As a writer, it’s sometimes hard to remember a truth that sounds totally obvious when stated out loud – other people cannot read my mind. I have to say every little detail, or you’ll never know.

In describing a scene, building a character, or advancing a plot, there are countless details lodged away in the insanity that is my mind, innumerable details about what everything looks like, what feelings the characters have, their fears, their desires, their pasts, and even their futures. I know more about the characters in my stories than I do about any living human, myself included, and I know more about that world than I do of Earth. I can even look into the future. No–I can shape the future.

But the rest of you? You don’t get any of that. You only get what I put down on the page, and any thoughts or emotions it inspires in your heads. If I don’t say it, it doesn’t count, because you’ll never know.

As a writer, you don’t get credit for the words you don’t write. Put it on the page or it may as well never have happened, at least as far as the reader is concerned.