Disclaimer: Writing is an art. I can't tell you what good writing is, but I know it when I read it.

Okay, that was a joke. Sort of. What that really means is that I know what I like, but that may be very, very different from your preferences.

However, there are some basic "rules of thumb" I think most science fiction and fantasy writers should follow. And the most basic of these apply to writers of either genre. And probably to writers of any kind of story.

Martin's Rule #1: Write about people

Writers of genre fiction often forget this. I know I did when I first started out. I was so busy creating whatever fantastic world I was trying to present that I populated those worlds with wooden, one-dimensional characters. It didn't matter if I was writing science fiction or fantasy, short stories or novel-length manuscripts.

I first began writing my unpublished fantasy novel way back in the early 1990s. At the time, the premise was a group of modern-day college students playing a Dungeons & Dragons style game who suddenly found themselves imbued with the powers of their characters. The whole thing was supposed to lead to a head nasty guy coming through from a fantasy world to ours to remake it in his image with my "kids" having to learn to control their powers and stop him at the same time.

Not only had the story been done before, but the characters had no real flavor to them. They were ordinary college kids with no real foibles and—ta-da!—now they've got super magical powers? Yech.

My next draft of the opening chapters included three characters that then bloated the ranks of my group of good guys so as to make the group, and therefore any relationships, virtually unmanageable.

Two of the characters were twins with psychic-style powers that I ended up transferring to one of the others. I decided a long time ago never to use them. Too much like the "Wonder Twins" from the old Super Friends TV series. The other character was a vampire that might be introduced in another story down the road.

But what I'm talking about here is that your characters have to have lives of their own; central to the plot, certainly, but not bound by your outline. A good story—any story—is about people.

One of my story's central themes is about how love conquers evil. Notice that's "love conquers evil," not "good conquers evil" or "love conquers all." It's the fact that my characters all ultimately love each other, allowing them to keep to their path against their arch enemy. The bad guy, on the other hand, is literally possessed by a devil, who has no concept of love. He rules by fear, death, and destruction. Those are all things that are ultimately self-defeating.

So, instead of always concentrating on how my wizard can call up earthquakes, or how the enchanter can generate grand illusions, or how my sorceress can turn into a griffin, I focus on what these characters mean to each other and what they mean to other, secondary characters as well.

Martin's Rule #2: Inner conflict is key

This rule is very much tied to the rule on writing about people.

There are actually two types of inner conflict in my opinion, and they should parallel the external conflict that makes up the main plot of your story.

Let me use my manuscript for some more examples.

One layer of inner conflict should be the inner conflict within a group. No matter how good your characters are—or how collectively evil—they all never get along with each other all of the time.

Within my group of good guys, the enchanter is the primary malcontent. He turned to magic as a means to an end: Regaining his father's lost title of Caesar of the Mediterranea Sovereignty (Greece) in the Old World (Europe). With this in mind, he constantly thwarts his leader's authority as leader of the group and often puts the group in danger. He even turns against them at one point, but redeems himself in the end.

To go along with this, the enchanter fights two other inner conflicts (this is one layered character, folks!): First, he has a problem with authority stemming from his perception that his father never respected or even really loved him. Second, every user of magic in my created world suffers some kind of side effect, or cost, for using magic. Being an Enchanter, he must make sure he never becomes lost in illusion, never deceives himself that his vision of reality is the right one.

Of course, there's no better character to create inner conflict with than your main character. Mine, the wizard, has a few, spicing up the story quite a bit. Let's see, on one end he fights often with his uncle over whether or not his father is still alive. He fights with the enchanter about the quest object in the story, but more importantly, he also struggles with magical side effects. Wizards are notorious obsessive-compulsives. His affinity for the natural world not withstanding, they prefer order to chaos, cleanliness to grime. In a sense, this is not too different from the enchanter's problem with illusion. The wizard must fight against imposing his vision of reality on everyone else.

That inner conflict neatly ties to the plot since my quest object transmutes magic. Toward the end of the story, the object calls to him, making him a bit insane with the temptation to claim it for himself and rule the world. He would have always thought he was doing the right thing for the people he loves, but he would have been considered as much a tyrant as the guy their going up against in the end.

Even your bad guys should suffer from inner conflicts, both within their ranks and within themselves.

The main bad guy chooses his right hand man, a half-Elf, half-Dwarf, to lead a group of 13 mercenaries to retrieve the object. But the mercenaries themselves are led by another man who calls no one master, especially a Mingled like bad guy #2. Further within the group, there are a number of members who crack as the plot wears on, calling into question the viability of the group.

But I also make bad guy #2 a transformative character. The story starts with his being the main guy's right-hand man. He is evil through and through, responsible for the murder of millions, isn't he? But even he begins to question his master's methods and motivations, which forces him to question himself throughout the book. This second bad guy is actually a more noble, refined character than his physical features and background would lead you to believe. He enjoys books. He finds a very particular kind of woman attractive.

By the end of the book, he finds himself switching sides. And that transformative moment is certainly not isolated. It's a direct result of another character finding out that sometimes you just have to do the right thing.

Martin's Rule #3: KISS

That's right, it's the old rule "Keep It Simple, Stupid."

Unfortunately, this is one rule I have a hard time following myself. I love to build worlds and rules for those worlds and the characters that inhabit them. Not to mention all the trouble those characters can get into.

