A Mission Statement for "Three Little Words" a serial narrative that appeared in the St. Petersburg Times in February, 1996.  Written (and slightly revised for this exercise) by Roy Peter Clark.

1) I want to tell a human story, not just about AIDS, but of the deeply human themes of life, love, death, sorrow, hope, compassion, family and community.
2) I want to portray my protagonist as a fully human character -- and not some kind of cardboard saint.
3) I want to do this so people can identify with and care for her and her family. It's so easy to see people with AIDS as "the other," the outcast suffering sinners.
4) I want to help illuminate AIDS, and help educate the public about key aspects of the disease.
5) I want to advance the conversation about sexual culture and its impact on public health.
6) I want to portray my protagonist's husband in a respectful way to avoid the common equation that Homosexuality = AIDS = Death.
7) I want to do this in a form -- 29 short chapters -- that would give people a chance to know, to learn, to care, and to hope.

As for the form, I want to:

1) Restore the form of the serial narrative to newspapers -- using the shortest chapters possible.
2) Reconcile the values of short and long writing in American newspapers.
3) Write each chapter with a) a stand-alone quality; b) a cliffhanger ending; c) a sense of a new starting point.

[This 250 word mission statement helped create a 25,000 word series. It took about ten minutes to write the statement, and takes about a minute and a half to read it.]