17) Do not do this "artfully."

18) Remember that you want something to change over the course of the story. Something big and visible to the reader. Start with one situation and end with a clearly different situation. In between tell us how you got from the one to the other. Don't be subtle designing this change-for purposes of nailing dramatic structure be as reductive as humanly possible.

19) Remember this simplified structure is not the story, but the hanger on which the story hangs. The story is shirts and jackets, ribbons, the perfumes of the closet, details, bits of persuasion, rubber gunk underfoot, attitudes, hints, suggestions-everything you can attach to this hanger.

20) Obviously, these carefully hewn 39 steps must be adapted to your way of working. If you're murky, then take these as bible and pare away. If you work bare bones, then murk up what you do. Throw stuff in. Make a mess. Don't clean up.

21) If you write a sentence that isn't poignant, touching, funny, intriguing, inviting, etc., take it out before you finish the work. Don't just leave it there. Don't let anyone see it.

22) To repeat, there is no place for rubbish & slop in the highly modern world of today's fiction. Every sentence must pay, must somehow thrill. Every one.

23) Also: Obscurity is not subtlety; intentional obscurity is pinheaded and unkind.

24) Doing odd stuff is good, especially like when you make characters do it in the story, like when stuff is happening to them and they just do this unexpected, even inappropriate stuff, and then somehow it makes a little sense. This fills the heart.

25) Don't let too many paragraphs go by without sensory information, something that can be felt, smelt, touched, tasted. Two or three paragraphs is too many.

26) Don't be enamored of the idea you start with, or the idea that comes to you after you've been working on a piece for a time. If you're lucky the idea will keep changing as you write the story.