Robert Olen Butler, in his book FROM WHERE YOU DREAM, says the one thing missing from almost every student manuscript he reads is a sense, in the beginning of the work, of what the main character yearns for.  He says fiction is "the art form of human yearning" and that  writers needs to place an epiphany, illustrating the protagonist's yearning, in the first few paragraphs or pages of a short story or novel.

I agree.  As a creative writing teacher, in every class I see emerging writers repeat the same mistakes over and over.  The don't write...