Inoticed that one. Interestingly, in Spanish the title was shifted to "Por quién doblan las campanas" (For Whom the Bells Toll). Not that I would read Hemingway in Spanish (or any Spanish-language writer in English, for that matter).
In a college English class, best thing I ever learned was, when writing, go ahead and write your paper, and then go back and cross out any words that are not necessary. Seems simple and kind of silly. I used that for years, in anything I wrote and MAN what a help. Best thing I ever learned in college (and.I was a math major). FYI: Hemingway would not have approved of my first sentence in this comment.
I must add, as child living in Cuba, I met the original Old Man Of The Sea. All school children visited his , Finca De Hemingway. I did not know what impact meeting this man would make later on. Thank you for your Channel..
Keep the energy from being too high or too low for too long. Start with a great ending and work backwards. Have interesting moments. Have interesting characters. Touch all the emotions. Funny, sad, angry, etc. Make it human. Show flaws in great people and greatness in flawed people.
I don't know how I stumbled upon this. I do know however that this was made with care and expertise in order to instruct and encourage writers everywhere. Thank you
I'd say you have made an important comment, Don. Hemingway broke the stodgy 19th century writing rules, and it helped him achieve fame and fortune in the 20th century. We should all be learning from the greats like Hemingway, but we should not be afraid to break rules when we must. In my experience, immature writers break the rules just because they can. They think they are so radical. Sadly, they end up as poor communicators. On the other hand, mature writers know when to break the rules and why they are doing it. We should all be breaking the rules when we must.
Rule #5: Know when to stop editing. In my quest for lean prose, I once starved a story by gradually removing salient details with each pass. The problem was I knew the characters and situations so well after multiple drafts that I unconsciously assumed the reader would be similarly familiar. It was like putting a fresh pencil in a sharpener and grinding until just a nub, thereby missing the point.
What Hemingway is doing is giving the tips to create a punchy, impactful style of writing, like his own. It is just one style though. His 'rules' create a particular texture and ethos to a story which matched his themes and content. Other writers may wish to create a different texture and ethos to match their own content and preoccupations.
Ha! We can all add our own rules. One of my personal rules is to fact-check. For example, "the write drunk, edit sober" thing is part of lore and not accurate. Ernest Hemingway put to rest rumors about the role of alcohol in his writing. He said, "My training was never to drink after dinner nor before I wrote nor while I was writing." Of course, we all probably know from experience we can't edit when we are under the influence of anything. Cognitive brain function is severely diminished. A spouse of friend correcting your work? Hmm. I discuss that in this video: th-cam.com/video/0khZSkKcIPI/w-d-xo.html
'The Boy in the Bubble' by Paul Simon is strikingly Hemingway in the opening lyric: "It was a slow day And the sun was beating On the soldiers by the side of the road There was a bright light A shattering of shop windows The bomb in the baby carriage Was wired to the radio." Echoes of Hemingway dispatches from In Our Time. One paragraph tells the entire story. Only two adjectives.
I greatly admire Hemingway but also Wilde and many other prose stylists who used long sentences, full of dependent clauses, which mimic both in form and content the variety of subtle and contradictory impulses of the human condition while at the same time induct the reader into the broad and majestic river of language that draws one forward into a mellifluous immersion in the music of language which differs only in kind, not in quality, to the mountain brook clarity of Earnest Hemingway.
I'm a visual artist writing a work statement at the moment. For me, Hemigway's style is akin to minimalist contemporary art. The key words here are -- "laconic" and "impact". Wilde is decorative arts, William Morris tapestry, Renaissance motifs. Both are hugely important for building good taste in all sorts of abstract thinking. But Hemingway is another level of modernity and relevance
These are great tips. Especially about the need for rewriting.. The story is created in the first draft. Rewriting transforms it into something readable. A third and maybe a fourth rewrite turn it into something others might actually want to read.
The writing positive rule really makes sense. Positive language is much more precise. If you say, "I did not feel good." that could mean you were feeling bad, or neutral. Negative language always bothers me for this reason. Inversely I think the rule can be broken for dialogue. Since realistic characters won't follow the rule, and also people use ambiguity to fool others. It might actually harm a story to have all the characters speaking, or thinking in positive language.
