--QUIT--

ENID'S LAWS

1. Organization is Everything. If the story isn't organized, what have you got? A mess. To be organized, you have to make some big decisions from the get-go, such as: What's the POV? One character? Multi? Tell it in first person? Third? How about the tense? Tone? I've got a nice beginning but will it lead to an end? Getting stuck without an end is bad. Make sure an ending is possible, and "the world blows up" doesn't count. There are maybe 10 000 decisions in writing a novel. Accept that.

2. Fiction is about reversals. Just like high school or college wrestling (meaning real wrestling). It's much more fun to watch a back-and-forth match than a blowout.

3. Torment your protagonist. Or, flipping it the other way, don't fall in love with your characters. And the main one -- perhaps a hero, perhaps not -- needs to be tested.

4. Push everything as far as you can without contriving. Get everything you can from your ideas. Don't leave the gold mine only partly dug. But stop before you do anything that makes the reader feel your behind-the-scenes presence and think that terrible thought: That couldn't happen.

5. Always advance the story. Sometimes when you're writing you'll come up with a lovely little passage, a description of sagebrush at sunset, say, and a white dove gliding low. Does it move the story forward? No? Then out it goes. Shoot that dove!

6. Be original. On every page! In every paragraph! No boilerplate! Ever!

- Taken from Peter Abraham's Reality Check