Conflict is the place where character and plot intersect.

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

Fiction is about stuff that's screwed up.

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.

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

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

Conflict is the place where character and plot intersect.