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The Rules for Creative Writing

By: Dwayne W. Waite Jr.

As creative professionals, it is sometimes necessary for us to get our inspiration for our work or writing from different sources, at times sources totally unrelated to advertising or communications. We need to give our minds a diversion, a thought or activity that captures them in order to give our thinking faculties a break. Sometimes we implement the same thinking processes on a matter totally different to get to what a result may look like. Then, after engaging in that brainstorming or brain-diversion activity, we return to the work at hand, refreshed and inspired.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote an introduction to Bagombo Snuff Box, a book that included about 20 previously uncollected short stories he wrote between 1941 and 1953. He talked about how people used to be thoroughly entertained with short stories in magazines, and that a writer could make a living on selling short stories for magazines alone. Once television came, however, the demand for short stories plummeted. More importantly, and the essence of this post, Vonnegut wrote out his eight rules for creative writing. He received much of this list from his agents while he was selling the stories. His agents would receive one of his stories and would send it back to him with advice on how to change the story to make it sellable. We thought we'd share it as a way to show how Vonnegut formed his creative landscape.

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 just to please 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.

Can we not make these rules applicable to our advertising strategy and copywriting? Shouldn't our advertising speak to our targeted audience? Shouldn't our consumer feel as though their time wasn't wasted, but that we provided them valuable information? In the information age, consumers demand to have information, or else (as we have seen) they find ways to get it. As communications professionals, it is our duty to provide them with the knowledge they need to know.

In copywriting, rule number four is crucial. When using words, the words must either give the brand a personality (character) or provide the consumer with a call to action (advance). It makes sense.

Of course, these rules make sense to the advertising world. Vonnegut himself dabbled in advertising and copywriting.

So it goes.

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About the Author

Dwayne W. Waite Jr. is partner and principal at JDW: The Charlotte Agency, a marketing and advertising shop in Charlotte, NC. He enjoys consumer behavior, economics, and football.

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