You're very welcome! Glad it helped!

It's like basketball practice--you have a heck of a lot of drills and practice games that you have to get under your belt in order to hone your craft, maximize your strengths, and overcome your weaknesses.

Yes, I know what you mean. I wrote a couple of chapters at the beginning of my WIP, which I loved writing, but on reflection, they just postponed the real point of the story. They were interesting, I thought, but they had to go.

I'll go look!

I think it's both. To me, when people are changed by external motivations as opposed to internal, the reader worries the change won't be permanent. Like Liam Neeson's character in Taken had a really strong external motivation for finding his daughter, but it was only overcoming his internal (that he was a bad dad who had no relationship with her and had let her down a thousand times) that he could finally pull it all together and find her. And, of course, have a relationship with her.

Thanks for the welcome! I love WITS!

I had to learn number 5 the hard way early on. People don't do things (especially change) without strong motivation. It can come from the inside, but it's much more powerful when it comes from an outside source. If it's internal, it's more of a choice, whereas external motivators tend to force a change. That creates more tension, upping the emotional response of both the character and the reader!

That's awesome! So glad it helped you!

Thank you! You're very welcome! FWIW, I just released a book called Writing Compelling Fiction that covers everything I teach (it's on Amazon, etc.). There's always so much to learn with a craft like this--even I sometimes have to remind myself that I'm missing something.