I absolutely love Hemingway. But... Wilde's novel is brilliant, too. I think it is a bit short-sighted to call his style tedious. It just requires a different mind-set to appreciate it.
The late great crime writer Elmore Leonard stated that Hemingway’s work had a profound influence on his writing style. The splendid economy of his writing over a span of over 60 years confirm the lessons he learned by appreciating Hemingway’s approach to effective writing.
Charles Dickens was my earliest realization of differing and personal writing styles, but now is the time to find, adapt, readapt, or merely ontinue to sharpen that individual writing style by any & virtually every human alive, The written word has never been as strong, so the Internet has been sculpting far greater communications for humanity.
JUST THE NAME HEMINGWAY MADE ME WANT TO VISIT KEY WEST FLORIDA FOR YEARS. NOW AT 75, I DID SO A FEW MONTHS AGO. THE TOUR OF HEMINGWAY'S HOME WAS UNIQUE AS WAS THE TOUR GUIDE FROM GERMANY, A STUDIED IN FRANCE. THE WALLS OF EVERY ROOM DESCRIBED SOME PART OF HEMINGWAY'S LIFE. FOR SOME REASON I RELATED MY LIFE TO HIM AND I DON'T KNOW WHY. PERHAPS MY LOVE OF CATS, AS HIS FELINE PALS REMAIN IN ANCESTRAL DNA, AND ARE BURIED ON SITE. HE WROTE FROM 6 AM TO 1230 THEN WENT DEEP SEA FISHING ONE OF HIS LOVES. HE WOULD VISIT IDAHO TO HUNT IN WINTER, AND NOW I UNDERSTAND WHY BEING BORN IN KANSAS. I WALKED THE STREETS AND VISITED OPEN AIR RESTAURANTS JUST IMAGINING HIS PRESENTS. THAN YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS.
A friend of mine had his wedding at the Hemingway House in Key West. When I went to Paris a few years ago, my favorite part was walking the streets and finding the places Hemingway wrote about in A Moveable Feast. I'm also a big fan of Ken Burns' documentaries so I've been waiting to watch this for years, since whenever they first announced it. 2021 felt so far away.
I'm going to start writing this year. Short stories and poems for the next twelve months. My life experiences can influence your free will. This is your one and only warning 🙂
Be confident when you write, don't be afraid to be unconventional. I've used the word "But" to start a sentence when I felt it was needed. And yes the best work will indeed have 3 maybe 4 draft's.
Very good advice. I was prepared to discard what you were about to say? After listening I found myself agreeing with you! "Keep it short and sweet" In today reality of texting. Keep one thoughts to 15 to 20 words so it can be read.
Yes. I enjoyed many of his short stories, and I liked "The Old Man and the Sea". I also liked his nonfiction "Death in the Afternoon". I never finished anything else he wrote because his sparse language lacked flair, and got boring.
@@peterpuleo2904 this is the risk. It's frustrating when writing courses suggest we write like Hemingway. His style is not appropriate for all writers, or writing, by any means, and is based in its own metaphysics and world view. Still, good to have in your toolkit 👍
Yep. But literature isn’t really journalism, is it? They kinda serve different purposes. Journalism is to inform. Literature should entertain and inspire, at least in my view.
@@tacktful this. Hemingway wrote at a time when reading was a pursuit for high faluting educated types....so he broke from convention and wrote like a layman which made his books an easy read for even the most barely literate person....
I re-read it a few months ago. It is so haunting, so human. We all need to have more strength of spirit like the old man. It's a worthwhile read for the COVID-19 era or anytime.
thank you.... the Hemingway personification in Woody Allen's "Midnight in Paris" comes to mind..... well done. short clips from a small town or city neighborhood..... punch writing...... works.
I'm glad you received value from the video. Thank you for your comment. Back when I taught hour-long classes on the university level, I summarized points for students. You know, "Tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them." Should I do that for a 6-minute video? I think I would get complaints for being redundant. That's why I seldom do it in videos. People would leave because they would say, "You just said that" and not watch to the end. I offer expanded content for almost all of my videos and normally include a "round-up" in them. I appreciate what you're saying, but it is hard enough to retain eyes, and repeating myself will kill viewing time.
