Some very cool stuff.

"I read a book once," he said after a pause. "Can't remember the name of it, but that's because I put it down after eighty pages. It was written well enough, I suppose, but the lead character was someone so unlikable that I realized that if I met him at a party, I'd make my excuses after five minutes and find another room to be in.

"So I thought, 'All my characters should be people I'd want to talk to at parties.' That's my - well, I'm just formulating it right now, but it's my Party Theory. Why would I like this person enough to spend time with them at a party I'm having a good time at? What about them would make me want to stand next to them and chat?

"If you don't know what it is, you should find it."

I can think of some classic examples of each of these -- but, yeah, by and large, they all seem like good rules.

(Ponders those which he has broken himself ...)

Via Doyce, a recommendation to excise little verbal plays that sound like you're setting up a joke --

Periodically, I talk about "clams," overused jokes that should be excised from your writing. I'm talking about (singsong) "Awkward!" and its sweaty companions "That went well" and "I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you," and so forth.

There's a related phenomenon that has bugged me for a long time, but that I haven't commented on before. These aren't overused jokes, exactly, but overused timing devices that get built into jokes. Look at this line, which might well occur in a sitcom spec script:

She was, how shall I put this, a well-rounded applicant.

Believe it or not, the thing that bugs me here isn't the punishing use of "well-rounded." I'm numb to that. What bothers me is the "how shall I put this." That little phrase is there to time the joke, to delay the punch so it lands harder. It drumrolls the joke instead of throwing it away. Since this little phrase is never used (at least never in comedy scripts) by a character genuinely searching for the right word without a comedic payoff, it always feels like a self-conscious request for a laugh. No! Don't beg!

Lester Dent's outline for a successful pulp action tale.  Since he was the guy behind Doc Savage and the Avenger, he knows whereof he spoke.

FIRST 1500 WORDS

1. First line, or as near thereto as possible, introduce the hero and swat him with a fistful of trouble. Hint at a mystery, a menace or a problem to be solved--something the hero has to cope with.
2. The hero pitches in to cope with his fistful of trouble. (He tries to fathom the mystery, defeat the menace, or solve the problem.)
3. Introduce ALL the other characters as soon as possible. Bring them on in action.
4. Hero's endevours land him in an actual physical conflict near the end of the first 1500 words.
5. Near the end of first 1500 words, there is a complete surprise twist in the plot development.

SO FAR: Does it have SUSPENSE? Is there a MENACE to the hero? Does everything happen logically?

Not that I recommend being completely formulaic -- but like all rules, it's best to know how to use them so that you understand why you're violating them.

It also occurs to me that a lot of this would be easily adaptable to a pulp RPG like Spirit of the Century.

"If you are writing without zest, without gusto, without love, without fun, you are only half a writer."

Ray Bradbury (b. 1920) American writer, futurist
Zen and the Art of Writing (1990)

I need to cultivate more gusto. 

(via WIST)

Writing tips on screenplays (but applicable, I think, in regular prose) from Billy Wilder (from Conversations with Wilder by Cameron Crowe):

1. The audience is fickle.
2. Grab ‘em by the throat and never let ‘em go.
3. Develop a clean line of action for your leading character.
4. Know where you’re going.
5. The more subtle and elegant you are in hiding your plot points, the better you are as a writer.
6. If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.
7. A tip from Lubitsch: Let the audience add up two plus two. They’ll love you forever.
8. In doing voice-overs, be careful not to describe what the audience already sees. Add to what they’re seeing.
9. The event that occurs at the second act curtain triggers the end of the movie.
10. The third act must build, build, build in tempo and action until the last event, and then — that’s it. Don’t hang around.

De mentions how City of Heroes/Villains provided some insight into how fight scenes can go when everything is not perfectly orchestrated.  Which is brilliant, since everyone who's played a MMORPG knows how things rarely go as scripted or planned, and how that can result in defeat (or near-defeat) with much more excitement and interest (and frustration and angst) than something that goes just how its choreographed in advance.

So, instead of the suggestion that "If things go slow, have someone walk in with a gun," it's perfectly acceptable to say, "If things are going well, someone gets cocky and runs into danger" or "someone wanders off for a bio break" or similar hilarity.

Steven Brust talks about some of his formative authors -- and how their changes inform something about his own writing. (Emphasis mine.)

One of the most important and significant events that shaped who I am as a writer came in, I think, 1984, when Will Shetterly and Emma Bull loaned me a copy of Looking for Rachel Wallace by Robert B. Parker.

I still read Parker's novels now and then, as I come across them, because he still uses words in a way that pleases me.  And yet, really, he's lost it.  He's turned into self-parody.  MacDonald, in my opinion, never did that--his later works are as engaging as, if not more-so than, his earlier ones.

I've been comparing them in my mind.  I think it is this: In early Parker, one had the feeling that the author was exploring complex issues of maturity, love, responsibility, duty; exploring issues about which he had not made up his mind.  In his more recent books, the reader cannot help but feel that Parker believes he knows all the answers.  MacDonald, by contrast, even when Travis McGee is ranting to the reader about what is wrong with people, and why Florida is screwed up, &c. &c., always seems to be digging away, trying to find answers that are vital to him (the author), but that he doesn't yet have.

It is far more engaging to go for a ride with an author who is exploring than it is to sit back and have the answers handed to you, whether you agree with them or not.

From the standpoint of the writer, then, it is the reverse path to the same result.  If I use my book to try to answer a question to which I don't know the answer, that will help keep me honest.  I might know what I'm exploring before I start the book, or I might discover it partway through the first draft (which usually involves a significant rewrite).  It doesn't matter.

I agree one hundred percent on Parker -- and I say that as, as well, someone who still reads him.  The first dozen or so Spenser books are excellent because Spenser (or Parker) didn't know the answers to the meta-questions he always raised.  Now that he does, they're simply a casual reacquaintance with an old friend, pleasant but not compelling.

Alan Moore discusses the difference (back in 1995).

The idea is what the story is about; not the plot of the story, or the unfolding of events within that story, but what the story is essentially about. As an example from my own work (not because it’s a particularly good example but because I can speak with more authority about it than I can about the work of other people) I would cite issue #40 of Swamp Thing, “The Curse.” This story was about the difficulties endured by women in masculine societies, using the common taboo of menstruation as the central motif. This was not the plot of the story – the plot concerned a young married woman moving into a new home built upon the site of an old Indian lodge and finding herself possessed by the dominating spirit that still resided there, turning her into a form of werewolf. I hope the distinction here is clear between idea and plot, because it’s an important one and one ignored by too many writers. Most comic book stories have plots in which the sole concern is the struggle between two or more antagonists. The resolution of the struggle, usually involving some deus ex machina display of a superpower, is the resolution of the plot as well. Beyond the most vague and pointless banality like “Good will always triumph over evil” there is no real central idea in the majority of comics, other than the iea of conflict as interesting in itself.

I'm not actually much of a Kurt Vonnegut fan (nil nisi bonum), but a lot of people are.  Some "rules" he gave for short stories:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things -- reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck 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.