Let's put it this way: if you are a novelist, I think you start out with a 20 word idea, and you work at it and you wind up with a 200,000 word novel. We, picture-book people, or at least I, start out with 200,000 words and I reduce it to 20.
“I remember having an argument with Alan, I said the Queen's not just going to call the guy up and send him out to do it. And Alan says, well, how would a monarch give orders to her assassin.”
“As a father now, I wouldn't do what my dad did, because it left me feeling emotionally unstable as a kid. But he didn't do the things he did out of selfishness or malice.”