George's method (writing sentence by sentence, letting one sentence lead you to the next, followed by the P/N meter reaction and multiple edits) reminds me, somewhat, of John McPhee's. Here's McPhee, from his book Draft No. 4: "Blurt out, heave out, babble out something—anything—as a first draft. With that, you have achieved a sort of nucleus. Then, as you work it over and alter it, you begin to shape sentences that score higher with the ear and eye. Edit it again—top to bottom. The chances are that about now you’ll be seeing something that you are sort of eager for others to see. And all that takes time. What I have left out is the interstitial time. You finish that first awful blurting, and then you put the thing aside. You get in your car and drive home. On the way, your mind is still knitting at the words. You think of a better way to say something, a good phrase to correct a certain problem. Without the drafted version—if it did not exist—you obviously would not be thinking of things that would improve it. In short, you may be actually writing only two or three hours a day, but your mind, in one way or another, is working on it twenty-four hours a day—yes, while you sleep—but only if some sort of draft or earlier version already exists. Until it exists, writing has not really begun.”
I comment here often about the transcendent nature of George’s observations and advice, about the way Story Club is secretly Therapy Club. Well, today’s post did it again - it took reading, writing and editing up to the level of truly seeing, deeply listening and generously offering. I particularly loved this at the end: “So, in a way, writing like this can start to feel like a spiritual discipline: we’re training ourselves to observe accurately (and there are volumes to be written about the difficulty of this), then react in a way that makes things better.”
I’ve been involved in Story Club for a while now, and this method has helped inform my process also. I just got the news recently that my novella-in-flash, Pineville Trace won the Etchjngs Press(at the University of Indianapolis) Book prize and will be published soon. This is my first book to be published, and I am grateful for the Story Club community and how helpful it’s been supporting my writing life.
"My artistic journey included a pivotal moment at which I realized I’d been neglecting/ignoring my desire to be entertaining (by keeping humor out of my work). It was like I’d been fighting for my life in an alley and then looked down and noticed I had one hand behind my back."
I discovered this for myself, in a different realm, writing instructional materials. I'd try to sound professorial and expert, and had a terrible time writing and revising. But then I met a woman who I greatly admired for her entertaining and very helpful training videos (on Lynda.com), and was fascinated to find that who she was in those videos was who she was at lunch. And from then I tried to dial back the 'expert' me and begin the search for my own voice. It ended up freeing me tremendously, feeling confident that I was conveying information in a way that I knew well, once I paid attention to it. Made writing and revising much simpler.
I have heard this before, but still don’t understand how plot or other global aspects of story structure take care of themselves based on line-to-line revision. It is a fascinating concept to think about, the emergence of global structures based on local processes, that we also see in nature. But I seem to be missing something key about how this works in creating stories. Does anyone have further insights on this point? Examples or pointers for further reading? Thanks in advance for any help!
I really like the idea of writing as being a sort of entertainer, keeping the reader interested. Also, the idea of writing as a spiritual discipline is a good way of looking at it and keeping at it day after day, even when the spirit is very unwilling!
I wanted to express my gratitude for a couple of things this morning. First, I'm so thankful the Story Club community has remained a stronghold of respectful discourse, stocked with so much wisdom, insight, and kindness. Every week, I am inspired by the contributions of you wonderful people and it makes me so badly want to read your work!
Second, I was reading an old "Teen Titans" comic book from the 1980s when I stumbled upon a suspiciously familiar villain named Gizmo. I'm just thankful our Gizmo decided to use his powers for good instead of evil.
If you ever wondered what George Saunders would look like as an evil genius (instead of a benevolent one), I offer this: https://ibb.co/Pw9bG2w
Tom Robbins always claimed to use this method, essentially, but sentence by sentence, revising each sentence until it was perfect before moving to the next, and (he alleges) never going back to revise them once he moves to the next. Tom's books are pretty good, and one suspects there's gotta be some revision at some stage. Maybe he was talking about first draft, it was never clear. But he does often site the creation of the first sentence of ANOTHER ROADSIDE ATTRACTION ("The Magician's underwear has just been found in a cardboard suitcase floating in a stagnant pond on the outskirts of Miami.") as a thing unto itself and that when he wrote and rewrote it till he was happy with it, claiming he had no idea who the magician was, and what came next. He describes it as insanely time consuming and inefficient way to write, also as the only way he can write. He further claims that he does not ever outline or plot, and truly never knows where he's headed. One quote at some point, which I'm paraphrasing: "How can I possibly know the where the book is going, or even what the next sentence will be until the sentence I'm working on is perfect?"
