Hey, and hello to new subscribers and regular readers. 

 Kurt Vonnegut’s famous list of 8 rules for creative writing appeared in the preface to his 1999 short story collection Bagombo Snuff Box.

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 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.

Good advice can be measured by the “oh wow, of course” reaction; it’s the sense of “why didn’t I see that,” or at least it falls between this and “wow, that’s well put.”

The genius is describing a complex idea, making it as simple as possible, without losing its truth.

For a writer of exciting tales of derring-do, however, rule 8 is a bit of a bump in the road. Not every story can be Columbo, where the murderer is revealed at the beginning; many suspend the reveal as Agatha Christie might. I like both, and I don’t think either approach is better than the other.

 Still, rule 8 resonates with me, as I write stories that involve complex world-building. The tricky part is figuring out which pieces of lore—the history, the hidden rules, the cultural quirks—need to reach the reader, and when?

It makes me think about the meaning of possible.

Is it impossible? No, not in a dry, factual way. I could simply info-dump the concepts, the imagined history, and the backstories of every character on the page. However, that approach would break all the other seven of Vonnegut’s eight rules in one way or another.

Possible in a technical sense, impossible in a practical, everyday way.

I have over seven hundred thousand words, at the last count of my notes, for my historical SF novel about vampires and other monsters. 

 Children of the Dominion. Born to serve. Raised to hunt. Destined to break free.

MY BOY JACKPREQUEL TO THE CHIMERA CYCLE Free Novella! 

 In stories, characters often do impossible things. An alien might read minds or a blind soldier see ghosts, but stories, to work, must have their own rules. 

 While it’s not impossible for Fonzi to ‘jump the shark’, if the situation comes off as absurd—breaking the established rules of the story—the reader’s suspension of disbelief will be lost: the story is broken. 

Hence, what is possible is constrained by the story itself.

If it’s impossible for a character to know something—that’s a good reason for the reader not to know it. I can let the reader explore the unknown fictional world through a character’s experiences, and I can show, not tell, the story. As the hero learns the secret things, so does the reader.

Third-person storytelling helps make the impossible possible by allowing me to explore the world through other characters. Revealing what they know, or come to know, by showing their stories, too.

Suspense can then exist in the differences. One character knows something another does not. What happens when one or both find out?

In my Spectral Detective series, the first novel, King in the Dark, part one: Duty Calls, the principal antagonist possesses a Nazi wunderwaffe. This wonder-weapon is portable, it’s an infra-red night-sight, and the Vampir ZG 1229 is a real breakthrough made late in the war. I chose to show the reader how the villain comes to have a version of this.

The Spectral Detective 

Free to Read Prequel!

Book 1. King in the Dark — Part One: Duty Calls

If I’d used a first-person or first-person adjacent perspective, for my lead character, Arthur Raphael King, sure, there would be a mystery around how a sniper can shoot in the dark.

Still, withholding that detail would create less genuine suspense—and less real dread—than front-loading Sergeant Doyle’s acquisition of the device.

The reader grasps the reality of 1945’s advanced tech right away, yet still experiences the thrill as King pieces it together.

In a story like Murder on the Orient Express, where everyone on the train is keeping a particular secret, the story's heart is this mystery. I feel this premise constrains what is possible. Sure, Christie could give away the twist on the first page, but then the story ceases to be about Hercule Poirot discovering it.

There’s a balance to be struck; what’s possible becomes what is best for the story, and my takeaway from Vonnegut’s rule 8 is “as possible” means as much information as I can deliver while keeping the story both exciting and engaging.