George Saunders vs Stephen King: Two Short-Story Writers, Two Ways of Teaching Craft
Comparing George Saunders's A Swim in a Pond in the Rain and revision-as-attention with Stephen King's On Writing and daily discipline: two documented teaching voices on how stories are made and improved.
George Saunders and Stephen King are two of the best-known American short-story writers who have also written books about craft. King's On Writing teaches discipline and plain speech. Saunders's A Swim in a Pond in the Rain teaches reading and revision. People compare them because they offer two kinds of advice that complete each other: get the words down, then look again.
What is the core difference?
King's advice is mostly about starting and continuing: write every day, read constantly, follow the story, and revise later. His voice is practical and humorous, and his teaching is built from his own habits.
Saunders's advice is mostly about looking: read slowly, notice what each sentence does to you, and revise by repeatedly testing whether the story is alive. His voice is warm and exploratory, and his teaching comes from a classroom.
One gets you to the page. The other keeps you at it until the page is good.
What does King offer?
Stephen King wrote Carrie in 1974 and has published dozens of novels and collections, in a range of genres. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (2000) is part memoir and part guide. It recommends reading a lot and writing a lot, using plain language, avoiding adverbs, and rewriting with the door open. He says the first draft is for the writer, and the second draft is for the reader.
His book is widely recommended, and his advice about outlining and adverbs is not universal.
What does Saunders offer?
George Saunders, an American writer and professor in the Syracuse University creative writing program, is known for short story collections including CivilWarLand in Bad Decline (1996) and Tenth of December (2013), and the novel Lincoln in the Bardo (2017), which won the Booker Prize. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain (2021) grew out of his course on Russian short fiction.
In the book and in essays, he describes revision as a process of improving each sentence's effect and following an instinct for what feels alive. He also writes a newsletter on craft. His teaching is humane and specific, and based on his own experience.
How do they compare?
| Dimension | King | Saunders |
|---|---|---|
| Teaching text | On Writing (2000) | A Swim in a Pond in the Rain (2021) |
| Emphasis | Daily output; reading; plain language | Close reading; revision as attentive adjustment |
| Tempo | Fast drafts; steady quota | Slow, repeated revision |
| Method | Follow a situation; no outline | Start with a spark; revise toward the form |
| Genre | Horror, suspense, popular fiction | Literary short stories, satire, a historical novel |
| Recognition | Bestsellers; National Book Foundation medal | Booker Prize for Lincoln in the Bardo (2017) |
| Typical question | Did you write today? | Is this sentence alive? |
When does each one fit?
King's approach fits when you are not producing: when the barrier is starting, finishing, or showing up. His rules about daily output and reading give a base.
Saunders's fits when you have drafts and they feel flat. His method of rereading the whole piece and testing each line is a way to find where the energy leaks.
Both reward patience, in different ways, and both rely on a belief that a story can be improved by paying attention.
What does this look like in practice?
A writer has a first draft of a story. A King-style step is to put the draft away, start the next project, and return after some weeks with fresh eyes, then cut and tighten. It treats time as a revision tool.
A Saunders-style step is to reread the draft from the beginning each time, stopping at every point where interest lags and making the smallest change that helps. The writer repeats this until the whole reads smoothly. The first gives distance. The second gives closeness. Many writers use both.
"I am writing [story or essay]. First, in King's style, set a daily word count and a schedule for the first draft, with a rule for when I will not look back. Then, in Saunders's style, design a revision pass in which I reread from the top, mark each place where my attention drops, and make the smallest change that restores it. Do not write the story for me."
Why it works: a quota produces pages and a reread finds what to fix.
Can you use both together?
Yes. They suit different stages of the same process, and both of them value reading as a foundation for writing. Their advice is practical because it is rooted in habits they have followed for decades.
Do not turn either into dogma. Both note that writers differ and that methods should be tried and adapted.
"Choose a short story you admire: [title]. Reading it slowly, tell me at each paragraph what the story is doing to the reader, what question it raises, and which sentence changes direction. Then list two things I could try in my own work, and how I will judge whether they worked."
Why it works: close reading trains the attention that revision needs.
For a related comparison, see Stephen King vs Joan Didion.
Where to go next
George Saunders sits in the Writer & Cultural Critic category and Stephen King in Creative Visionary. For the originals, read On Writing by King and A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by Saunders.
Frequently asked questions
What is A Swim in a Pond in the Rain?
It is George Saunders's 2021 book based on his Syracuse University course on the Russian short story. It reads seven stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, with Saunders's commentary on how each works and what a writer can learn. It is both an anthology and a manual of craft. The method is close reading, with attention to how a story moves the reader moment by moment.
How does Saunders describe revision?
He describes revision as a process of making many small adjustments, rereading from the start, and asking whether each element is doing its job, comparing the work to a dial being turned until the effect is right. He talks of the writer's intuition developing through repeated reading. His essays in The Braindead Megaphone (2007) and his teaching describe the process.
Do either of them outline?
Neither plots in advance. King says he starts with a situation and follows the story, and Saunders says he starts with a small spark, such as an image or a sentence, and revises toward a form he finds along the way. They differ in tempo, with King writing quickly and Saunders revising intensively over many drafts. Saunders has described rereading a draft many times, adjusting a word here and a sentence there.
How do their genres differ?
King writes popular horror, suspense, and fantasy, in novels and stories, with a plain, conversational style. Saunders writes literary short fiction, often satirical and compassionate, in collections such as Tenth of December (2013), and the novel Lincoln in the Bardo (2017), which won the Booker Prize. Both write short stories and both have taught. Both are also known for generous teaching, in books, classrooms, interviews, and newsletters.
Where do they overlap?
Both treat the story as something the writer discovers and the reader experiences, both emphasize the sentence and the reader's attention, and both advise reading widely. Both also write with humor and humanity. Their advice is complementary: King on showing up and Saunders on looking again. Pairing a quota with a reread is a practical way of using both, as the process section above suggests.
Can AI help me use their methods?
It can help you reread a draft line by line and ask whether each sentence earns its place, or set a daily quota. It cannot find the sparks that stories begin with. Use it to structure your practice, and keep the intuition work yours. Use it to keep a schedule or to list questions about a draft, and make the artistic decisions yourself.
Written by Gareth Hoyle. Last updated 8 October 2026. Part of the authority.md guides library.
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