@@VelocityWriting Hi & thanks for the answer. I see the conundrum, but I thought of just listing the four rules on a single page, without any further comment, at the end, as a summary, so that the interested listener can take one screenshot instead of four. - The rules are indeed worth gold!
Thanks Jan. You are not wrong. I agree with you. Others have too. A few have even listed the four rules in the comments. I always delete them because I think all "spoilers" (books, movies, etc.) do not deserve to be heard. I strongly believe in free speech, but am equally strong in my beliefs about bad manners. I invest a lot of time in my videos and spoilers are unwelcome. However, know that I've been rethinking the need for summaries in my videos, so your comment was valuable to me.
Henry James probably epitomizes the long sentence. His late work had a distinctly ornate beauty, but this advice cuts to what strikes an impression most effectively and is a world more useful.
Thanks for this videos, I am a writer myself so this is pretty helpful. I tried reading Hemmingway's short stories and they are awkward to read (If I can remember correctly.) but I find Hemmingway's life fascinating.
Good reminder, Dave. I've been to the Hemingway Home and Museum in Key West. Writers will have a positive experience visiting the place where he lived and worked from 1931 to 1939. I've also visited a few of his hangouts in Paris.
Can I add another great piece of advice? George Orwell told us to go over our work and cut out as many adjectives as possible. When we think we are done, cut out one more.
@@estebanb7166 being torn is compound interest for writing. if you like both, obey the 80/20 rule to have constraint. if constraint is a creative blocker, put on paper how you would best sum up your topic orally. if none of this helps, put up a corpus of 3 texts coming from your Praise list, observe yourself resonating with some parts of the text. try to get into that state of mind and scream write it. another one that helped greatly for me was "write drunk, edit sober" good luck
Beg to differ. Adjectives tell the story. Yes, they must be crisp, and apropos; but they are essential to a description. Without adjectives, every story would just be "Boy Meets Girl." But when you have, say, "Homely Boy Meets Beautiful Girl", now you have a story.
@@estebanb7166 Agreed. I was taught: "If you come across an adjective: Kill it." (Can't remember who said that.) I applied it on all my texts and stories, only to end up with precise, on-point albeit clinical, dead prose. I now use adjectives again, but only very specific ones, mostly weird, unexpected ones that help define characters in subtle, almost subtextual ways. I think this is the way. Mostly, when people tell you: "Don't do this or that AT ALL" or "always do this" they're not right. There's always middle ground. Which is where your personal truth lies.
@@Ekkobelli You don’t need adjectives to provide descriptions. Turn “It was a rainy or cloudy or windy or stormy day” to “The clouds had hidden the sun. “As the wind showed no mercy. Trees danced in solidarity, shaking off their leaves. And water had dominated the streets.” No adjectives but still vividly written.
I have learned, over the years, that in almost any artistic endeavour, it's not what you do that matters the most, but what you Don't do! I first realised this when watching the Band's documentary movie, "The Last Waltz". During a guitar solo in the blues song, "Further on up the Road", I was instantly taken with the little stops and pauses that Eric Clapton sprinkled through his playing. Later in life, I became aware of the concepts in music of creating tension by not playing and then resolving it with your playing. You don't have to play a million notes to impress anybody - sometimes you can do it by not playing at all! The English actor and raconteur, Peter Ustinov summed it up perfectly in a story about his most valuable lesson as a young stage actor. During rehearsals for a play, a very tall and imposing member of the cast strolled over to Ustinov and asked, "And what are you doing in this scene, my boy?" A very nervous Ustinov stammered, "Um..um..n..nothing." Suddenly the other actor, a Knight of the British Theatre, leaned in close to Ustinov and roared, "Oh no you don't - that's what I'm bloody well doing!" Hemingway's take on writing is bit like the joke about how to be a successful sculptor. All you have to do is get a big rock and chisel off all the bits that don't look like the subject of your sculpture. Absurd, but also strangely true.
