8 rules for writing a short story.

Found in this Wikipedia article about Kurt Vonnegut, whom I was thinking about because my commenter Bissage linked to a book of his here and because — also this morning — I was in a long IM conversation that ended up — though it started being about the New Hampshire primary — being about the number 57, Tom Cruise and Scientology, whether humans are the most rational or the most irrational animals, why we love our ideas so much, religion, and "Cat's Cradle."

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 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 hell 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.

I like the way somebody put in Wikipedia links for "sadist," "pneumonia," and "cockroaches." It seems to mean something. Perhaps you could write a short story in which it does and which follows the 8 rules.

ADDED: Here's a nice NPR interview with Vonnegut in which he talks about these rules, some other things about writing and reading (it's meditation), and laughs about the time Nazis wanted very much to surrender to him.