(to her students) As writers, we sometimes fall into a rabbit hole of adding insignificant details to our stories: this often results in a disappointed audience whose expectations haven’t been met in the slightest. Or conversely, we can make the audience feel cheated when elements that prove important during the climax have not been adequately foreshadowed.

(firm, direct, relentless) You have no clear understanding of the medium you’re working with. You have interesting thoughts, which is a luck to have in the first place, but you don’t do anything interesting *with* them. You just let them float. Zero grasp of the concept of metaphor, you let your ideas and what you want to say guide you, with little to no consideration for the actual story. Your writing reads like a pamphlet.