1. When describing certain characters, settings, and/or props, I should just show how they look and/or feel, rather than just tell their backstories. The backstories are just optional toppings to further describe those characters, settings, and props. For example, "the village is powerfully ancient and void of anyone living there, decaying into near-oblivion and made even more depressing through being covered by the night-time darkness," is more subtle, yet speaks better than something along the lines of, "the village was abandoned long ago because it was a source of a terrible plague." 2. I have to make my characters feel like people, rather than plot-movers. To do that, I have to create subplots that further reveal who each of the characters are. For example, if I'm writing a mystery/thriller where the main-protagonist is a cop, I also have to portray said cop as a dedicated husband and father to two children. 3. Compared to writing short-stories, writing a novel is almost like taking multiple short-stories and interweaving them into a much larger one. This means I can add as many characters as I want in the overall main-arc, so long as I give each of them their own side-arcs in order to portray them as people. Again, I refer to the example of the cop trying to protect his wife and children as a dedicated husband, while solving a mystery as said cop. However, the cop might encounter suspects throughout a murder-case, meaning that I might also have to portray each suspect like people as well, namely through giving them motivations as to why any of them may or may not be the true culprit. By doing so, I give not only the cop his own storyline to go along with the larger "who-done-it" arc, but I also give each of the suspects their own smaller arcs as well. However, is there any other advice besides the three things I already know? And, was I right to mention those three things?
