The One Book to Read If You Want to be a Better Writer

“A Swim in a Pond in the Rain” is a masterclass for readers and writers.

Bookshelves are packed with quality books about writing. Frequently mentioned are Stephen King’s On Writing, Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, William Zinsser’s On Writing Well, John McPhee’s Draft №4. These are all excellent books to begin with for studying writing.

But there is another book that will teach you how to read short stories in order to teach you how to write short stories and offers the keys to create great short story art.

That book is George Saunders’ A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, a truly remarkable book.

Saunders is an MFA professor at Syracuse University, a Booker Prize winner for his first novel Lincoln in the Bardo (a future post coming about that extraordinary novel), the writer of 9 other books of short story collections, and a MacArthur genius grant recipient. His writing is deeply humane, with sensitive understanding of the complexities of language, art, and life.

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is a masterclass in reading and writing. It’s a big book at 400 pages, but it reads easily like a summer time beach novel.

As the professor he is, he writes the book as if he is teaching a creative writing class, walking his reader through seven short stories by four amazing Russian writers — Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol. But what we get is an excitement about literature often not found in literature classrooms. Through his sheer apparent joy at reading these stories, Saunders will reawaken your love for literature.

Along the way, Saunders points out how each story is built, how each writer builds his world to keep us going, to wanting to find out what happens next, to understand why we keep going line after line.

For readers, you will learn how to read classic short stories. You will come to understand first-hand the artistry of great short stories and learn what pushes you forward to continue reading.

For writers, you will learn what moves writers make to engage their readers and keep them reading.

The first story is Chekhov’s “In the Cart.” Saunders presents one page of the story at a time and then offers his analysis, holding your hand page by page, alternating story and analysis until he completes the story.

Then he takes the training wheels off and creates magic.

He presents the other six stories in full followed by his analysis, piece by piece, building your understanding of the story from the first page to the last.

While he offers some technical terms to explain how stories work — increased specification, expectation of efficiency, the ruthless efficiency principle, variation, escalation, causation from energy transfer (to name just a few) — he does so in easily accessible ways. You don’t have to be an academic to enjoy Saunders’ analysis. He makes literary analysis fun.

He offers a helpful acronym — TICHN — “Things I Couldn’t Help Noticing” about those items in stories that stand out as you are reading that come to play an important role later in the stories. Guides like these help you to get the most out of your reading, whether you are reading for enjoyment or as a writer learning how great writers do what they do.

As an academic, I have read and reviewed many books about writing by famous writers and teachers. But I have never read a book that has taught me as much about writing and reading or brought me as much joy and reinvigorated my love for short stories as much as A Swim in a Pond in the Rain.

Chief among his insights, he shares what he believes is the key difference between those writers who go on to publish and those who don’t:

“First, a willingness to revise. Second, the extent to which the writer has learned to make causality.”

At the back of the book are Appendices with exercises, a higher ed. MFA professor providing you a way to practice the highest of writing arts. The exercises are challenging, bold, inviting you to evaluate your own efforts and to increase your skill in story writing. Best of all, they are exercises anyone can do.

If you’re an aspiring writer, you’ll appreciate just how much this wildly successful writer and professor has shared of the secrets to successful writing.

Saunders writes for readers who want to experience joy in their reading of first-class stories. Saunders also writes for writers who want to understand the story-making process and learn the techniques that the best story-tellers in history use to create the best stories.

I have read my share of great Russian writers, but I am no expert in the Russian short story. Reading these seven stories has opened my world to a new appreciation for the short story and for authors I have mostly neglected. I have also gained an understanding about writing and literary art that belies my 35+ years in the field. Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?

George Saunders has restored my confidence in the world of literature, that truly fine literature can make the world a better place. Literature helps us to empathize, to feel, to understand those outside of our own skin.

In his conclusion, he writes about the connection made between writer and reader, how we can even disagree about the details of writing, about an image, a “pale green in the hot sun.” He says, we can disagree about whether that’s the best way to phrase the image. We tussle, the writer and the reader. He explains that tussle.

“There are many versions of you, in you. To which one am I speaking, when I write? The best one. The one most like my best one. Those two best versions of us, in a moment of reading, exit our usual selves, and, at a location created by mutual respect, become one.

That’s a pretty hopeful model of human interaction: two people, mutually respectful, leaning in, one speaking so as to compel, the other listening, willing to be charmed.

That, a person can work with.”

As our world falls apart around us, Saunders offers us hope through literature. Even in disagreement, we can connect our best person with another. We can speak and listen with mutual respect. I don’t know if that is enough, but it’s a lot and quite a good start.

I hope you enjoy Saunders’ A Swim in a Pond in the Rain as much as I did. It’s so good, I’m going to read it again.

Just keep writing. And reading.

Lee G. Hornbrook, an expert in the writing process, taught college English for 25 years and is the editor of The Writing Prof. He has finished his memoir.

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