All good plots come from well-orchestrated characters pitted against one another in a conflict of wills.

It is possible to combine a story line and plot line in the same work. Usually the storylines comes first, serving as a background to the plot line, but not always.

To set a forest on fire, you light a match. To set a character on fire, you put him in conflict.

You will never work through writer's block if you walk away from your typewriter. That will only make it easier to walk away the next time.

Novel writing is like heroin addiction; it takes everything you've got.

It has been said that Ernest Hemingway would rewrite scenes until they pleased him, often thirty or forty times. Hemingway, critics claimed, was a genius. Was it his genius that drove him to work hard, or was it hard work that resulted in works of genius?

All good plots come from well-orchestrated characters pitted against one another in a conflict of wills.