Technology is Darwinian. It spreads. It evolves. It adapts. The most dangerous wipes out the less fit.

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

There are two wrong reactions to a rejection slip: deciding it's a final judgment on your story and/or talent, and deciding it's no judgment on your story and/or talent.

Conflict is the place where character and plot intersect.

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.

Anything said in upper-crust British automatically sounded intelligent.

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