these five books fundamentally changed the way i write

Added: 2026-05-18

[00:00:00]Here are five books that have taught me more about writing than any writing course, plus the specific craft technique I've learned from each one.

[00:00:06]And even if you're not a writer, they're all great reads anyway. First up is Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson. This collection of loosely linked stories about an addict at rock bottom is what turned me from a Johnson fan into a disciple. There is so much to excavate here from Johnson's chemistry-altering prose, but the most important thing I've learned from him is economy of language.

[00:00:23]There's not a single unintentional word in this entire book, and I flip through it all the time when I'm writing to remind myself how energizing a sentence can be when it's stripped to its essential elements. Next up is the very underrated Desperate Characters by Paula Fox. I read this for the first time earlier this year, and it hasn't left the stack of books in my writing nook since. It's a novel about a middle-class couple in Brooklyn that starts with a stray cat bite and ends in a deliciously understated moment of catharsis. I'm still unpacking craft wisdom from this book, but so far the aspect of Fox's writing I've found most instructive is the way she balances detail and omission to suggest at her characters' feelings without ever stating them explicitly, which is exactly the kind of elegant and subtle emotional writing I strive to emulate. The next book is Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor. This novel has been pickling in my brain juice ever since I read it, and I'm still in awe of what Melchor achieved with it. The story takes place in a Mexican village and uses multiple narrative perspectives to uncover the details [music] of a murder and the rampant prejudice and misogyny at the root of the crime. It's gratuitous and relentless and utterly unflinching, but Melchor's deeply subjective sense of voice makes the novel addictively immersive. And even though my writing is very different from hers, I've learned so much about how to harness perspective to submerge readers in a narrative world through this book.

[00:01:35][music] Next is Provinces of Night by William Gay. This languid tale about a poor family in rural Tennessee is sizzling with spectacular imagery, but the technique that makes Gay's writing feel totally singular is his use of symmetry. Throughout the book, he'll repeat scenes with slight variations at different times to create a kind of mirrored effect across the narrative. I love this technique because it allows us as readers to feel what's going to happen [music] when we arrive in a recurring scene without having to be told and infuses the entire story with a sense of inevitability. And last but certainly not least is A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin. We could probably do a whole series of craft videos on this sublime collection of Lucia Berlin's short fiction, but for the sake of brevity I'll just mention the technique I think about most, which is her ability to examine big existential [music] themes through mundane moments and turn the ordinary into metaphors for the profound. Berlin is an absolute wizard when it comes to injecting banal objects like puzzle pieces or x-ray scans with multi-layered significance. And the best part is she does it all in a way that's so authentic to the narrative world you don't even notice it happening. Let me know in the comments which books have shaped you as a writer and follow to help me spread the word that books matter more than ever.