“Write only about how your characters came, got married, and died, and what is unnecessary — throw away.”Anton Cehov · Scrisori · 1900 · lui Maxim Gorki, 1899
A whole life fits in three moments; everything else is scenery to cut.
Chekhov's advice from his letters condenses an aesthetic of sobriety. A life, he says, can be told through three moments: arrival, marriage, death; the rest is decoration. The rule does not demand boredom but the courage to discard beautiful yet useless pages, because they dilute tension and blur form. Chekhov wrote this way himself: his stories give no full biographies, only the gestures and silences through which a whole person shows.
Why it matters Valid beyond literature too: cutting what is unnecessary is a mark of respect for the reader in any communication.