“Early in a story, I’ll have a few discrete blocks (blobs? swaths?) of loose, sloppy text. As I revise, those blocks will start to…get better. Soon, a block will start working—I can get all the way through it without a needle drop. The word that sometimes comes to mind is “undeniable,” as in “All right, this bit is pretty much undeniable,” which means that I feel that any reasonable reader would like it and would still be with me at the end of it.”
– George Saunders, from “A Swim in a Pond in the Rain”