When I write, “Bob was an asshole” and then, feeling this sentence to be somewhat lacking in specificity, revise it to read, “Bob snapped impatiently at the barista,” then ask myself, seeking yet more specificity, why Bob might have done that, and revise to “Bob snapped impatiently at the young barista, who reminded him of his dead wife,” then pause to add “who he missed so much, especially now, at Christmas”—in the process, Bob has gone from “pure asshole” to “grieving widower, so overcome with grief that he has behaved ungraciously to a young person to whom, normally, he would have been
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