Someone who does character studies, plot steps, and allows room for surprises along the way.

Because here’s the big secret. All first drafts suck. That’s what they’re supposed to do. They’re a framework. The bare essentials of your story. The empty walls upon which you must now go back and spread the paint, mount the shelves, and hang the pictures.

You can have more plot steps, of course, but these are the critical ones. I do it on one page and post that page on the wall where I can see it when I start writing.

I write best in my office with a cat on my lap.

It’s very easy to fall into clichés when creating characters who have mannerisms. You can avoid it by making the mannerisms character-driven. Ask yourself why a character does that.

But, a word of warning. If you let your theme overrun your story, it can end up preachy and have the opposite effect.

Ask questions, even if they sound dumb. We all had those same questions until someone answered them for us.

Increasing the emotional risks will drag your reader into the plot. They want to care about what your MC is feeling.

The advantage is that it puts the reader smack-dab in the middle of the action. It's no longer "me" or "John" that the bad stuff is happening to. It's you. The disadvantage is that it gets boring fast, and is prone to filtering,