It's always wrong of course to say that you can't do this or you can't do that in fiction. You can do anything you can get away with, but nobody has ever gotten away with much.

Anyone who survives a southern childhood has enough material to last a lifetime.

Remember that you don't write a story because you have an idea but because you have a believable character.

You have to quit confusing a madness with a mission.

The truth is not distorted here, but rather a distortion is used to get at truth.

[To] know oneself is, above all, to know what one lacks. It is to measure oneself against Truth, and not the other way around. The first product of self-knowledge is humility . . .

In most good stories, it is the character's personality that creates the action of the story. If you start with real personality, a real character, then something is bound to happen.