Decalogue of the perfect storyteller, by Horacio Quiroga

Horacio Quiroga, was a Uruguayan playwright and poet whose real name was Horacio Silvestre Quiroga Forteza. He was born in 1878 and died in 1937, for suicide. Upon learning that he suffered from prostate cancer, he took a glass of cyanide in the same hospital where he was being admitted.

In addition to leaving us numerous good literary works, which we will summarize below, he also left us his famous «Decalogue of the perfect storyteller». Two days ago, I shared my own decalogue of the good writer; Today I also offer you the decalogue of this great writer who unfortunately left us very soon. I hope you enjoy!

Literary works of Horacio Quiroga

• "Travel diary to Paris."
• "The coral reefs".
• "The crime of the other."
• "The persecuted."
• "Story of a murky love."
• "Tales of love, madness and death".
• "Tales of the jungle".
• "The wild".
• "The sacrificed ones."
• "Anaconda".
• "The desert".
• The exiles.
• "Past love."
• "Homeland".
• "Beyond".

To be a good storyteller ... (By Horacio Quiroga)

1. Believe in a teacher — Poe, Maupassant, Kipling, Chekhov — as in God himself.
2. He thinks your art is an inaccessible top. Don't dream of taming her. When you can do it, you will get it without knowing it yourself.
3. Resist imitation as much as you can, but imitate if the influence is too strong. More than anything else, personality development takes long patience.
4. Have blind faith not in your capacity for success, but in the ardor with which you desire it. Love your art as your girlfriend, giving her all your heart.
5. Do not start writing without knowing from the first word where you are going. In a successful story, the first three lines are almost as important as the last three.
6. If you want to express exactly this circumstance: «From the river the cold wind blew», there are no other words in human language than those indicated to express it. Once you are the owner of your words, don't worry about observing if they are consonant or assonant.
7. Don't adjectives unnecessarily. Useless will be how many colored tails you attach to a weak noun. If you find the one that is accurate, he will only have an incomparable color. But it has to be found.
8. Take your characters by the hand and lead them firmly to the end, seeing nothing other than the path that you traced for them. Don't get distracted by seeing what they can or don't care to see. Don't abuse the reader. A tale is a novel refined of cuttings. Take this for an absolute truth, even if it is not.
9. Do not write under the rule of emotion. Let her die, and avoid her later. If you are then able to relive it as it was, you have reached the halfway point in art.
10. Don't think about your friends when writing, or the impression your story will make. Count as if your story had no interest except for the small environment of your characters, of which you could have been one. Not otherwise you get the life of the story.