- Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
- Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
- Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
- Every sentence must do one of two things--reveal character or advance the action.
- Start as close to the end as possible.
- Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them--in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
- Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
- Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
"Here's a novel idea to save the planet: Remove the main cause of its woes - homo sapiens. The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT - pronounced "vehement") proposes the phasing out the human race. "When every human chooses to stop breeding, Earth's biosphere will be allowed to return to its former glory, and all remaining creatures will be free to live, die, and evolve (if they believe in evolution)," offers the movement's website. But 'it's going to take all of us going'." See www.vhemt.org SOURCE: Email invite. I thought I was the only one who thought like this. Everyone I know thanks the universe that I didn't study microbiology. I would have developed a human-specific killer virus. WE are the vermin.
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Red_Juliet