Teach me how to Vonnie

So, as we know, Vonnie has his eight writing rules. I agree with some, and I disagree with some. If I were writing a novel and someone wanted to "teach me how to Vonnie" and they reccommended that I use Vonnie's rules of writing, I would follow most of them. In this post, I will also speak of some authors who do and don't know how to Vonnie. I dislike Vonnie's writing style, but his rules do offer some good ideas.

Note: For those who don't know, "Teach me how to Vonnie" is a play on a song and dance move called "Teach me how to Douggie". When I say for example, "Steinbeck knows how to Vonnie", I mean that Steinbeck knew how to follow Vonnie's rule.

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
I'll give Vonnie this one. I absolutely DETEST boring books where nothing happens. Thomas Hardy, the writer of Mayor of Casterbridge, and William Shakespeare, the writer of a whole slew of awful works, are notable wasters of my time. I wanna write a story where stuff HAPPENS, and where much of that stuff is INTERESTING or entertaining, where I don't spend pages and pages describing the most insignificant things like Hardy does, or where I don't spend pages and pages detailing things like moronic characters prancing around in the bush naked like Shakespeare does. We're all entitled to our own likes and dislikes, even when it comes to stories. Mayor of Casterbridge, Much Ado about Nothing, and Midsummer Night Dream all had awful and slow storylines. I want to create something with a heck of a lot more cowbell. And I definitely respect that books have to have slower or boring parts, but when the WHOLE book is slow and boring, that's not cool. If Vonnie were here today, I betcha he would agree with me. In Slaughterhouse-5, HE knew how to make stuff happen!
Rule #1: APPROVED
Authors who know how to Vonnie: Steinbeck, Lee, Huxley, Vonnie
Authors who don't know how to Vonnie: Shakespeare, Hardy, Orwell, Chandler

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World, could have definitely benefited from this rule, because all of his characters sucked in my opinion. It's always nice to have a relatable character that you can feel for and that you can hope for. If I were to write a novel or a short story, I would definitely use some of these root-able characters. As a reader, I have encountered characters who go through similar experiences that I do and who have similar ideas as I do. I also can appreciate and follow this rule because characters are the only reason why I read books; I didn't know books could have themes or ideas until the very end of grade 9, and even so, I can never see them, understand them, or agree with them, and I read too slowly and infrequently to understand any plots, so I GOTTA make some fun characters that deserve to be rooted for! As for Vonnie, I guess Billy was a root-able character for the times in the book where he looked just so pathetic, like his funny boots and his ripped coat and his 'muff'.
Rule #2: APPROVED
Authors who know how to Vonnie: Orwell, Steinbeck, Lee, Vonnie
Authors who don't know how to Vonnie: Huxley, Hardy, Chandler

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
Every character SHOULD want something. Nuff said, amigos. It makes dem characters more real if they want something.
Rule #3: APPROVED
Authors who know how to Vonnie: Huxley, Steinbeck, Shakespeare
Authors who don't know how to Vonnie: Lee, Chandler, Hardy

4. Every sentence must do one of two things -- reveal character or advance the action.
Nope, nope, and nope. I'm not jiggy with this one. What about setting and other little sentences to make the book more realistic? Vonnie himself breaks this rule nicely in Slaughterhouse-5. I clearly remember a few sentences at the end of a paragraph about a bottle of pop on the windowsill, and he spend two or three sentences describing it. Not champagne who was dead (so it goes) but a bottle of pop who did nothing for character or action. It was a nice homey setting sentence. In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley must have thought like I did here. Huxley didn't know how to Vonnie. There are other ways to make a fun story and show your style than just making every single thing totally related to character and action. Example, I would argue that Vonnie's catchy little "So it goes" does not forward either action or character.
Rule#4: DENIED
Authors who know how to Vonnie: Steinbeck, Chandler, Lee
Authors who don't know how to Vonnie: Huxley, Vonnie, Hardy, Vonnie

