Hemingway's Iceberg Theory of Prose
You don't have to be a budding novelist to benefit from some of the advice offered by professional writers. Consider, for example, Ernest Hemingway's famous iceberg theory of prose, which he first articulated in his nonfiction book on bullfighting, Death in the Afternoon (Scribner, 1932):
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 iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing. A writer who appreciates the seriousness of writing so little that he is anxious to make people see he is formally educated, cultured, or well-bred, is merely a popinjay. And this too, remember: a serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.Whether we're writing essays and reports or the great American novel, these are points worth considering. Effective revising often means cutting material from a draft, not adding more to it.
And what should be cut? Empty introductions, for a start, and needless repetition, followed by anything that's obvious or irrelevant--information that readers already know or don't need to know.
Then we might reconsider our purpose for writing. Are we consistently informing or (if appropriate) entertaining our readers, or at some point have we lost track of our original aim and started showing off?
Finally, try reading your work out loud. If you start to hear yourself chattering like a parrot, stifle that annoying popinjay. That way your main points won't get lost in the chatter, and your readers will be extremely grateful.
More Advice From the Pros:
- How to Avoid Writing, by Robert Benchley
- "We Can Do Better": Dr. Seuss on Writing
- Writers on Writing: E.B. White
Image: Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
Comments
What the heck is Hemingway talking about? What’s with all the animals? And, the iceberg? Apparently he has omitted enough to leave me, his reader, dumbfounded, which actually may not be hard to do … if he’s talking about math! But, I don’t think he is.
He’s just saying you shouldn’t spell everything out, you should give the reader enough information to draw their own conclusions, often the same ones you would have drawn but there is no need for you to say it if you have done a good job setting up the story. Just like at the end of For Whom the Bell Tolls, you never actually see Robert Jordan die, but you know he does. I don’t always agree with this style, because sometimes it makes too many details be left out and muddles the clarity of the plot, or leaves out the nuances of story telling, but Hemingway came at writing from a very journalistic standpoint.