Another thing I turned up and that I need to post here so I can close that browser tab and expunge the stain from my being: Yud’s advice about awesome characters.

I find that fiction writing in general is easier for me when the characters I’m working with are awesome.

The important thing for any writer is to never challenge oneself. The Path of Least Resistance™!

The most important lesson I learned from reading Shinji and Warhammer 40K

What is the superlative of “read a second book”?

Awesome characters are just more fun to write about, more fun to read, and you’re rarely at a loss to figure out how they can react in a story-suitable way to any situation you throw at them.

“My imagination has not yet descended.”

Let’s say the cognitive skill you intend to convey to your readers (you’re going to put the readers through vicarious experiences that make them stronger, right? no? why are you bothering to write?)

In college, I wrote a sonnet to a young woman in the afternoon and joined her in a threesome that night.

You’ve set yourself up to start with a weaksauce non-awesome character. Your premise requires that she be weak, and break down and cry.

“Can’t I show her developing into someone who isn’t weak?" No, because I stopped reading on the first page. You haven’t given me anyone I want to sympathize with, and unless I have some special reason to trust you, I don’t know she’s going to be awesome later.

Holding fast through the pain induced by the rank superficiality, we might just find a lesson here. Many fans of Harry Potter have had to cope, in their own personal ways, with the stories aging badly or becoming difficult to enjoy. But nothing that Rowling does can perturb Yudkowsky, because he held the stories in contempt all along.