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Any rules/guidelines?

Kurt Vonnegut's 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.

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I thought these were interesting, which got me thinking. Anyone have any rules/guidelines that they live by? (not talking grammar rules ) Maybe something you live by could spark that imagination in someone else and they can use it to create.

His #5 rule... I'm guilty of that one. I usually have my ending done before I even know the characters, story arc, or even beginning.

some are good, some are just awful.

4. What about atmosphere? Some of my favorite writers (dunsany, lovecraft) could fill a page with prose describing nothing but the background, and make it awsome.

8. If i know how the book is going to end half way through, why should i carry on reading it?

Yeah I don't agree with number 8 either.

I don't know if I have any general guidelines. Except maybe that my best work comes when I'm inspired... if that could even be considered a guideline...

9. No dues ex machina

What's dues ex machina?

This is when the story is resolved by a power outside of the hero's control.

For example ... A bomb is about to blow up and the hero is locked up. At the last minute, a character shows up that we thought was dead and realeases the hero to stop the bomb.

10. The final conflict is between the hero and the villain. Other characters can play offstage, but they can not participate in this one-on-one battle, nor can they resolve the story for the hero or else you have picked the wrong hero.

11. Situations and stories are totally different. In a story, the character is motivated toward a goal and must attempt to resolve their character flaw to have a chance at reaching their goal. Situations are any story that does not hold to this litmus test.

12. Heros are never victims. They do not constantly shrink from disaster or they cease to be heros. It's okay for them to have doubts, but they need to be able to set these aside to keep moving forward.

13. Sight is only one of five senses. Use the others as you can, in this preferential order: sound, touch, smell, taste. The reason for this is you give the reader a better sense of their surroundings when you can present it with more than one sense. Also, I have ordered the senses as to how strongly we perceive them.

So, if a rock falls from a cliff: You see it fall and hear it crash down.

If it's raining: You see the rain, you hear the pit-a-pat on the sidewalk, you feel the dampness, you might smell the rain, and you might even take out your tongue to taste it.

Combine senses where it makes sense, but don't use every experience as a sensory overload to the reader. Consider each experience and ask yourself ... which senses would respond most likely to this experience and write about those.

A character eating might see the food and hear it crunch in their mouth. They might even feel the food upon their tongue. However, the better senses here would be smell and taste. What does the food taste like? How does it smell?

14. Follow your own rules. What I mean by this is, if a character can fly in chapter one, then that character can fly in the rest of the chapters, unless you do something to remove that power.