1 – Thou shalt not take the crisis out of the protagonist’s hands.
2 – Thou shalt not make life easy for the protagonist.
3 – Thou shalt not give exposition for exposition’s sake.
4 – Thou shalt not use false mystery or cheap surprise.
5 – Thou shalt respect thy audience.
6 – Thou shalt know thy world as God knows this one.
7 – Thou shalt not complicate when complexity is better.
8 – Thou shalt seek the end of the line, taking characters to the farthest depth of the conflict imaginable within the story’s own realm of probability.
9 – Thou shalt not write on the nose — put a subtext under every text.
10 – Thou shalt rewrite.