“The basic rule you gave us was simple and heartbreaking. A story to
be effective had to convey something from writer to reader and the
power of its offering was the measure of its excellence. Outside of
that, you said, there were no rules. A story could be about anything
and could use any means and technique at all—so long as it was
effective.
necessary for the writer to know what he wanted to say, in short, what
he was talking about. As an exercise we were to try reducing the meat
of a story to one sentence, for only then could we know it well enough
to enlarge it to three or six or ten thousand words.” Via Letters of Note
Influence without logic 