Ideas either age like fine wine or rot like potatoes over time.

If you are writing fiction, think like a god. Release all the power of your imagination; create worlds and destroy them at your will, create as many miracles as your story needs.

The good writing ideas don’t have to be about political turmoil, mass killings, capitalism, racism, injustice, etc. Find that one idea that has deep roots in your heart.

It's always wrong of course to say that you can't do this or you can't do that in fiction. You can do anything you can get away with, but nobody has ever gotten away with much.

In any case, you can't have effective allegory in times when people are swept this way and that by momentary convictions, because everyone will read it differently. You can't indicate moral values when morality changes with what is being done, because there is no accepted basis of judgment. And you cannot show the operation of grace when grace is cut off from nature or when the very possibility of grace is denied, because no one will have the least idea of what you are about.

If certain aspect needs to be inconsistent, it must better be consistently inconsistent throughout the story.

As you become a better writer, the writing becomes more difficult. You toil harder to tell a story in a lesser number of words.

Now the second common characteristic of fiction follows from this, and it is that fiction is presented in such a way that the reader has the sense that it is unfolding around him. This doesn't mean he has to identify himself with the character or feel compassion for the character or anything like that. It just means that fiction has to be largely presented rather than reported. Another way to say it is that though fiction is a narrative art, it relies heavily on the element of drama.

Write in pictures. With your words, let the reader see not letters, but images. Be specific about every detail, but don't describe it--make it happen on the page, if you were writing fiction, or make it happen over again, if you were writing about history or some recent event.

I have an idea and a first line -- and that suggests the rest of it. I have little concept of what I’m going to say, or where it’s going. I have some idea of how long it’s going to be -- but not what will happen or what the themes will be. That’s the intrigue of doing it -- it’s a process of discovery. You get to discover what you’re going to say and what it’s going to mean.