"It wouldn't be advisable." Carner sat casually on the corner of his desk. "Make them human also; show the reader that these aliens—whether they have one head or five—have emotions understandable to them. Let them feel joy and pain. Show them as being misguided. Pure evil in your characters has gone out of fashion."
"But could I make their leader pure evil?" the young man asked, busily jotting down everything Carner had said.
"I suppose so," Carner said thoughtfully. "But give him motivations also. By the way, in dealing with that sort of story—the panoramic kind—remember not to oversimplify the aliens' problems. If they amass an army of twenty million, all have to be fed. If the rulers of fifty scattered star systems meet in conclave, remember that different star systems have different languages, and different races have different nervous systems. Bear in mind also, that there would be little logical reason for attacking earth; the galaxy is filled with so many stars and planets, what is the necessity of fighting for one?"
The horn-rimmed fellow nodded dubiously, writing his notes with tremendous speed. Eddie stifled a yawn. He preferred to think of his villains as pure unadulterated evil; it made characterization so much easier. And he was getting tremendously bored.
Carner answered questions for the next half hour. He told them not to describe Venus as a 'jungle-choked green hell,' never, never to call the moon 'pock-marked,' 'small-pox pitted,' or 'scarred from centuries of meteoric bombardment.'
"All this has been said," he explained. "Millions of times. Do not use cliches."
He went on to explain that the red spot of Jupiter need not be called a malevolent red eye, that Saturn's rings don't necessarily resemble a halo, and that the inhabitants of Venus are not Venetians.
"All common errors," he said. "I want a thousand words from each of you next time. I suggest that you choose a planet and write a fresh study of it, avoiding with care all the cliches I mentioned. Class dismissed."
"Well, whadja think?" Mort asked Eddie in the hall. "Isn't he great? I mean, he really knows!"