broke: Going back in time with access to modern science to invent everything.

woke: Going back in time with access to modern news stories to write some killer dystopian sci-fi.

The third one is "god and the devil are both in the details".

The devil is in the details means that the details is where screwups are hiding.

"God is in the details" means something slightly different. Vermeer spent months painting this, blocking out the shadowns and the midtones, builidng up the paint. The highlight on the pearl is possibly just a single brushstroke, but it''s the one detail that elevates the whole painting.

These three are more personal, and some fiction writers may not agree, but it's worth thinking about.

Asking the right questions in functional writing means "who is it for, what do they want." In fiction, it's trickier, but the general message translated to having a clear picture of where the reader is, and what they should get from the current page.

Working from coarse to fine is about sketching out the broad strokes first. I guess that's plotting in fiction, so it's a bit personal.

#WritersCoffeeClub 20251219
If you were to teach a writing course, what would be the most important lesson?

I did a lecture on writing once; academic rather than fiction, but some of the lessons translate.

Here is one: writing is not just the stuff you do when you are behind the keyboard. You are allowed to go for a walk and say that you're writing.