Hemingway is Hemingway. Style should depend on the subject matter and the author's voice; another author might prefer longer sentences and have a very good reason, too. And then you have the issue of different rhythm, syntax, etc. of various languages. It seems to me that "short" rules are arbitrary. Hemingway liked it that way, good for him. Years ago, Stephen King proposed eradicating adverbs altogether. Nonsense. There are very few rock-solid advice for writing and they are mostly not about style, but story, for example: to have some kind of conflict.
exactly! this video is advice on how to write like Hemingway, not how to write in general (or 'in specific'!). create your own style, but certainly writing is rewriting and rewriting and rewriting...
Couldn't agree more! My first rule for writing is that it is good to have something actually interesting to write about. Second rule, write the first chapter or paragraph last. Third rule, rewrite and rewrite until the rhythm is right.
agreed - i have read a couple writers on writing - and watched his video - and will watch others in the future - but not to let their style wholly supplant mine - but instead to gain some perspective on the art - and adopt what fits me - and ignore what doesn't
Please take this as an observation, not a criticism. Following one's own advice is difficult, even for the great Hemingway. In the quote at the 5 minute mark, he says, "No man [...] can fail to write well if he abides with them." Given your interpretation of his fourth piece of advice, "be positive, not negative," I submit this sentence should be written, "Any man [...] will write well if he abides with them."
I went back a few months ago to reread one of Hemingway's novels. It's quite a thing to read an artist's work when you are young and to bring all that extra baggage back to their work over the years. The rhythms of the work felt awkward and it was hard for me to get into it. Is it possible for literary tastes to change so much over the years? I'm certainly more critical of what I read now, but Hemingway was one of the authors that got me interested in literature. Also the advice about an good opening paragraph is simply cliche. It's the easiest thing to tell a novice and it's a great way to make them crazy. Is this opening interesting enough? Has it been overdone? Is there a better way to tell it? Shouldn't someone die in the first paragraph? What about starting it with a mystery? Maybe it should be like a Michael Bay movie and have a slow motion explosion in the opening paragraph.
Thank you for the thoughtful observations. Yes, both literature and literary tastes change for individuals and society. Remember, Hemingway is heralded as the greatest 20th century novelist and we have moved on. He broke new ground, but others are doing that now. For example, you point out that saying a good opening sentence is "simply cliche." That advice was new and fresh with Hemingway. He broke new ground that seems ordinary today. Oscar Wilde was considered the greatest 19th century popular writer in English by many people. He started "The Picture of Dorian Gray" with about a 125 word opening sentence. Some 18th and 19th century fiction had opening sentences that ran several pages. So, you have to keep these things in context. Hemingway was an exceptional writer. We call all learn from his approach and his sensibilities.
remember even the Nobel committee has subjective views; bob Dylan won for his songs--he was so surprised, for 6 months he refused to believe the award was nothing more than a hoax; Alice Munro won the Nobel. have you read her short stories? absolute nonsense.
Rule (5): Call the unamazing amazing. That's how mediocrity advertises itself in the business of writing. Rule (6): Strain for effect in your opening paragraph. That's how to grab the attention of readers who have no business reading in the first place (see Rule 5 above).
Sorry, you're a little too cynical for me. You are entitled to your opinion, but I'd say you are going 100 mph/kph down a dead-end street. Our job as communicators is to encode data (write) in a way so readers can easily decode our word symbols (read) them so that an exchange of consciousness takes place. A superficial elitism like yours will not change hearts and minds.
I'd enjoying a lot about the concept of writing I learned more from you Mr. VelocityWriting I briefly open my curiosity in writing. thank you and Godbless
I understand why "good" is generally preferable to "not bad". Yet, "The movie was not bad" has a subtly different meaning than "The movie was good." An example like this may be exception worth considering.
Yes, but that may be the main reason (along with his subject matter) why Locke does not sell many books. For example, his Oxford collection has average sales of $67 per month on Amazon. Meanwhile, just one Hemingway book, "A Farewell to Arms" is still selling at the rate of $ 10,240 per month. "For Whom the Bell Tolls" is doing $8,275 per month on Amazon. Those are the only two Hemingway titles I checked. So, short sentences win! :-) Of course, I hope you see I'm just playing. My facts are correct, but you need to consider the subject matter. That said, someone could probably make a load of money today if they re-wrote Locke so his circumlocutious sentences were more accessible to today's readers.
