“First, find out what your hero wants, then just follow him!” – Ray Bradbury
“The story…must be a conflict, and specifically, a conflict between the forces of good and evil within a single person.” – Maxwell Anderson
“If you do not have an alert and curious interest in character and dramatic situation, if you have no visual imagination and are unable to distinguish between honest emotional reactions and sentimental approaches to life, you will never write a competent short story.” – Edward J. O’Brien
“What is either a picture or a novel that is not character?” – Henry James
“To most readers the word ‘fiction’ is an utter fraud. They are entirely convinced that each character has an exact counterpart in real life and that any small discrepancy with that counterpart is a simple error on the author’s part.” – Louis Auchincloss
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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past decade, I’ve helped more than 300 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the 7 Minutes a Day… writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.