Tag: Snoopy

Writer’s Desk: Snoopy Kept Trying

On By chrisbarsantiIn Books, Comics-Graphic Novels, WritingLeave a comment

When we think of Snoopy and writing, we think of that determined beagle hammering away at his sentences, trying to figure out how to follow his opening line, “It was a dark and stormy night.”

Not an easy task.

But he also had to face rejection. One of the great Peanuts strips showed Snoopy writing a response to a publisher’s rejection letter.

I think there might have been a misunderstanding. What I really wanted was for you to publish my story, and send me fifty thousand dollars.

Is your story worth fifty thousand dollars? Maybe yes, maybe no. But acting like it is never hurt.

Writer’s Desk: Snoopy’s Rules

On By chrisbarsantiIn Books, WritingLeave a comment

In the 2002 collection, Snoopy’s Guide to the Writing Life, a stellar line-up of scribes from Ray Bradbury to William F. Buckley, Jr. responded to a Peanuts strip featuring Snoopy writing. 

One of the contributors was Charles M. Schulz’s son Barnaby Conrad, who provided these six rules for writing:

1. Try to pick the most intriguing place in your piece to begin.
2. Try to create attention-grabbing images of a setting if that’s where you want to begin.
3. Raise the reader’s curiosity about what is happening or is going to happen in an action scene.
4. Describe a character so compellingly that we want to learn more about what happens to him or her.
5. Present a situation so vital to our protagonist that we must read on.
6. And most important, no matter what method you choose, start with something happening! (And not with ruminations. A character sitting in a cave or in jail or in a kitchen or in a car ruminating about the meaning of life and how he got to this point does not constitute something happening.)

It was a dark and stormy night…

(h/t: Maria Popova)