When you do enough research, the story almost writes itself. Lines of development spring loose and you'll have choices galore.

To get the truth, you want to get your own heart to pound while you write.

No civilization, including Plato's, has ever been destroyed because its citizens learned too much.

Do research. Feed your talent. Research not only wins the war on cliche, it's the key to victory over fear and it's cousin, depression.

Angry contradiction of the patriarch is not creativity; it's delinquency calling for attention. Difference for the sake of difference is as empty an achievement as slavishly following the commercial imperative.

A culture cannot evolve without honest, powerful storytelling. When a society repeatedly experiences glossy, hollowed-out, pseudo-stories, it degenerates. We need true satires and tragedies, dramas and comedies that shine a clean light into the dingy corners of the human psyche and society.

Stories are the currency of human relationships.