Ruthless Efficiency as Respect
Cover art by Chelsea Cardinal
George Saunders’ new craft book, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, dissects seven stories from Russia’s literary greats, including Chekhov and Tolstoy. I’m such a fan of Saunders and have been looking forward to the release of this book for a long time, and I’m glad to report that it is everything that I’d hoped for and more. I currently don’t have the ability to go into an MFA program or something similar, and reading this book makes me feel like I’m in a short story master class. I get to read amazing writing and learn what makes them tick, with the end, of course, of applying it to my own work.
The book is divided into seven “lessons” where Saunders goes through each story in specific, technical detail. For example, in the first section, he does a page-by-page reading of Chekhov’s “In the Cart”, identifying the purpose and effect of each—it’s an exercise I’d never done before and one that I might start doing now. The book isn’t as dry as that makes it sound, and Saunders also talks about more general truths about craft, the short story, and the writer’s life.
One thing that struck me from this book is what Saunders calls the “ruthless efficiency” principle. Because the short story form requires economy, each word must do some heavy lifting, or else get cut:
Everything in a story should be to purpose. Our working assumption is that nothing exists in a story by chance or merely to serve some documentary function. Every element should be a little poem, freighted with subtle meaning that is in connection with the story’s purpose.
Most of my projects are in novel form, where such economy might not be a paramount concern, but the principle nonetheless makes me rethink some of my drafting choices. I often worry that I’m meandering or that I’m repeating myself and as a new-ish writer, I know it comes from insecurity. I think that I’m not able fully to communicate the ideas in my head and so I end up overexplaining. I write chapters of info dumps that I almost always pare down in revisions, or backstory scenes that get edited out entirely.
Using “The Singers” by Ivan Turgenev, Saunders talks about the heart of the story, and how each line should contribute to that heart in some way. He demonstrates this in part by an exercise by which he revises a paragraph down to its essence by examining each word or phrase and repeatedly asking, “How is this meaningful?” It’s a question that I’m now finding myself asking more and more as I revise.
Ruthless efficiency may sound like it could be a German automaker’s slogan, but more than a principle of economy, it is also tied to the relationship between writer and reader. Saunders says:
A story is a frank, intimate conversation between equals. We keep reading because we feel respected by the writer. We feel her, over there on the production end of the process, imagining that we are as intelligent and worldly and curious as she is. Because she’s paying attention to where we are (where she’s put us), she knows when we are “expecting a change” or “feeling skeptical of this new development” or “getting tired of this episode.”
That really gave me a new perspective on what I’m doing and my relationship with the reader. I’m realizing how I should aim to not waste my interlocutor’s time, but also defaulting to the belief that they are full enough beings to understand what I’m saying. That I don’t need to overexplain or repeat myself, or to beat around the bush or to lecture. Being efficient is a means of moving toward that sense of an equal footing, and more importantly, it’s a sign of respect.