My go-to model for my stories – a model that actually helps me write them – is that a story is a black box, into which the reader goes, and something happens. Something big and breathtaking and non-trivial. I don’t have to know what that thing is beforehand – it’s going to reveal itself to me at speed and I don’t need to be able to pithily reduce it. I just have to micro-manage the machinery inside the box so as to maximize the various effects – to sharpen the curves, so to speak. Now, mysteriously, thinking of stories this way does tend to produce themes and ethical resonance and all of that – how, I don’t know. But I’m OK with not knowing. I just want to get better at the doing.

GEORGE SAUNDERS