You think intelligence and grit can succeed by themselves, but I'm telling you that's a pretty illusion.

Every paragraph should accomplish two goals: advance the story, and develop your characters as complex human beings.

In commercial fiction especially, everything in the story usually contributes directly to the plot The shorter the story, the truer this is

What characters do must grow out of who they are, and who they are is, in turn, influenced by what you make happen to them.

You think intelligence and grit can succeed by themselves, but I'm telling you that's a pretty illusion.

Characterization is not divorced from plot, not a coat of paint you slap on after the structure of events is already built. Rather characterization is inseparable from plot.

Religious reverence for one's own job, even if the job is worth doing, is a sexual turnoff.