“Don’t think of the opponent as someone the hero hates. He may be, or he may not be. The opponent is simply the person on the other side. He can be a nicer person than the hero, more moral, or even the hero’s lover or friend.”
“Don’t censor or judge yourself. Don’t ever tell yourself that any idea you come up with is stupid. “Stupid” ideas often lead to creative breakthroughs.”
“Always tell a story about your best character. ‘Best’ doesn’t mean ‘nicest’. It means the most fascinating, challenging and complex, even if that character isn’t particularly likeable.”
“Each time you compare a character to your hero, you force yourself to distinguish the hero in new ways. You also start to see the secondary characters as complete human beings, as complex and as valuable as your hero.”
“The moral argument is most powerful when it is most dramatic. This means holding off the hero’s moral self-revelation until as close to the end of the story as possible.”
“When you let structure do the heavy lifting to make the moral case, you free up the dialogue to do what it does best, which is provide subtlety and emotional force.”
“Because plot involves the intimate weaving of characters and actions over the course of the entire story, it is inherently complex. It must be extremely detailed yet hang together as a whole. Often the failure of a single plot event can bring the entire story down.”