I've started writing in short sentences. Can you tell? I wrote some long sentences to see if I could do it. The longest was 250 words. I see it as an exercise in grammar.
I think for these great writers the style of writing is married to the vision . For lesser mortals it’s not easy to follow their principles of writing. And Hemingway’s vision? As Norman Mailer says, he taught us to be brave in a bad world and to be ready to die alone. But a good video worth a watch
English has no grammatical case endings; hence, it is very easy to "get lost" in a complex English sentence, as the function of a word in the sentence is not obvious from word endings the way it is in German, Russian, or other inflected languages. A typical German or Dutch sentence may need to be split into 2-3 sentences in English.
Another excellent resource for writers interested in honing their skills and ‘voice’ is George Orwell’s WHY I WRITE - a collection of four essays including POLITICS AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. Orwell clearly examines the power of writing exactly and the lazy mistakes writers often make.
Thanks for suggesting this resource. These days I'm wearing a t-shirt that says, "Let's Make Orwell Fiction Again." Orwell, above all, knew how political speech could be perverted by all political parties. Today, corporations are also engaged in the twisting of truth by the manipulation of words to change behavior.
VelocityWriting - LMOFA! LMFAO! “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
True story. I was forced to write a number of term papers in college. One professor objected to my use of short sentences. He wrote that my paper was "too journalistic" and gave it a "B." I took it as a compliment -- his comment, not the grade.
One that really bothers me, people will write about an experience , a meal for example and will say or write - "I was not disappointed" I hate that double negative.
Speaking of long sentences... Melville had em in spades... Moby dick's opening pages blew my mind... Fourteen commas, three colons, half a dozen semi colons before the first period shows up...
My high school chemistry teacher got me interested in Hemingway. I then read almost every book by Hemingway in the library. I still tend to binge read authors that I like. My own writing is limited to e-mails to customers and friends. I find that people stop reading after the first topic. If I start by telling a customer that I can start their job on Wednesday at 8:00a.m. and add that they could upgrade some feature for a certain amount, they will only remember that I will be there 8:00 a.m. Wednesday. If the order is reversed, they will reply yes or no to the upgrade and then ask when am I going to start.
With respect, CThunder, you stand alone. That's not flavor, that's jetsam and flotsam that no one wants to read. Good writing does appear in first drafts. It becomes evident after all pruning has taken place. Great writers like Oscar Wilde, Eudora Welty, G.K. Chesterton, Chekov, Allen Ginsberg, and William Faulkner and many others advise pruning away adjectives, adverbs and and all those other things an author thinks adds flavor. It is called "Killing your darlings." Stephen King, in his book on writing, put it this way: “Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler's heart, kill your darlings.”
@@VelocityWriting fair enough haha though again idk maybe you're right that i stand alone. I enjoy that kind of writing style. Maybe reading Inifinte Jest has gotten to my head since I've been stuck reading it for months, and that book is very wordy. Though that book is also controversial for that.
Ha! Your heart is in the right place if you like "Infinite Jest." I've been reading it for several years now. Not for the story, but the way David Foster Wallace triggers my creative juices. Reading a few pages sends my mind into hyperdrive. Also, I'm enchanted by a novel that has 388 footnotes. I would not say that Wallace is the benchmark for writing technique. His skills were more transcendent.
@@VelocityWriting yes! DFW and his style is truly uniquely his and i fell in love with it haha. I'm still falling in love with it since I'm only about halfway done, and I'm constantly re-reading pages and going back. I appreciate your response! Gave me a much needed reason to suck it up, take a step back and "kill my darlings" haha. All best!
In my writing, I extend Hemingway's advice about short opening paragraphs to most paragraphs. Unless there is a reason to do otherwise, I keep most paragraphs in the 3-5 sentence range. I use what I call the "pee" rule: If someone suddenly has the urge to pee just as they start the paragraph, they should be able to get to the end of the paragraph (a good stopping point) before they have to "go". This rule not only makes it more convenient for modern readers to start and stop reading as real life insists, but it also keeps things moving and helps turn the book into a page-turner with its own sustained momentum.
'In my writing, I extend Hemmingway's advice...' - If you are planning to be a writer it's a good idea to get the small details right - like spelling Hemingway Hemingway.