I personally have always used the very method George espouses, but until reading Swim/Pond I also always thought I was doing it wrong. How freeing that my favorite living author not only approves, but works the same way himself! Of course George also completes things, which is not quite a habit of mine. But even working endlessly is more joyful knowing the revision is always making the bits better.
What I always came up against was the advice from every writing teacher I've had, save one (David Milch) to never, ever read the previous days work or start revising until a draft was finished. They said it would be death. But I could never move on without tinkering. I would start each day reading the previous days work, or maybe reading from the top, and fix and fix and fix. As the work grew, I was able to start each day not from the top but from the top of the most recent section, if all else before had already been 'fixed' to satisfaction.
I was, however, when screenwriting, very able to move past place-holder 'bad versions' of scenes to progress (there was always an outline, index cards, etc, a map!). And then come back and write-for-real the lightweight placeholder scenes. One perk was that occasionally I learned that a 'bad version' could often be a pretty good version, or at least a signpost towards one.
I've been writing using more or less George's method, trying to adapt it to my own ways of working, and it has been working really well for me. Where I want to grow is listening to and trusting what George calls my micro-opinions. Because when I don't, I let certain aspects of the story harden too quickly, which in turn gets me stuck down some frustrating dead-ends.
For a (made-up) example, I might get stuck writing a scene where a character is driving to work. For whatever reason, I convince myself this scene is a load-bearing element of the story. But no matter how much I edit the scene, the energy still lags there.
What I have a bad habit of forgetting is that as a writer I have radical freedom to follow my micro-opinions. Why can't the character ride a helicopter to work? Or a helicopter? Or better yet, cut the scene altogether and start with him already at work in the dreaded meeting with the boss.
That freedom can really open up a story for me. And maybe that's the real source of the problem: I'm impatient and just want the story to settle into something firm. Instead, I need to learn to keep trusting my taste and the process. As George talks about here and elsewhere, being okay with living in that middle discomfort for as long as it takes.
Anyway, thanks for listening to my self-therapy session.
It sounds like you're ready, George, to write a habiltation thesis (like we do in France)... You swept a little under the rug when you wrote "that, when using this method, I don’t have to do much thinking about themes or plot or rising action or any of that." Isn't escalation rising action? That's the major takeaway for me here: I didn't have a name for the way story progresses. I like your take on what counts as escalation in the stories we've been reading. It has helped me to become a better reader, more attuned to what these stories are doing to me and how they do it.
I know this is really meta but I have to ask, isn’t the balance of what makes a readable, enticing story also partly having some of both credit and debit, in an appropriate for that story balance? What kind of role do people see for interplay between those enjoyable and not-so-enjoyable parts, both because both might be necessary in the story but also the additional benefit of cultivating relief and a sense of accomplishment for a reader having made it through a ‘debit section’, glad for its value and also glad it’s over (like climbing a mountain, for example). Like a satisfying challenge.
For me, the Shakespearean quoted passages in The Basement, as an example of this.
Passage below from post for ref:
I make a fix and next time I read that place…the “debit” moment is gone, replaced, I hope, by a “credit” moment.
This is such genius I have to read it really slowly. Or, it's so thrilling I can only read a little bit at a time. George is so by far the best short story teacher I've ever been exposed to...I don't know what else to say, or how strongly it can be said.
George's method (writing sentence by sentence, letting one sentence lead you to the next, followed by the P/N meter reaction and multiple edits) reminds me, somewhat, of John McPhee's. Here's McPhee, from his book Draft No. 4: "Blurt out, heave out, babble out something—anything—as a first draft. With that, you have achieved a sort of nucleus. Then, as you work it over and alter it, you begin to shape sentences that score higher with the ear and eye. Edit it again—top to bottom. The chances are that about now you’ll be seeing something that you are sort of eager for others to see. And all that takes time. What I have left out is the interstitial time. You finish that first awful blurting, and then you put the thing aside. You get in your car and drive home. On the way, your mind is still knitting at the words. You think of a better way to say something, a good phrase to correct a certain problem. Without the drafted version—if it did not exist—you obviously would not be thinking of things that would improve it. In short, you may be actually writing only two or three hours a day, but your mind, in one way or another, is working on it twenty-four hours a day—yes, while you sleep—but only if some sort of draft or earlier version already exists. Until it exists, writing has not really begun.”