5. Start as close to the end as possible.
Naw. I always like to know lots of character backstory, and I always like to watch plot(s) unfold slowly and carefully. I like plots and characters that make you wonder, and I think you need a nice long story to do this. (By long, I mean it has enough meat and potatoes in it, and is lengthy enough to enjoy carefully placed twists, deviations, etc). This is a difficult idea for me to explain, my apologies. As for good ol' Vonnie, he started so close to the end that he actually started AT the end itself! It's good to see he knows how to Vonnie and he knows how to follow his own rule.
RULE #5: DENIED
Authors who know how to Vonnie: Steinbeck, Vonnie
Authors who don't know how to Vonnie: Lee, Huxley, Orwell, Hardy

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.
I like this one, I really do. As a kinda-writer, it's definitely fun to do terrible things to characters, especially those you don't like. Sadism makes the characters come alive; doing terrible things to them allows them to change, and characters who change are potentially the funnest characters! Huxley was outright abusive to his characters, like John's sticky predicament, Bernard's unpopularity and birth defects, the DHC's secret exposed, Lenina getting turned down violently by John, Linda living on the Reserve...the list goes on and on. Orwell was quite a sadist too, with all the torture Winston endured at the end of the book, and all the health problems and stupid rules Winston had to put up with. Steinbeck made George make a very difficult decision...actually, one could say George had an extremely difficult life in general. And look at Lenny, being mentally challenged and always getting into all sorts of trouble! Now Vonnie? His scenes with crazy Lazarro were DEFINITELY showing his usage of this rule. Also, Billy has had his fair share of hard luck too, with being in a long, bloody, dirty war, and being in a plane crash, and all the time spent in the hospitals, and his conversations with Lazarro and the Professor...that poor guy.
Rule #6: APPROVED
Authors who know how to Vonnie: Huxley, Orwell, Steinbeck, Hardy, Vonnie
Authors who don't know how to Vonnie: Lee

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.
My probably incorrect interpretation of this rule is that an author should know that the whole world isn't going to love their book, and many will hate it and scrutinize it and maybe even try to ban it. It is difficult to judge authors' following of this rule, but my knowledge of some of the authors we study have given me a decent understanding of who knows how to Vonnie for this one. My thoughts? I totally agree. If I were to write a book, I know it would be only for my own amusement, to put a creative spin on my thoughts, fears, ideas, hopes, experiences, and dreams. The one person I would aim to please would be Jay Pencaps. If some other bizarre soul would happen to like my book, then hey, bonus!
RULE #7: APPROVED
Authors who know how to Vonnie: Lee, Huxley, Vonnie
Authors who don't know how to Vonnie: ???

8a. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. 
As a SUPER literal/linear thinking reader, I NEED as much info as possible ASAP. I sometimes get lost when authors do this...but I usually get hopelessly lost when they don't. Steinbeck knows how to Vonnie here; in Mice and Men, he really told it like it was. Huxley actually knows how to Vonnie with this rule too, because he spent the first few chapters telling his story in such a way that taught the reader all about the world that the characters are living in. Orwell didn't know how to Vonnie with this rule, especially during the middle/end of the novel. I had no idea what was going on at almost any given time. Shakespeare's a big offender of this rule too. The language he uses is just beyond repulsive, and even aside from the stuffy language, I also have absolutely no idea what's going on at any given time, even when normal-talking people explain things to me. Hardy didn't follow this rule either. I didn't know that books could get sooooo boring, drawn out (and bad in general) until I read Mayor of Casterbridge. Chandler's another big offender, but I'll cut him some slack because The Big Sleep was a mystery novel. Now let's talk about Vonnie. I think he gave his reader TOO much information too soon. Like, starting with the end of the book and all that :(. He follows the rule, but not well.
RULE #8A: APPROVED
Authors who know how to Vonnie: Steinbeck, Huxley, Vonnie
Authors who don't know how to Vonnie: Orwell, Shakespeare, Chandler, Hardy