Do you know where you are, Foggy? This is the internet. Almost everything is a first draft---young people trying to learn, fast typers (or spell-checkers) creating typos. or people trying to express themselves in English as a second language. Be kind. Writers know the best writing begins to appear in the second or third draft, and we don't have opportunity for that kind of revision in this ephemeral medium.
That is interesting. David Farland in his wonderful course on enchanting prose recalls his female reader who loved his book so much that she stayed up all night to finish reading it AND didn't even go to the toilet AND landed in hospital with urinal infection. So... yeah...good that you care for your readers. The danger is real.
Hemingway's famous 1940 novel is, "For Whom the Bell Tolls." Please excuse the slip of the lip in this video.
You're forgiven.
It's a reference to a John Donne poem.
An innocent parapraxis. I survived.
You scared me!
Inoticed that one. Interestingly, in Spanish the title was shifted to "Por quién doblan las campanas" (For Whom the Bells Toll). Not that I would read Hemingway in Spanish (or any Spanish-language writer in English, for that matter).
My favourite literary joke:
"Why did the chicken cross the road?"
"To die. Alone. In the rain."
- Ernest Hemingway
Was that on a dark and stormy night? lol
Q: Why did the chicken cross the road? A: Because the road had made the chicken cross first. Getting even y'see.
This is hilarious. I feel like it sums up all his work.
On a dark. Stormy. Night.
This is a great challenge! Like a koan, I'll cling to it until I'm weary, unsure that the answer will...Papa you fox!
"The highest form of architecture is the building of a sentence." ~ CHARLES F. HAANEL
King Master Supreme - Damn!
that\s s really good saying. Thank you for it...
Lol any architect will tell you that’s a lie
@@Cherem777 cute saying, yes. My rule of thumb: don’t read poetry written by engineers and don’t walk across bridges designed by poets.
In a college English class, best thing I ever learned was, when writing, go ahead and write your paper, and then go back and cross out any words that are not necessary. Seems simple and kind of silly. I used that for years, in anything I wrote and MAN what a help. Best thing I ever learned in college (and.I was a math major). FYI: Hemingway would not have approved of my first sentence in this comment.
Great tip!
Should have applied it to this comment lol.
Thanks for the tip.
@@maskednil #Truth!
"I learned, write your paper, then cross out unnecessary words." There ya go! It is true.
@@tropicaldoodad somehow this feels clinical and dry compared to his version
I must add, as child living in Cuba, I met the original Old Man Of The Sea. All school children visited his , Finca De Hemingway. I did not know what impact meeting this man would make later on. Thank you for your Channel..
Thanks for sharing!
Keep the energy from being too high or too low for too long.
Start with a great ending and work backwards.
Have interesting moments. Have interesting characters.
Touch all the emotions. Funny, sad, angry, etc. Make it human.
Show flaws in great people and greatness in flawed people.
I will take your advice. Because it's good.
I don't know how I stumbled upon this. I do know however that this was made with care and expertise in order to instruct and encourage writers everywhere. Thank you
Don't forget to break every one of these rules when you must.
I'd say you have made an important comment, Don. Hemingway broke the stodgy 19th century writing rules, and it helped him achieve fame and fortune in the 20th century. We should all be learning from the greats like Hemingway, but we should not be afraid to break rules when we must.
In my experience, immature writers break the rules just because they can. They think they are so radical. Sadly, they end up as poor communicators. On the other hand, mature writers know when to break the rules and why they are doing it. We should all be breaking the rules when we must.
Hemingway deserves to be read along with many other writers with different styles. Not every writer needs to conform to Hemingway.
@@VelocityWriting You are a kind and gracious soul.
"Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist." Though said by Pablo Picasso it applies to all art forms.
@@happylittletrees5668 I think this has been said by every major figure of any art form lol
Rule #5: Know when to stop editing. In my quest for lean prose, I once starved a story by gradually removing salient details with each pass. The problem was I knew the characters and situations so well after multiple drafts that I unconsciously assumed the reader would be similarly familiar. It was like putting a fresh pencil in a sharpener and grinding until just a nub, thereby missing the point.
You make a good point which is often overlooked.
