Tips for beginning writers
- If you don't have a main character who is desperately pursuing something -- a thwarted love, an ideal of himself, a pile of money -- you don't have anything.
- Get the story going from the first sentence.
- Write in the morning before breakfast.
- Being a successful writer is less about talent than it is about sticking with it long after others have quit.
- Be generous to your readers.
- Understand the difference between commercial and artistic success and accept that one doesn't guarantee the other.
- Read absolutely everything. You should spend at least as much time reading as you do writing.
- Never say in 10 pages what can be said with a single interesting sentence.
- Remember that every villain has a mother somewhere who loves him.
- Suspense is almost always better than surprise.
- Get a job that has nothing to do with writing.
- If chapter 2 feels like it's not working, chances are the problem isn't with chapter 2, it's with the mistake you made in chapter 1.