8b. To heck with suspense.
Nooooooo! I got a fevah, and the only prescription is more suspense! It's fun when books leave you waiting and wondering, it forces you to keep reading past your bedtime :P! Books with suspense make your heart beat faster when you read them because they're so interesting. Books without that suspense like Slaughterhouse-5, Mayor of Casterbridge, Midsummer Night Dream, and Much Ado About Nothing, and books with poorly executed suspense like Big Sleep and Brave New World didn't give me that quickened heartrate, they didn't make me wanna keep reading. When books are 100% predictable, they get boring. Why bother reading a book if you always know exactly what's going to happen next? Vonnie clearly doesn't believe in suspense, as demonstrated with his reference to Edgar Derby's death about a hundred times in the book, even at the very beginning.
RULE #8B: DENIED
Authors who know how to Vonnie: Chandler, Hardy, Shakespeare, Huxley, Vonnie
Authors who don't know how to Vonnie: Orwell, Steinbeck, Lee

8c. 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.
This is a toughie. I like suspense and unpredictability, but when it comes down to those crucial last few pages and the action is over, I can maybe do without those last few pages. And as soon as I typed that out, red sirens went off in my mind as I immediately thought of Huxley and Orwell. If you even removed the last paragraph of either 1984 or Brave New World, you'd be screwed. The last few pages of Slaughterhouse-5 were nothing new. Vonnie, I believe, followed this rule well because his story kinda never terminates. If you took the last few pages out of that infernal Mayor of Casterbridge, you'd be okay. And Shakespeare? Heh, the characters just all get married at the end anyways, anyone couldda told you that! The end of Mockingbird comes to mind for this one, ahh, the ending is just sooo cute, but I think one could do without it if talking about the overall story.
RULE #8C: APPROVED
Authors who know how to Vonnie: Hardy, Shakespeare, Lee, Vonnie
Authors who don't know how to Vonnie: Orwell, Huxley

The Concentrated Flavors of Jay Pencaps

Genre
If I were to write a novel, it would definitely be science-fiction. I don't read often, but when I do, it's usually science-fiction. First of all, it is a very tolerable genre in my opinion. I've never seen a single one of those annoying little 'symbols' or 'themes' in science-fiction. If they are actually there, they play very nicely and stay hidden from me and possibly other very literal people. So if I wrote a sci-fi, I wouldn't have to bend over backwards thinking about 'symbolism' or 'theme' :D. (And if anyone dares to think that my novel would suck without this, I wouldn't write it for popularity or fame and fortune, I would write it for my own amusement.)

Also with sci-fi, I can create my own world. Design EVERYTHING from the weather patterns to the level of technological advancement to the government system to the culture to the social norms to the native species. And I can do it all by Jay-self, it's all up to ME!

Characters
My novel would contain all kinds of different characters. Each would have a concentrated element of Jay Pencaps. For example, I can think of an antagonist I've used in another story who I can bring over to this story. She's very disrespectful, apathetic, does WHATEVER she wants no matter the cost, and some people mistakenly figure she's a psychopath. She always feels the need to do the opposite of what is she is told to do, and trusts nobody's logic but her own. Now I certainly hope nobody will EVER perceive me as this kind of person, but this is actually a very concentrated flavor of Jay Pencaps. That is what I feel like on rare occasions, and in writing about it, I get to see how it would work. Like Vonnie said, I have to be a sadist and do terrible things to characters...characters like this one I am describing can really help out with the sadism. An example of this character in action is when she tells of a childhood experience, a school trip to the municipal Leadership Palace. She’s tired, so she sits down to rest on the floor. A security guard firmly tells her that she is not allowed to sit on the floor in the Leadership Palace, then tells her to remove her hat to “respect the space”. In a W-I-L-D and defiant blast of swearing, she tells the guard how she will not even entertain the notion. Of course, she is ejected and actually gets jailed for a brief period of time.

