Be a Whys writer

Never leave your readers with unanswered questions unless you absolutely, positively have a good reason for leaving them in doubt. By the end of what they're reading, they're going to want to know "why" or have the satisfaction of figuring it out for themselves on the basis of the hints ("gold coins") you've tossed them along the way. This is true for both factual and fictional writing.
It is possible to write a short story by simply answering the question "Why?" five or more times.
Here's how it works. Write the opening sentence of a story. Something simple. Don't spend a lot of time thinking about it. After you write the sentence, ask the question: Why? Answer the question in your second sentence. Then ask the question again: Why? Do this five times and you're well on your way to writing a story.
Here - I'll write the first sentence for you...
"Richard entered the bank."
You answer the question "Why?" with your second sentence and then keep asking and answering that question with each subsequent sentence.
Have at it.

Keep your writing fresh and original

When I start to read something, I expect the writer to keep a promise to me, a promise the work will be fulfilling. That should be the reader outcome every time -the sense of being fulfilled.
One way of keeping our writing fresh and original is to avoid the use of cliches. I could tell you "the bottom line is, at the end of the day, when all the i's are dotted and t's are crossed, we don't want to be caught with our pants down or with a stiff upper lip or with the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing - because the clock would run out on us."
But it will be a cold day in hell before I'd write anything like that.

Writing with precision

Sol Stein, author and publisher, calls it "particularity." It is telling the reader the patron at McDonald's paid $5.67 for a meal, rather than "about six dollars." The reader can picture someone paying for a meal with exact change.
Roy Peter Clark of the Poynter Institute advocates the same thing when he says, "Name the dog." Is the dog's name "Fluffie" - or is it "Bruiser"? Names tell the reader a lot. No names tell nothing.
Novelist John Updike described his craft this way: "I try to write with precision what my mind's eye conjures up."
It's one thing to look out a window and write what we see with precision. It's quite another to use our imagination and then "write with precision what our mind's eye conjures up."
But that's what every great novelist has done throughout the ages.

What is your universe?

I once had occasion to interview astronaut James Lovell, commander of the ill-fated Apollo 13 space mission that was later relived in a movie starring Tom Hanks. I asked Lovell what his lasting memory was of his travels in space. As he answered, he held out his hand and put his thumb up toward his eye. "I looked out the window of the space capsule, put my thumb up like this ... and blocked out my view of the entire planet earth," he said.
It has always struck me that universe is in the eye of the beholder.
When I was a child, I lived in the Chicago suburbs. Not far from my home was a pedestrian bridge that spanned all the way across what is now the Eisenhower Expressway leading into Chicago. Sometimes I would walk to the middle of that bridge at night and look down at all the vehicles heading in both directions, all with headlights on. And I would think to myself, "All of those people are going somewhere. All have a destination. Some are happy. Some are sad. Some are mad. Some will reach their destinations; some won't. But at this moment, the thing they have in common is that they are all within my eyesight. They are in my universe." That image has remained with me all of my life.
Writers create universes. Sometimes they remember being caught up in their own, like Jim Lovell and that kid on the bridge in Illinois. What is your universe?