The sentence has to do the work

Pantheon has a lot of paperwork in it, the quiet admin that money leaves behind wherever it goes. Getting it right meant months of reading before I wrote a word, and most of that reading was never meant to show.

I did not want you to need a textbook to enjoy the book. So there are no footnotes and no glossary at the back. If you have to stop and look something up, the story has already let go of your hand.

The rule I ended up with is a small one. A new word or a strange bit of procedure has to make sense in the sentence where it first turns up. You should come away knowing what it does and why it matters to the people in the scene, right then, without me stopping to explain.

It sounds easy. It was the rule I broke most while drafting. I would write something perfectly accurate and it would land like static, because I had forgotten to tell you why you should care. When that happened, the answer was nearly always to say less and aim it better. And if a page of paperwork is not your thing, it is fine to read it lightly. What matters is always in the people around it, so you can move on to what they do next and still keep the thread.

Most of what I read never made it onto the page, and I am glad of that. The bits that did had to earn their place twice: once by being true, and once by being easy to follow for someone picking the book up cold. I find a well-filed document far more unsettling than any gadget, because it is so close to how these things really work. That only lands if you can follow it the first time through, so that is what I kept chasing.