Another example of a character I have used before is a guy who's a huge fan of progressive music that I have called 'rough music'. He lives as an exile from his home continent in a small village on a neighboring continent with his two drug-addicted friends, but he doesn't do drugs himself. He definitely embodies a concentrated flavor of Jay Pencaps. I LOVE old progressive rock like Rush, Pink Floyd, E.L.P. and so on, and I also feel like a freak sometimes because I stay away from all drugs and alcohol.

And another character I've liked that I would use is a chick that’s head of a very unfair factory. She experiences a messy emotional breakdown after a stranger does something nice for her. This dynamic character eventually goes on to resign from her position. She embodies a concentrated flavor of Jay Pencaps because, just like myself, she has unfortunately become so used to people being so stupid and mean.

So enough about my characters, I could speak volumes about all the characters I could use. Once again, all concentrated flavors of moi.

Ideas
If I could go on a radio show today, I would put a death grip on that mic and scream at the top of my lungs "I LOVE LIFE! I HATE SHAKESPEARE! I HATE POLITICS! WOMEN are equal to MEN, GAY are equal to STRAIGHT, OLD are equal to YOUNG! I HATE POLITICS! PEOPLE ARE MEAN AND STUPID! AND I HATE POLITICS!" with a nice assortment of colorful swear words and other ideas that I choose not to mention in this blog post. But instead, I'll just write a novel and stick these messages in it :).

(Note: the following has absolutely no connection to Brave New World, it's an idea of my own I generated last summer.) The society in my world isn't totally lawless, there are some loose municipal 'Leaderships' who deal with taxes, major crimes, and stuff, but the world is lacking a government. In fact, the word 'government' is extremely offensive, and a popular inappropriate insult is to call someone a 'politician'. Even this idea is a concentrated flavor of Jay's mind. I hate politics.

My novel would be written from the perspectives of a few different characters, possibly including some non-heterosexual people, some women, some old people, some children, some folks of minority races...Though I don't belong to any of those demographic groups, I feel that on earth, all those demographic groups get discriminated against at times and it would be fun to write about their perspectives in a world where discrimination against them isn't so much of a problem.

What the Public Should Learn

Something the public could learn about my novel is how meaningful a random act of kindness can be. I know it sounds cheesy, but teaching the public is not a great goal of the novel I’d write, ok? Maybe something else the public can learn is how fun it can be to tinker with a world where there is no strong government systems. Maybe something else I can put out for the public is trying to erase those stupid functionless rules such as ‘no hats in school’ and ‘put your knife and fork at 3 o’clock on your plate when you’re done’ and ‘don’t walk on the grass’ and such.

Most of all, the public can learn about my interesting life’s experiences, because like Vonnie’s book, most of my novel will be true…more or less :P.

If you get offended...PUT THE GOSH-DARNED BOOK DOWN!!!

Can you write an awesome book without swearing or sexual content? I sure think so.

Though bad words and taboo thingies like sex and drugs can add to a story in my opinion, I'm fine without them, as are many other folks in Canada and Amurica. Some books like SH5 have been banned because of swearing and sex. I don't think that any book should be banned for any reason. If you happen to get offended by it, then DON'T READ IT. And don't try to get it banned...what's that gonna do, besides deny people a unique reading experience? It's not like anyone hasn't sworn or talked about sex before, why is it so different when you see it in print?

Regarding Vonnie's seemingly anti-Amurican-ness...I don't really have an opinion on that. He had freedom of speech, eh? Like I said, if someone gets 0ffended...put the gosh-darned book down!!!

I am the eggman, they are the eggmen. I am the Pilgrim, Kookoo-Kachoo!

I've done it, I've come up with something to compare this book to: I am the Walrus, very old and famous song by the Beatles. Each verse is just a tangle of very far-fetched and weird ideas. For example,

"Semolina Pilchard, climbing up the eiffel tower. Elementary penguins, singing Hare Krishna. Man, you shouldda seen them kicking Edgar Allen Poe. I am the eggman, they are the eggman. I am the walrus!"

Billy is in bed with his wife for a page or two, then he's in a garden with giraffes, then he's back in the war for about a paragraph, then he's getting sniped in Chicago before going to some alien world to impregnate Montana Wildhack.

