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

Changers are characters who alter in significant ways as a result of the events of your story. They learn something or grow into better or worse people, but by the end of the story they are not the same personalities they were in the beginning. Their change, in its various stages, is called the story's emotional arc.

You must learn to be three people at once: writer, character, and reader.

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.

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

Fiction is about stuff that's screwed up.

Anything said in upper-crust British automatically sounded intelligent.