Thinking about what George said about process and imagined an upside down pyramid like this:
WRITE READ WRITE READ WRITE READ WRITE READ WRITE READ WRITE READ
REWRITE READ REWRITE READ REWRITE READ REWRITE READ REWRITE
READ REWRITE READ REWRITE READ REWRITE READ REWRITE READ
REWRITE READ REWRITE READ REWRITE READ REWRITE READ
REWRITE READ REWRITE READ REWRITE READ REWRITE
READ REWRITE READ REWRITE READ REWRITE READ
REWRITE READ REWRITE READ REWRITE READ
REWRITE READ REWRITE READ REWRITE
READ REWRITE READ REWRITE READ
REWRITE READ REWRITE READ
REWRITE READ REWRITE
You’re getting close
Read !
I comment here often about the transcendent nature of George’s observations and advice, about the way Story Club is secretly Therapy Club. Well, today’s post did it again - it took reading, writing and editing up to the level of truly seeing, deeply listening and generously offering. I particularly loved this at the end: “So, in a way, writing like this can start to feel like a spiritual discipline: we’re training ourselves to observe accurately (and there are volumes to be written about the difficulty of this), then react in a way that makes things better.”
I’ve been involved in Story Club for a while now, and this method has helped inform my process also. I just got the news recently that my novella-in-flash, Pineville Trace won the Etchjngs Press(at the University of Indianapolis) Book prize and will be published soon. This is my first book to be published, and I am grateful for the Story Club community and how helpful it’s been supporting my writing life.
"My artistic journey included a pivotal moment at which I realized I’d been neglecting/ignoring my desire to be entertaining (by keeping humor out of my work). It was like I’d been fighting for my life in an alley and then looked down and noticed I had one hand behind my back."
I discovered this for myself, in a different realm, writing instructional materials. I'd try to sound professorial and expert, and had a terrible time writing and revising. But then I met a woman who I greatly admired for her entertaining and very helpful training videos (on Lynda.com), and was fascinated to find that who she was in those videos was who she was at lunch. And from then I tried to dial back the 'expert' me and begin the search for my own voice. It ended up freeing me tremendously, feeling confident that I was conveying information in a way that I knew well, once I paid attention to it. Made writing and revising much simpler.
I have heard this before, but still don’t understand how plot or other global aspects of story structure take care of themselves based on line-to-line revision. It is a fascinating concept to think about, the emergence of global structures based on local processes, that we also see in nature. But I seem to be missing something key about how this works in creating stories. Does anyone have further insights on this point? Examples or pointers for further reading? Thanks in advance for any help!
I really like the idea of writing as being a sort of entertainer, keeping the reader interested. Also, the idea of writing as a spiritual discipline is a good way of looking at it and keeping at it day after day, even when the spirit is very unwilling!
I wanted to express my gratitude for a couple of things this morning. First, I'm so thankful the Story Club community has remained a stronghold of respectful discourse, stocked with so much wisdom, insight, and kindness. Every week, I am inspired by the contributions of you wonderful people and it makes me so badly want to read your work!
Second, I was reading an old "Teen Titans" comic book from the 1980s when I stumbled upon a suspiciously familiar villain named Gizmo. I'm just thankful our Gizmo decided to use his powers for good instead of evil.
If you ever wondered what George Saunders would look like as an evil genius (instead of a benevolent one), I offer this: https://ibb.co/Pw9bG2w
Thanks for this reprisal of your method George.
Tom Robbins always claimed to use this method, essentially, but sentence by sentence, revising each sentence until it was perfect before moving to the next, and (he alleges) never going back to revise them once he moves to the next. Tom's books are pretty good, and one suspects there's gotta be some revision at some stage. Maybe he was talking about first draft, it was never clear. But he does often site the creation of the first sentence of ANOTHER ROADSIDE ATTRACTION ("The Magician's underwear has just been found in a cardboard suitcase floating in a stagnant pond on the outskirts of Miami.") as a thing unto itself and that when he wrote and rewrote it till he was happy with it, claiming he had no idea who the magician was, and what came next. He describes it as insanely time consuming and inefficient way to write, also as the only way he can write. He further claims that he does not ever outline or plot, and truly never knows where he's headed. One quote at some point, which I'm paraphrasing: "How can I possibly know the where the book is going, or even what the next sentence will be until the sentence I'm working on is perfect?"
