A whole lot of writers come out of fandom - in comics, science fiction, fantasy, horror. If you don't love the stuff, you ought not even try to
write it - you might hit the obvious marks okay, but it is the between-the-lines material that really sells it to a reader. Jim Cameron
loves science fiction, that comes across in his movies. I imagine Avatar will blow our socks off.

Some people don't like the stuff at all, but write it. It's never as good. It's missing the heart.

What you have to watch as a fan is that you don't allow your desire to show how much you know of all the little details get in the way of the story.
People don't care that the lint in Ripley's pocket is green or blue; they care that, terrified as she was of the Aliens, she went back for Newt. (And
what they didn't know unless they read the original script was why, but that didn't matter. She did. Bravery isn't a lack of fear - it's doing what needs
to be done even if you are scared ********.)

Character, under pressure, that's what people relate to the most.

If you do the research, you want it to show. Too much kills reader interest. No matter how fascinating you might think it is, a big expository lump stops
forward motion like a giant boulder in the middle of the road. Generally, if you have a scene in a 75,000 word novel that runs more than four pages? It's
too long. Cut it down.

Pacing matters.

You have two guys sitting at a table telling each other stuff they both already know for fifteen pages, your reader's eyes will glaze over and he's
gonna start snoring. He will stop reading or skip ahead, both of which are bad. If you absolutely have to have all that stuff -- and you don't -- cut
it into three or four scenes and sprinkle it in. Nobody wants a brick in the stew.

Here's the formula: Chase your hero up a tree and throw rocks at him. Show us who he is, what makes him tick, make us like him, fear for him, root for
him. Everything else comes from that. Every time he overcomes an obstacle, put a bigger one in front of him. That's your story, and the plot needs to
center around your hero coming to the last, biggest, win-or-die obstacle, and get resolved because of who he - or she - is.

That's it. Simple.

Commander Scott on the Enterprise might love to read technical manuals. Movie-goers and fiction readers want to be able to identify with who you
people your tale with. That's the cake - everything else is icing. Nobody is going to break into spontaneous applause when they find out what
color the lint is in Ripley's pocket. When she says, "Get away from her, you *****!" and cranks up her hydraulics? They will laugh out loud and cheer.

I did.