Damon Knight Writing Advice

Some good advice from Damon Knight (from the chapters handed out to you in class):

1. "You can't write about a general character in a general setting--[to keep a story going] you need a particular person in a particular place, feeling a particular way, in a particular situation."
2. "Each time you answer a question [about character, setting, situation, feeling] you will be closer to finding out what happens in the story."
3. "Editors are often reluctant to publish any short story that ends with the death of a sympathetic viewpoint character."
4. "After writing a 1st draft, go back over your story and: criticize your own story. By asking questions [about craft] now, you will save yourself the embarrassment of having others ask them later."
5. Remember to draw on your own experiences if you need to, but also rely on research to flesh out an idea.
6. Constraints (like prompts) can help limit your imagination and give you a good place to start writing.
7. "In a story we expect a quality of completion, of roundedness, which sets it apart from a sketch, an incident, or an anecdote."
8. "There is an implied contract between the author and the reader that goes something like this: Give me your time and pay your money, and I'll let you experience what it's like to be...a trapper in the woods, an explorer in the Martian desert, a young woman in love with an older man, a dying cancer patient...etc. You must look hard at the offer you are making: would you accept it, if you were the reader?"
9. "A story has a shape; you can't see it all at once, but it's there. A good story has a pleasing shape, like a vase or a violin; a bad one has a meaningless, haphazard shape, like a pile of junk."
10. "Every story is a machine designed to evoke an organized series of responses in the reader. When the writer is clumsy, the mechanism shows. In a good story it is concealed and we are not aware of it, but it is there just the same, and every part of it has its function."