[QUOTE]Originally posted by Marcus
[B]Here is something from one of my favourite authors/humourists. I personally like no. 10

Twain's Rules of Writing
(from Mark Twain's scathing essay on the Literary Offenses of James Fenimore Cooper)

10. The author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and their fate; and that he shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones.
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To be sure. Our small, dark corner of the literary world depends even more heavily than usual on "the bad ones"?

Our m/f stories, (or at least the n/c stories), rise or fall, it seems to me, on two things above all -- the credibility of our villains and the beauty of our heroines. A story that succeeds at realistically depicting both villainy and beauty is well on its way to success.