There’s something about studying writers in a college near New York City. I envision writers like Ernest Hemingway, meeting with publishers and drinking at bars downtown. They have become real, not ghosts behind the words on a page.
Hemingway, like many others, didn’t begin his journey in literary fame. He was first a journalist with a notable style — he wrote the news as a narrative. The people featured were characters in a story.
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Hemingway’s past as a journalist influenced his career as an author. He writes simple, concise sentences, and his characters portray how people think, talk and act. His prose is strong, emotional and powerful.
Go back to your notebooks and look at your writing. Dissect your stories and experiment. Try to think as a literary genius.
Lessons from Hemingway:
1. Write from your personal experiences.
Write what you know, and your readers will experience it too because it was real for you.
“Write about what you know and write truly and tell them all where they can place it...Books should be about the people you know, that you love and hate, not about the people you study about.” – Ernest Hemingway, "On Writing"
2. Don’t describe the emotion. Show it.
Avoid describing how someone is feeling or what something feels like. Let the reader use his or her imagination.
“You see I'm trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across -- not to just depict life -- or criticize it -- but to actually make it alive. (...) You can't do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful. Because if it is all beautiful you can't believe in it.” – Ernest Hemingway, "On Writing"
3. Write simple, concise sentences.
Write in a Biblical style. Parables are told simply, but there is much wisdom behind the stories. The reader will always make connections.
“If I started to write elaborately, or like someone introducing or presenting something, I found that I could cut that scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written.” – Ernest Hemingway, "A Moveable Feast"
4. Leave mystery by learning to omit.
Take away a part of the story, usually the best part, and it will make the story better. The reader feels more than what they understand.
“If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.” – Ernest Hemingway, "On Writing"
5. Conquer writer's block.
Write what is true, whether it is something you know or had heard.
“I would...stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, ‘All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.’ (...) It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say." – Ernest Hemingway, "On Writing"
