Hemingway’s Rules for Writing

 By Steve Pease writing as Michael Chandos

"My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way."

 

Earnest Hemingway developed his writing style writing for the Kansas City Star newspaper.  Their editorial style stressed short, concise and efficient writing, that made the best use of limited page space and minimized costs.

 

His Rules:  1. Use short sentences.  2. Avoid the use of adjectives, especially such extravagant ones as splendid, gorgeous, grand, magnificent, etc.  3. Eliminate every superfluous word.  4. Try to preserve the atmosphere of the speech in your quotation.  5. Both simplicity and good taste suggest home rather than residence and lives rather than resides.  6. Never use old slang.  7.Use revolver or pistol, not gun, unless a shotgun is meant.  8. Don’t say "He had his leg cut off in an accident." He wouldn’t have it done for anything.  9. He died of heart disease, not heart failure - everybody dies of heart failure.  10. Use vigorous English.

 

Newspaper ideals, yes, but fiction can learn from them. Use the right, best word. Short sentences. Don’t flaunt your English "weaving" skills with half-page long sentences and complex phrases. Write with vigorous, emotional language, and you won’t need an adjective or (shudder) an adverb. Be clear what your sentence says. Don’t get cute with your use of slang. Hammett uses some street slang, but it’s in the cadence of the sentence, not in spelling school "skul".

Other Hemingway quotes:

"Write the best story that you can and write it as straight as you can." A Moveable Feast

"Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the baroque is over." Death in the Afternoon

“Find what gave you the emotion; what the action was that gave you the excitement. Then, write it down making it clear so the reader will see it too and have the same feeling that you had." Monologue to the Maestro

"Try and write straight English, never using slang except in dialogue and then only when unavoidable."  From a letter to his sister

"Never confuse movement with action." Advice to Marlene Dietrich

“You see I’m trying in all my stories to get the feeling of actual life across - not to just depict life - or criticize it - but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me you actually experience the thing." Letter to his father

“Keep them people, people, people, and don’t let them get to be symbols.” Letter to John Dos Passos

“Don’t get discouraged because there’s a lot of mechanical work to writing. There is, and you can’t get out of it. I rewrote A Farewell to Arms at least fifty times. You’ve got to work it over." Advice to a writer

“On the Star you were forced to learn to write a simple declarative sentence. This is useful advice to anyone." Paris Review interview

 

“Write as long as you can live.” Green Hills of Africa