As I mentioned during Rule #1, I had originally written three extra characters into my group's ranks, making it difficult to relate the human story (it doesn't matter that there are dwarves and elves here) about the group.

But imagine the complexity of the way I had originally drafted the novel: Magic comes to our modern Earth. It may not be original, but it's more complex than it sounds. You have to find a way to fit magical rules into a mundane world. The real world is complicated enough, now you want to add magic into the mix? You're crazy!

Seriously, though, the simpler you keep your imagined world the easier it will be for readers to follow. That isn't to say that creating a rich world is bad. Certainly, my transforming America into a fantasy land was daunting. The action ranges from Memphis to New Orleans to Birmingham to Atlanta to Alexandria (Washington, D.C.) to New London (New York) and even Vinland (Newfoundland). And, of course, I have all manner of magicians and magical creatures thrown into the mix.

What I threw in for world building, I traded for a less complex story.

My original outline had several more chapters, focusing more on a number of the secondary characters. To be honest, even the way I have the story written at the moment may not be the way it's ever published. I still think I have far too much going on sometimes.

Of course, my unfinished manuscript is a novel length story. It's supposed to be complicated.

So, let's take a look at a short story. If you have Adobe Acrobat Reader, you can view an old short story of mine called No Drone Is An Island from my personal website. If you don't have Acrobat Reader, or would prefer not to download it, let me know and I'll try to send you a copy.

After reading it, I think you'll agree that this is a relatively simple story with just enough information about the universe the characters inhabit to give you the flavor of why things are the way they are. The story still focuses on people (droids) - Rule #1 - and their conflicts (Rule #2) to keep things interesting, but is nowhere nears as overwhelming as trying to follow my group all over my transformed America.

Only you can decide how much information to throw at your readers. Tolkien was a master of complexity as is Robert Jordan today. They both created large, complex worlds with lots of characters and just as many rules to follow. I enjoy reading them. Some people don't.

The only concrete advice on this I can really give is this: The shorter the story, the simpler you need to keep things. But even with novel-length manuscripts, be careful of how many layers of complexity you lay on. You could find yourself writing more about the world and unable to focus on the people that should be the centerpoint of the story.

Martin's Rule #4: Know when to quit

This is perhaps the hardest rule of all.

How do you know when you've written enough words to tell your story? For that matter, how do you know when to just throw up your hands, quit typing, and trash that darn stupid story?

I've had lots of online conversations with all manner of people about Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time series. I believe that he is the storyteller and that he will write as many words as he feels are necessary to tell the story.

Would I be taking 9, 10, or a dozen books to get through Rand al'Thor's troubles? Probably not. But as I said before, I enjoy reading the series. I can't wait for it to end because I want to see how he gets there. Others, though, feel that Jordan is merely taking advantage of the reading consumer and milking his universe for all its worth. If anyone's doing that, in my opinion, it's his publishers. I've met Jordan (once), and he didn't strike me as the type to beat a dead horse just for the money.

For some reason, no one gets real upset that Anne McAffrey has written about a dozen books about Pern, another series I enjoy. Her books are certainly shorter than Jordan's, and they all don't fit into one specific time frame. Her books have bounced from "modern" Pern to "ancient" Pern (when it was first colonized) and—although I haven't had a chance to read it yet—to redefining Pern now that Thread-threat is pretty much gone.

So, again, how do you know when enough's enough?

This is tied back to Rule #3, keeping things simple. When you read the story to yourself, do you feel as though you're missing something? If so, you probably need to do some more writing. On the other hand, do you feel as though you're having to slog through to get to the "good stuff?" You probably need to cut and cut and cut. More than likely, you'll be stuck with the latter problem. Very rarely have I been in the situation of not having written enough and I haven't seen too many stories submitted to Demensions where that's been a problem either.

As for when to quit a story altogether and move on to something else—well, this is probably a problem of motivation to begin with. I have a number of other unfinished pieces that have been languishing on my computer for years.

I have four chapters or so of a novel—the first of a trilogy—focusing on a generational starship being sent out for first contact purposes. Again, I took quite a bit of time creating the plot and the "world" (the ship) where everything takes place. And, again, I realized at one point that I needed to focus on the characters, so I set things up so that, over the course of the trilogy, one family on board the ship—perhaps two or three—would be what the story's really about.

Then there's my "alternate" Superman novel. Based on the idea that Krypton didn't explode, but that Superman was sent to Earth by his father to escape persecution, I've also gotten to about chapter four or so and stopped. I have no idea why this keeps happening to me, but I suspect it's been a combination of factors.

I simply don't have as much time to write as when I started these things. My unfinished fantasy novel was written at a large bank while working as a temporary administrative assistant. They allowed me to use my downtime to write the novel and, for some reason, when I switched from science fiction to fantasy, things clicked.

I think the rule here is, again, to read the story. Are you interested in the story? Are you drawn into the lives of the characters? Do you want to "stay" in their world? If so, then keep working. I hope to return to both of these projects at some point. On the other hand, if you're finding that you simply don't care about the plot, the people, their lives, and situations, then drop it. Move on to something else.

There's no sense in beating a dead horse.

Well, there are my four rules to good science fiction and fantasy writing. There are probably others, but I think these four cover the basics. If you'd like more examples of what I'm talking about, just write me. I'll be glad to share some of my other stories with you, or talk about other books I've read.

In the meantime, I think I'll stop writing this editorial. It's enough, don't you think?

Besides, I've got some stories to get back to.