Our instinct as human beings is to provide answers, to ease tension. As writers our job is the opposite, to create tension and not dispel it immediately.

In our not-yet-acknowledged secret garden lie the seeds of some of our best not-yet-written stories

Dialogue, contrary to popular view, is not a recording of actual speech; it is a semblance of speech, an invented language of exchanges that build in tempo or content toward climaxes.

Readers take in dialogue one thought at a time. A frequent mistake of beginners is to combine thoughts, which may be suitable for other forms of writing but not for dialogue. Another mistake is speechifying. Three sentences at a time is tops, yet many beginners write speeches that go on and on.

To create tension, dialogue needs to be stretched out. That is, characters should not be immediately responsive.

Readers, transformed by film and TV, are used to seeing stories. The reading experience . . . is increasingly visual.

The expert magician seeks to deceive the mind, rather than the eye.