When it came to giv­ing advice to writ­ers, Kurt Von­negut was nev­er dull. He once tried to warn peo­ple away from using semi­colons by char­ac­ter­iz­ing them as “trans­ves­tite her­maph­ro­dites rep­re­sent­ing absolute­ly noth­ing.” And, in a mas­ter’s the­sis reject­ed by The Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go, he made the tan­ta­liz­ing argu­ment that “sto­ries have shapes which can be … Con­tin­ue read­ing Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Tips on How to Write a Good Short Sto­ry