One of the most intriguing and well thought out set of questions I have ever received. Thanks so much to Greggerguy for these!

What qualities do you give your protagonist to make him/her someone that readers will want to follow throughout the journey of your story?

I think the most important quality to give any character in any story in any genre is humanity. They have to be real. No one roots for and relates to the shiny perfect protagonist who can do no wrong and can't be affected or hurt by anything. Readers love a flawed character, because everyone has flaws. When we read a book we look desperately for characteristics to relate to, and humans are flawed, that's just a fact of life. So what I always think to myself when creating a character is, how can I make them believable? How do I make them real? What flaws can I give them, and what room can I give the to grow and develop?

Exposition is where most writers struggle the most. How do you inform your readers of information that they need to know to move your story forward without embedding exposition in clunky, fake dialogue or ham-fisted prose?

This takes me back to my NBR days. NBR was a group I used to be part of, in which we would basically swap work and critique each other with a different spotlighted author each week. An incredibly helpful too and I recommend it for any and every writer, no matter what stage you're at. The phrase 'show not tell' was engrained into me during those days. 'Show not tell', 'show not tell', 'show not tell'. The basic idea of this is, if you want to get something across to your reader, you should always show them through speech, or an action, or a reaction. Never explicitly tell them. One, it's lazy, and two, the readers want to think for themselves, they don't need stuff spelled out to them. For example, if you want to show that Bobby is a loving man, show him doing something loving, don't just write 'Bobby was a loving man'. That's a basic example, but the rule applies. Show not tell, it's far more believable and engaging.

Most writers are influenced by popular source material. How do you keep yourself from copycat writing?

This is a tough one. There's that old saying that 'everything has been done already', which I guess is true to an extent. Every basic idea has already been covered in some shape or form. Obviously you should never look at something and think 'I'm going to copy that', but what you can do is take elements of things you admire and enjoy, and work them together with your own ideas, whether it's subconsciously or consciously. You might like a character in one show, but you would love to see them in a scenario from another film, with the genre from this book you read, and with this storyline that you've been working on for a while. Take inspiration from anything and everything that you read and watch, the writers created those books, shows and films to inspire you after all. Always set out to do something new and exciting, but that doesn't mean you can't carve ideas from other work.

Do you believe in the saying 'get into a scene late and get out early'?

I've had a good think about this one, and no, I can't say that I agree. Don't get me wrong, in some situations getting in late and out early really works to your advantage. It leaves the reader wanting more and constantly thinking. However, I'm also a big fan of building tension, which is especially prevalent in horror writing. Taking the time to slowly build a scene up before throwing it off a cliff is what it's all about.