What works for one writer may not work for another. One writer may be able to break rules that another cannot.

Pick one character or action and explain its importance to yourself. Ask yourself over and over again those important writer questions.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. But it’s also a lot like copying.

I don’t like to include physical descriptions of my characters in my writing. I’m often accused of this fault.

On a Thursday night, I listened to a poet read his newest stuff.

Readers need mental “take a breath” moments in a fight scene. Like swimmers holding their breath, eventually they need to come up for air.

Self-awareness is an end result. A new self-revelation is a great denouement. But until the character has struggled to learn, hold off.

Take the time to learn the skills, to learn the craft, to develop your talent. People will be reading books forever. You have time. Take it.

Our brains use inductive logic; thus, pairing two specific actions together gives the readers all they need to understand.

In order to SHOW your character’s emotions, you need to know WHY the character feels that way. This is not as simple as it sounds.

Narrative will not deliver a feeling alone. Instead, zoom in. Give the image of an action that creates the feeling. Here's how.

As you improve, focus more on the nuances of what you know and not the novelty of something new. I call this learning to “write small.”

To write dialogue, invert the reading process. Don’t use dialogue to deliver information. Use it to imply emotions and psychology.

Invert your craft. Start with the deeper psychology, and then write what they'd say because of the feeling, not to explain that feeling.

Think about how dialogue affects many other elements of writing all at the same time. Below are my Top Five Dialogue Techniques.

I gave myself full permission to stop writing. I wasn’t going to write any more that night and I wasn’t going to write any more the next day

That’s why, to me, the worst Jeffery Eugenides book will always be remarkably better than the best Dan Brown book.

There are less-discussed and less-understood Time factors, such as the past perfect verb tense or the order of phrases and clauses.

When you use a verb tense without fully understanding it, you’re essentially sticking your reader into the Delorean and stepping on the gas.

Many writers add more words in an effort to explain or justify. The more effective solution is to go back to fix. More is not always better.

The most misused and dangerous use of Flashback is – what I have come to call – the Immediate Flashback or interrupting backstory.

Character's unique abilities put them in strange places, but if you include too many details about abilities, you bore the reader.

The ratio is simple: the amount of words used to show the action is inversely proportional to the time that action requires.

Don’t be fooled – characters will not suddenly become real people, capable of reaching out from your computer to type their own story.