Ernest Hemingway: A Study of His Work and Writing Advice

Ernest Hemingway. What comes to mind when you hear this name? Is it the memory of a lecture hall, a particular feeling you had while reading his work, or an obscure fact about his life you can only dimly recall? No matter what you’re thinking of, it’s clear this name has had an impact on many of us.

When I hear Hemingway’s name, the brilliance of his writing immediately comes to mind. Before writing fiction, Hemingway worked as a reporter for the Kansas City Star, allowing him to hone a writing style particularly suited to the fast-paced world of journalism. His writing was distinct, concise, and powerful. Hemingway brought this style of writing to his fiction pursuits, and his ability to write complexity so simply became the very thing to propel him to stardom and garner him a fierce reputation that lives on today.

In this article, we will discuss Hemingway’s work, influence, advice, and why exactly we still care about the power of his name.

One True Sentence

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, literature was marked by a distinctively ornate and elaborate style of prose. The more complex and luxurious the writing, the more powerful the novel seemed. Hemingway’s writing challenged this mindset, and in effect, paved the way for a whole new world of literature to soon follow.

Joan Didion, the author of The Year of Magical Thinking, copied down pages from Hemingway’s novels to study the way his sentences worked. Annie Dillard, who won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, declared Hemingway to be one of her favorite authors and as having a big influence on her writing. Ezra Pound, a well-renowned American poet, was one of the first to recognize Hemingway as an incredible talent and inspiration.

Hemingway broke free from the mold that had become the written word; he challenged the limitations on what exactly made a fine novel, and his efforts have proven most fruitful. Hemingway’s advice is this: “Write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” Rather than be pulled down by the weight of intricacy, rather than let his voice be muddled by a constant focus on the flow of beautiful prose, he wrote the truth of his stories exactly as he had come to understand it.

“If I started to write elaborately, 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.” It is this emphasis on the power of simplicity and bare-bones truth that marks his particular perspective on writing. If we as writers cannot be true to ourselves and our stories from the very beginning, cannot cut out language that serves only to mask the strength of our craft, then we cannot even begin to write our stories with the candor they most certainly deserve.

80/20 Rule

Hemingway’s work demands focus from its readers. In order to fully understand his stories, we must look between the lines Hemingway has set for us. All of the information is there, but it sometimes lies in the words left unsaid or in the patterns uncovered on the second read or in the object that sits on the table unassumingly until it is anything but.

Hemingway once described his technique as leaving 80% of the story up to the reader to discover. He wrote that, “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.” In Hemingway’s efforts to write truly, there remains much left unsaid, but nothing left untold, and it is this powerful method of delivery that draws readers in and keeps them there.

In The Sun Also Rises, the dialogue is said to be simple and common, as if plucked from a conversation you yourself may have had just moments ago. It bores the idle reader who does not bother to look beneath the surface, but it propels the reader who seeks to learn the power behind what the characters cannot say. In Hemingway’s short stories, this same methodology is applied. Hemingway wrote about love, war, and hunting, with his life experiences often serving as the blueprint for his most powerful stories. The simplistic nature of his writing, coupled with the intricacy of the stories he was telling, makes for a reading experience unlike any other. There is something most rewarding about the so-called “lightbulb moment,” wherein the deeper meanings of his stories click for his readers, and it is this consistent reading experience that often makes a Hemingway reader for life.

No matter what genre you write in, there is something to be said about allowing your readers to come to important information on their own time. No one likes a romance with characters who spell out their every feeling and thought, just as no one enjoys a mystery that doesn’t allow its readers to speculate about possible conclusions. While obvious to some, the importance of this skill remains overlooked by many others. Hemingway’s readers value the chance to discover the depths of his stories, to identify meanings that aren’t spelled out on the page, and understanding the significance of this in the same way Hemingway clearly did is an essential lesson indeed.

Write What You Know

Hemingway served as a World War I Red Cross ambulance driver until July of 1918 when he suffered severe injuries from a mortar shell explosion. He went on to write about his many wartime experiences time and time again, with his memories serving as the basis for A Farewell to Arms and various short stories.

Between 1923 and 1927, Hemingway traveled to Pamplona, Spain every year for San Fermín, the annual bullfighting festival. The Sun Also Rises, published in 1926, portrays the lifestyle of bullfighting in Pamplona, directly drawing from his own experiences. Death in the Afternoon, his non-fiction novel on all things Spanish Bullfighting, was published in 1932 and is now considered one of the most well-written books on the subject.

The Old Man and The Sea, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1953 and is arguably one of Hemingway’s finest works, was set in Cuba, where Hemingway lived and worked for 22 years. The main character, Santiago, may have been inspired by Gregorio Fuentes, Hemingway’s fishing boat captain, and his experiences of life at sea.

If there’s one thing Hemingway stood by time and time again, it’s writing what he knew. His life experiences continually make appearances throughout his work, with Hemingway going as far as to create “Nick Adams,” a character featured in various short stories no less than two dozen times and who served as the vessel by which Hemingway’s experiences as a young man were made known to the public.

Hemingway never fully outlined his writing methodology in the way many other celebrated authors have done, but he did give us glimpses over the years, with one such example being, “I decided that I would write one story about each thing that I knew about. I was trying to do this all the time I was writing, and it was good and severe discipline.” This piece of advice may seem simple enough, but it’s certainly easier said than done. Readers seek out literature that makes them feel something, and the tried-and-true method of delivering those powerful emotions is to draw from our most valuable experiences. The bravest writers are the ones who allow their invaluable perspective to wholeheartedly inform their craft and who understand that some of the most powerful stories we can tell derive from some of our most painful life experiences. It is this kind of sacrifice that may very well result in your most striking work to date.

This Powerful Name Matters

Ernest Hemingway. This name means something. It means something to me, and it more than likely means something to you. Ernest Hemingway was a man who wrote about the struggles of being human. He drew from his lived experiences and offered his ideas to us, his readers, and we are better for it.

Writers cannot be everything for every person. We can only write what makes us feel and hope our stories land in the hands of those who feel in the same way we do. In the case of the many people who read Hemingway and reached greater heights in their writing, gained a new understanding of their lived experiences, or discovered a whole new world of literature, Ernest Hemingway most certainly matters a great deal.

Did you know that today, July 21st, is the late Ernest Hemingway’s birthday? In honor of the legacy he left behind, spend some time today reading his work—you might just learn something new! For more writerly tips and tricks, check out our blog! We’ve got everything from character-building advice to marketing secrets, and we can’t wait to share our wealth of knowledge with you. Enjoy!