One critical thing I've learned through writing my sci-fi novel: virtuous characters are way more interesting to write than broken or vicious ones.
I started out thinking characters and plots needed moral failings to be compelling. That's just how everything is written these days. How boring would a book be about well-behaved people?
Turns out the exact opposite is true, and it's not even close. The best antagonists I've written can't compare to the good characters. They're deeper, more surprising, more alive.
I've come to think that using vice to drive a plot is actually a crutch. It skips over the hardest and most fascinating question: what does a person look like when they choose the good anyway? Not the easy good. The hard good, at a cost. That's where the real drama lives.
This is the most important thing I've learned in two years of writing.