I personally have always used the very method George espouses, but until reading Swim/Pond I also always thought I was doing it wrong. How freeing that my favorite living author not only approves, but works the same way himself! Of course George also completes things, which is not quite a habit of mine. But even working endlessly is more joyful knowing the revision is always making the bits better.
What I always came up against was the advice from every writing teacher I've had, save one (David Milch) to never, ever read the previous days work or start revising until a draft was finished. They said it would be death. But I could never move on without tinkering. I would start each day reading the previous days work, or maybe reading from the top, and fix and fix and fix. As the work grew, I was able to start each day not from the top but from the top of the most recent section, if all else before had already been 'fixed' to satisfaction.
I was, however, when screenwriting, very able to move past place-holder 'bad versions' of scenes to progress (there was always an outline, index cards, etc, a map!). And then come back and write-for-real the lightweight placeholder scenes. One perk was that occasionally I learned that a 'bad version' could often be a pretty good version, or at least a signpost towards one.
I've been writing using more or less George's method, trying to adapt it to my own ways of working, and it has been working really well for me. Where I want to grow is listening to and trusting what George calls my micro-opinions. Because when I don't, I let certain aspects of the story harden too quickly, which in turn gets me stuck down some frustrating dead-ends.
For a (made-up) example, I might get stuck writing a scene where a character is driving to work. For whatever reason, I convince myself this scene is a load-bearing element of the story. But no matter how much I edit the scene, the energy still lags there.
What I have a bad habit of forgetting is that as a writer I have radical freedom to follow my micro-opinions. Why can't the character ride a helicopter to work? Or a helicopter? Or better yet, cut the scene altogether and start with him already at work in the dreaded meeting with the boss.
That freedom can really open up a story for me. And maybe that's the real source of the problem: I'm impatient and just want the story to settle into something firm. Instead, I need to learn to keep trusting my taste and the process. As George talks about here and elsewhere, being okay with living in that middle discomfort for as long as it takes.
Anyway, thanks for listening to my self-therapy session.
Totally unrelated, but I saw a lovely avatar/caricature/portrait of you in El País today (Liberation Day was recently published in Spain). https://elpais.com/babelia/2024-04-18/el-dia-de-la-liberacion-de-george-saunders-como-gatitos-ciegos-en-un-sueno-amnesico.html
More great Carver advice
https://lithub.com/get-in-get-out-dont-linger-go-on-read-raymond-carvers-greatest-writing-advice/
It sounds like you're ready, George, to write a habiltation thesis (like we do in France)... You swept a little under the rug when you wrote "that, when using this method, I don’t have to do much thinking about themes or plot or rising action or any of that." Isn't escalation rising action? That's the major takeaway for me here: I didn't have a name for the way story progresses. I like your take on what counts as escalation in the stories we've been reading. It has helped me to become a better reader, more attuned to what these stories are doing to me and how they do it.
"some people are more generous readers than others, and insist on finishing whatever they start" I'm very generous. I finish the page : )
I know this is really meta but I have to ask, isn’t the balance of what makes a readable, enticing story also partly having some of both credit and debit, in an appropriate for that story balance? What kind of role do people see for interplay between those enjoyable and not-so-enjoyable parts, both because both might be necessary in the story but also the additional benefit of cultivating relief and a sense of accomplishment for a reader having made it through a ‘debit section’, glad for its value and also glad it’s over (like climbing a mountain, for example). Like a satisfying challenge.
For me, the Shakespearean quoted passages in The Basement, as an example of this.
Passage below from post for ref:
I make a fix and next time I read that place…the “debit” moment is gone, replaced, I hope, by a “credit” moment.
And my story just got better.
This is such genius I have to read it really slowly. Or, it's so thrilling I can only read a little bit at a time. George is so by far the best short story teacher I've ever been exposed to...I don't know what else to say, or how strongly it can be said.