I expect this applies to non-fiction too, especially the ones in bold (and as commented).
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.
LOL - unpolitically correct aside: we were taught in journalism school that your text should be like a bathrobe. Long enough to cover the facts, but short enough to make it interesting.
6. Be a sadist. Now 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.
(Even non-fiction needs to pivot on this!)
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.
(This would be my weakness. I can't please everyone! I have to choose to be on one side of the fence or the other)
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.
Vonnegut, Kurt Vonnegut, Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons 1999), 9-10.
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