At first, this non-linear story really confused and annoyed me. Now that all the broken-up little sub-stories are concluding and tying together, I'm starting to enjoy and understand this story more!

Huh!? Vonnie's got some nuggets o' wisdom, you say?

I'm not gonna lie, a lot of those quotes were pretty over my head, and few of them just seem like him putting some big words together to try and make himself sound smart. But maybe that's just me not being as deep of a thinker as the rest of the wonderful, creative, and intelligent folks in the class.

ANYWAYS...one of the quotes that I do understand is the first one. "Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae." A little connection I could make to the book would be an angry Roland Weary picking on an ill-equipped, semi-clueless, cold and tired Billy Pilgrim. Weary was all at someone who didn't do anything wrong to him. He is mad about some terrible things going on in his life and he needs a handy little target to take his anger out on.

I've had times in my life where I put on my armor and attacked a few defenseless hot fudge sundaes. The names of a few notable sundaes I've attacked are The Mayor of Casterbridge, Much Ado About Nothing, and A Midsummer Night's Dream. I've realized over the last year that attacking books doesn't do me or anybody else much good. It might feel so good and fun to vent about how far over my head those books are and how messed up their plots (or lack of plots) are and how weird and obscure the symbolism and themes and ideas is in those books are, but pleasure and anger release seems to be the only benefit. And that seems to be the only benefit for Roland attacking Billy. And that seems to be the only benefit for a dude in armor beating on a stupid little sundae!

This book be gettin' pretty darn trippy

I'm halfway through chapter 6 in SH5, and this book is getting pretty trippy. All this business regarding time travel and aliens and war and giraffe-gardens and morphine nights is kinda messing with my brain. Vonnie jumps all around to different weird scenes, and only spends a paragraph or two on each scene. Not only is it hard to follow, but its hard to remember and understand the little details when I'm getting bombarded with all kinds of information that is unrelated to the paragraphs that precede and follow! It reminds me of like, when someone hasn't cleaned their room in a long time. There's stuff over here, junk over there...

I started off strongly disliking this non-linear trippiness but I'm warming up to it.
I wonder if Vonnie was into drugs? Yes, the brain is not meant to be perfectly organised, but I wonder if he got some of that disorganised creativity from drug use? Huxley was all into LSD, maybe Vonnie was too?

Sorry Vonnie, I'm just not jiggy with your sense of humor dude!

I've heard so much about how dear Mr. Vonnegut is apparently so 'hilarious' and how he apparently has a very entertaining dark sense of humor. I just don't find him funny. My first issue with Vonnie's weird sense of humor is that I personally haven't noticed anything in this book so far that is funny. I can't begin to tell what's supposed to be a joke, not even when I searched the novel in class. I don't dig jokes that I have to think about, and I REALLY don't dig jokes that I can't even recognize as being jokes. My classmates have brought up various funny parts of Vonnie's writing, but I still can't recognize them as being funny until someone tells me blatantly that it's supposed to be funny. It's hard to like something you can't understand.
My second issue with his humor is that so many people like it. I tend to disagree with the majority on just about every topic there is to be debated in English class. It's just a weird quirk of mine. Most of my classmates like Shakespeare, therefore its no surprise that I strongly dislike him. Most of my friends like poetry, therefore its no surprise that I generally dislike it. When I'm surrounded by folks who enjoy Vonnie's sense of humor, it's just not my nature to conform so readily and start liking it just because my buddies say it's funny.

Everyone is entitled to their own likes and dislikes. I like failblog (when people don't get hurt), and I like certain comedians (when they're not racist, sexist, overly perverted, etc..), and I like to laugh with friends and coworkers and family members. I like jokes that aren't unkind to others, as well as jokes that I could easily say 'ba-dum, pshhhhhhhh!' to. Vonnie's humor just doesn't fit into my idea of what is funny.

(I love this blog assignment. I can so totally get away without a boring and redundant concluding paragraph =D.)