Dare to tell the smallest of stories if you want to generate large emotions.

I almost always urge people to write in the first person. ... Writing is an act of ego and you might as well admit it.

Dare to tell the smallest of stories if you want to generate large emotions.

All your clear and pleasing sentences will fall apart if you don't keep remembering that writing is linear and sequential, that logic is the glue that holds it together, that tension must be maintained from one sentence to the next and from one paragraph to the next and from one section to the next, and that narrative - good old-fashioned storytelling - is what should pull your readers along without their noticing the tug.

A simple [writing] style is the result of very hard work.

Tips can make someone a better writer but not necessarily a good writer. That's a larger package - a matter of character. Golfing is more than keeping the left arm straight. Every good golfer is a complex engine that runs on ability, ego, determination, discipline, patience, confidence, and other qualities that are self-taught. So it is with writers and all creative artists. If their values are solid their work is likely to be solid.

Writers must constantly ask: what I am trying to say? Surprisingly often, they don't know.