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A good story will keep you wondering about what's happening, what's going on, where does this go? Now it's going to go that way, now it's going to go that way. It has to do that. If it's predictable, it's just boring.

I never plan my novels because if I know what is going to happen, it bores me rigid. I let the story tell itself.

As soon as things become predictable, they become boring.

Characters are so important to a story that they actually decide where the story is going. When I write, I know my characters. I know how things are going to end, and I know some important incidents along the way.

One of the things I love, and I'm a voracious reader as well as a writer, is books that surprise me, that are not predictable.

Readers will stay with an author, no matter what the variations in style and genre, as long as they get that sense of story, of character, of empathetic involvement.

I think the main thing to remember when writing a novel is to stay true to the characters.

I'm always amazed by writers who tell me they plan everything at the beginning. I feel their writing days must be very bland.

I start with a character and a situation, but I don't know what's going to happen until I write it. Sometimes things happen that surprise me.

You can never properly predict the future as it really turns out. So you are doing something a little different when you write science fiction. You are trying to take a different perspective on now.