Keeping an ideal reader in your mind helps you think about the promises you’re making in the text, in the form of hints, clues, dangling plot threads, foreshadowing, and so on.

it’s always easier to invest in someone who doesn’t entirely fit in, and who might see the injustices everyone else chooses to ignore.

good character usually has as much story behind them as ahead of them. We might only need to glimpse their past, but we should know that they’ve already been on the journey before the story even begins.

Character is action: people aren’t just a collection of feelings and opinions and habits, but rather the sum total of all the choices they take.

I just love writing any kind of moment where relationships shift, someone’s baggage gets unpacked and/or repacked, and conflicts are deepened.

Oftentimes, character growth comes down to one of the following: A character couldn’t do a thing before, and now they can. Or they were not willing to do a thing before, but now they’re willing.

Writing is a solitary act—but it’s also a way to feel connected to the world, in a different way than spending ten hours a day on social media.

you can’t twist the knife until you find the knife.

3. I had a choice between writing pretty terrible war fiction and somewhat less terrible queer lit, and only one of those things was going to make me happy and leave me with the energy to do actual useful work in the world.