Aspiring writers and Ernest Hemingway

What Hemingway can teach aspiring writers.

Outline / talking points:

• If you've been to high school, you have probably read Hemingway's work. Major influence on writers from the mid-20th century onward.
• Non-flowery, unadorned style. Minimalist
• Background in journalism.
• The short declarative sentence.
• Wrote at a time when literature was first having to compete with electronic distractions—the radio, and Hemingway wrote in the early phase of the television age.
• If you read his work versus the typical 19th century novel, you can see a difference.
• (Reading from short story "The Battler")
• Telling a story through dialogue. Read: "Hills Like White Elephants."—Entire story consists of a conversation between a man and a woman.
• You can see Hemingway's influence today in particularly in writers of crime fiction like Elmore Leonard. (Good example of a more updated version of the minimalist style.)
• Recommended reading:
• The Old Man and the Sea (story about fisherman in Cuba where Hemingway spent a lot of time
• For Whom the Bell Tolls (Spanish civil war. Hemingway visited Spain during civil war of 1930s as journalist.)
• A Farewell to Arms (about an American serving with the Italian army in WWI; very closely parallels Hemingway's own experiences during WWI.)
• The Sun Also Rises -- American expatriates living in Paris in the 1920s. Hemingway lived in Paris during 1920s when trying to launch his writing career.

Negative:
• Tends to repeat a lot of the same themes. Believed that it was only valid for a writer to write from personal experience.
• If you haven't lived it, don't try to write about it.
• As you gathered from the list above, most of Hemingway's work was semi-autobiographical.
• There is no place in the Hemingway mindset for science fiction, stories of the supernatural, or even historical fiction, like the novels of James Michener or Edward Rutherford. Adventure fiction like the novels of Dan Brown or spy fiction like that of Frederick Forsyth also drawn from research and imagination.
•Good for style and technique, however imposes a topical or thematic restriction that most writers will rebel against.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• writing
• writers
• Hemingway
• literature
• fiction
• plot
• style
• novel
• story
• The Sun Also Rises
• For Whom the Bell Tolls
• A Farewell to Arms

[vidbid1]

I agree. Hemingway's style is awesome, but you don't have to live it to write it.

[GechlangloveLymeng]

Thank for this summary.

It was very helpful for my research paper.

[Jerridable]

How does Hemingway's paratactic prose differ from previous paratactic works?

[MrNed78]

thanks for posting, found this summary very useful - half way through reading Winner Take Nothing short story collection. His lean narrative creates great tension effortlessly and very refreshing to read