Never use a long word when a short one will do. -- George Orwell
Never use the passive voice when you can use the active voice. -- Orwell
Know and understand your audience. -- Pierre Berton
Recycle and read the good stuff before you write. -- Berton
Honor the miraculousness of the ordinary. -- Andrew Morton
Good copy = draft -- 10% -- King
Look at every word in a sentence and decide if they are really needed. If not, kill them. Be ruthless. -- Bob Cooper
Remember: writing doesn't love you. It doesn't care. Nevertheless, it can behave with remarkable generosity. Speak well of it, encourage others, pass it on. -- Al Kennedy
Basically, the writer, or any artist/creator, must create a world the reader wants to enter.
Write to a quota. The key is to figure out what you can produce and commit to doing that week in and week out.
Write/talk to one person, a friendly acquaintence, perhaps. You know them, but not especially well.
ALWAYS ASK
How is this character feeling?
What are they thinking?
Why did they do or not do that?
What happens next?
STRUCTURE
Act I
Opening conflict
Protagonist shown in daily life, before the transformation
Pick one, preferably, but you can always combine them
THEME
The theme of a story is a lesson or message the story is trying to tell us. Some stories have only one theme or message. Other stories have many lessons or messages.
PREMISE
Come up with one, such as "He was an expert on widgets and took it upon himself to rid the world of faulty widgets!"
SETTING
Where the protagonist starts out -- your story can stay here or move to other places.
The setting is the WHEN and WHERE of a story.
CONFLICT
Contrary to what you would do in real life, CREATE PROBLEMS, LOTS OF THEM... with solutions.
CHARACTERS
The characters are who the story is about. A good character description includes:
What the character looks like.
How they act
How they change
And all characters have relationships.
The Protagonist
The main character of your story.
supporting, first tier
supporting, second tier
The Antagonist(s)
The person or thing that gets between the main character and his or her goal.
hostile minor characters who function in making complications for hero
MOTIVATIONS
Goal (An important object)
What does your main character want?
This object is very important to your main character and plays a crucial role in the story.
secondary character wants
tertiary character wants
BASIC PERSONALITIES
Make a protagonist (or at least their goal) likeable
To make a protagonist likeable, even one who's not a model citizen, give him an inner conflict such as should he be serving a greater good or satisfying his own self-interest. The sacrifice your protagonist makes to forego his or her own selfish desires and indeed serve the greater good is what makes him or her likeable.
PLOT
The plot is what happens in the story. Usually a character has a problem or conflict. The plot consists of the events that help the character solve or deal with a problem.
Introduce protagonist and setting
An important event. This will be a turning point in your story.
issues/problems
Point of tension, more conflict or problems
blind trails by which the hero is misled or confused
complicating circumstances
Effort to stop (or out-run, out-do, out-wit) antagonist
QUESTIONS YOUR READERS ARE ASKING
what happens next?
are all issues/conflicts (even the little ones) resolved?
CLIMAX/RESOLUTION (solution)
Seem to fail, then triumphant
Happy (or appropriate) outcome... but not before several twists and turns
And don't forget the "unspoken" things like the moral of the story
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