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Hemingway's Writing Tips

Pamela Jo

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I almost forgive him for writing the most boring books I've ever had to read. Except for the pencil thing...but when you think about it a laptop is the ultimate pencil. Everything is erasable.,

Ernest Hemingway’s Writing Rules:⁣⁣⁣
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1: To get started, write one true sentence.⁣⁣⁣⁣
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“Sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, ‘Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now.’”⁣⁣⁣⁣
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2: Always stop for the day while you still know what will happen next.⁣⁣⁣⁣
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“The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day when you are writing a novel you will never be stuck.”⁣⁣⁣⁣
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3: Never think about the story when you’re not working.⁣⁣⁣⁣
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“I had learned already never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.”⁣⁣⁣⁣
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4: When it’s time to work again, always start by reading what you’ve written so far.⁣⁣⁣⁣
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“When it gets so long that you can’t do this every day read back two or three chapters each day; then each week read it all from the start.”⁣⁣⁣⁣
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5: Don’t describe an emotion—make it.⁣⁣⁣⁣
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“In writing for a newspaper you told what happened and, with one trick and another, you communicated the emotion aided by the element of timeliness which gives a certain emotion to any account of something that has happened on that day; but the real thing, the sequence of motion and fact which made the emotion and which would be as valid in a year or in ten years or, with luck and if you stated it purely enough, always, was beyond me...”⁣⁣
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6: Use a pencil. ⁣⁣⁣⁣
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“If you write with a pencil you get three different sights at it to see if the reader is getting what you want him to. First when you read it over; then when it is typed you get another chance to improve it, and again in the proof.”⁣⁣⁣⁣
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7: Be Brief.⁣⁣⁣⁣
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“It wasn’t by accident that the Gettysburg address was so short. The laws of prose writing are as immutable as those of flight, of mathematics, of physics.”
 
When I was a kid in school, we were made not only to read "Old Man and the Sea" but sit through an entire term of word by word pedantic analysis from our completely obsessed teacher. Painful. I often left the class thinking, there is no way Hemingway put that much meaning into every damned word. No way. I still stand by that. And I've never read another Hemingway book since.

I do like #2 and #5. Yup, great.

#3 and #6 are not for me. lol
 
I don't understand #5. He appears to be saying "do something I can't do," or am I misreading it?
I didnt get it at first either. No wonder the editors at the KC Star made him write short sentences. Some of the examples given here are so long and entangled the meaning gets lost.

It means make the reader feel the emotion. How do you feel when you see an angry outburst on the street? If your character is in a rage- your reader should have that feeling. Tho frankly Dude, your characters did no such thing for me.
 
What I get from his comment is that he knows how to make you feel fear because an ax murderer is active in your street now, but has no idea how to do it when describing something without any immediacy. Not sure how that qualifies as [actionable] advice?
 
What I get from his comment is that he knows how to make you feel fear because an ax murderer is active in your street now, but has no idea how to do it when describing something without any immediacy. Not sure how that qualifies as [actionable] advice?
The person compiling the advice extrapolated his words to mean make your reader feel the emotion instead of just describing it, which seems good advice to me. You can do as you like w it.
 
I took it as a version of show don't tell. The emotional version of it. Make the reader feel it instead of telling them how to feel. It's basic advice really.

He did make me feel bored and alone sitting on that boat. Maybe that's what he meant? :rolling-on-the-floor-laughing:
 
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