Dawn Olivieri

You have to figure out what's important and keep the main points, though I will swing a little outside the box. It affords me the freedom to find out who the character is, and it's been a positive technique for me. I'm not saying everyone should change words, but if you can do it with confidence, you may nail it.

The leg system of the beach animals works because of a combination of certain lengths of tubes. Because of the proportion of lengths, the animals walk smoothly. You could say that this range of numbers is their genetic code.

It is only when you watch the dense mass of thousands of ants, crowded together around the Hill, blackening the ground, that you begin to see the whole beast, and now you observe it thinking, planning, calculating. It is an intelligence, a kind of live computer, with crawling bits for its wits.