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.