Self-respect is not inherited but manufactured through daily effort: one works to squeeze, drop by drop, the servility out of oneself until one wakes feeling real human blood, not a slave's, in one's veins. The condition is treated as a process of gradual self-cultivation rather than a fixed trait of birth or class.
To convey a feeling like moonlight, do not describe the moon; mention the glint of a broken bottle-neck on a mill-dam and the black shadow of a dog, and the scene appears. Vivid particulars shown to the reader produce the emotion more reliably than the author naming or analyzing it.
Length and padding are treated as defects to be cut: abolish the opening and closing passages, discard everything general and explanatory, and the shorter a piece becomes the more often it gets read. The recommended practice is to write, then throw out the parts that merely cushion the core.