply these same rules to my music creation, my art creation, furniture building, home repair and renovation, all my math and science studies, etc. Now that I'm retired I realize I had a fourth rule: 4. Always have a "day-job."

[@davedalton1273]

I am not a writer; I am an historian. As such, I have my rules, too. First and foremost : do your research. You might ask what this has to do with Vonnegut's eight rules. Kurt was a novelist, you might say. Yes, but in Slaughter House Five, he crossed over into the discipline of History, when he stated as fact the number of deaths resulting from the allied bombing of Dresden. He put the number at 135,000. I wonder if you know where that figure came from. There is only one source for that figure. It came from David Irving, perhaps the most notorious Holocaust denier of all time. Irving and his alleged account of the firebombing were thoroughly discredited at the libel trial of Deborah Lipstadt. It seems to me that, given the enormity of Irving's claim, Vonnegut would not have relied entirely on only one source, but apparently, he did. Vonnegut did some rather serious damage and he never acknowledged it. The trial ended in 2000, when Kurt was still alive, but I don't believe he ever corrected it, or even commented on it.

[@finzenberger]

heartfelt thanks for that remark. (i never read vonnegut because there is a kind of praise that mekes me suspicious.) 5:53

[@t0dd000]

Irving's numbers were initially widely accepted. So ... There you go. Why didn't he comment on it? Dunno. Maybe because he felt it didn't matter in the context of his novel.

[@tracyclark7560]

guess it was a he tried to get away with, and did

[@feelinguru-vywiththepaingu9808]

​@finzenberger Read Vonnegut, see a movie, go on an amusement park ride always, always with an open mind. If you don't, you will experience many things that are wonderful and you won't appreciate them. That's because we let others' praise build in our minds to such a degree that we can't truly enjoy our own experience. We feel let down by the good reviews we've allowed to color our minds. I began to truly enjoy reading in the early 1970s. My grandmother gave me books she thought appropriate for my young, teenaged mind. I wanted more. The local librarian helped me expand beyond Agatha Christie and Louis L'Amour. When she gave me Le Guin and then Vonnegut, my mind exploded. I wanted nothing but to explore more. No one experiences the same way someone else does. Vonnegut was a great writer. Even if you don't love his stories, you may learn something about the craft of writing. As a 60-year-old reader and writer, I think you may find something to appreciate in Vonnegut's work. Find out for yourself before you make a judgment. If you feel his work doesn't merit praise, you'll know that for yourself.

[@JStack]

Maybe you could have looked up that Vonnegut himself survived the attack of Dresden by hiding in a meat locker as a US soldier. But maybe you aren't a historian and you don't look thinks up. You look for confirmation bias

[@vp4744]

Kurt's writing advice applies to speaking also, especially when making youtube videos. You are too wordy.

[@authortaraeast]

lol!