Great point. I totally agree.
I really liked the positive versus negative point, as I've never heard it before.
What Hemingway is doing is giving the tips to create a punchy, impactful style of writing, like his own. It is just one style though. His 'rules' create a particular texture and ethos to a story which matched his themes and content. Other writers may wish to create a different texture and ethos to match their own content and preoccupations.
Thank you for your intelligent analysis and application. I have said this many times. You said it better.
Rule 5: write drunk, edit sober.
Rule 6: marry a wife who can correct your bad spelling and poor punctuation.
Ha! We can all add our own rules. One of my personal rules is to fact-check. For example, "the write drunk, edit sober" thing is part of lore and not accurate. Ernest Hemingway put to rest rumors about the role of alcohol in his writing. He said, "My training was never to drink after dinner nor before I wrote nor while I was writing."
Of course, we all probably know from experience we can't edit when we are under the influence of anything. Cognitive brain function is severely diminished.
A spouse of friend correcting your work? Hmm. I discuss that in this video: th-cam.com/video/0khZSkKcIPI/w-d-xo.html
I'm married to a girl named Grammarly.
@@subscribe_to_bimble damn
'The Boy in the Bubble' by Paul Simon is strikingly Hemingway in the opening lyric:
"It was a slow day
And the sun was beating
On the soldiers by the side of the road
There was a bright light
A shattering of shop windows
The bomb in the baby carriage
Was wired to the radio."
Echoes of Hemingway dispatches from In Our Time. One paragraph tells the entire story. Only two adjectives.
I greatly admire Hemingway but also Wilde and many other prose stylists who used long sentences, full of dependent clauses, which mimic both in form and content the variety of subtle and contradictory impulses of the human condition while at the same time induct the reader into the broad and majestic river of language that draws one forward into a mellifluous immersion in the music of language which differs only in kind, not in quality, to the mountain brook clarity of Earnest Hemingway.
That was such a beautiful paragraph
Well put. ;v)
I'm a visual artist writing a work statement at the moment. For me, Hemigway's style is akin to minimalist contemporary art. The key words here are -- "laconic" and "impact". Wilde is decorative arts, William Morris tapestry, Renaissance motifs. Both are hugely important for building good taste in all sorts of abstract thinking. But Hemingway is another level of modernity and relevance
so beautiful words
These are great tips. Especially about the need for rewriting.. The story is created in the first draft. Rewriting transforms it into something readable. A third and maybe a fourth rewrite turn it into something others might actually want to read.
The writing positive rule really makes sense. Positive language is much more precise. If you say, "I did not feel good." that could mean you were feeling bad, or neutral. Negative language always bothers me for this reason. Inversely I think the rule can be broken for dialogue. Since realistic characters won't follow the rule, and also people use ambiguity to fool others. It might actually harm a story to have all the characters speaking, or thinking in positive language.
Thanks for explaining. I never understood what was wrong with it
I absolutely love Hemingway. But... Wilde's novel is brilliant, too. I think it is a bit short-sighted to call his style tedious. It just requires a different mind-set to appreciate it.
I concur.
Hemingway is like baking soda biscuits.
Wilde is like a complicated braided cinnamon bread.
Different, but both are good.
The late great crime writer Elmore Leonard stated that Hemingway’s work had a profound influence on his writing style. The splendid economy of his writing over a span of over 60 years confirm the lessons he learned by appreciating Hemingway’s approach to effective writing.
Absolutely!
Charles Dickens was my earliest realization of differing and personal writing styles, but now is the time to find, adapt, readapt, or merely ontinue to sharpen that individual writing style by any & virtually every human alive, The written word has never been as strong, so the Internet has been sculpting far greater communications for humanity.
Thank you Sir. I'll be pleased to watch another video about Jack London's Style of writing. keep up your work.
Awesome video. Clear and concise, like Hemingway himself
" For whom the bell tolls", "The old man n the sea" I love his style
JUST THE NAME HEMINGWAY MADE ME WANT TO VISIT KEY WEST FLORIDA FOR YEARS. NOW AT 75, I DID SO A FEW MONTHS AGO. THE TOUR OF HEMINGWAY'S HOME WAS UNIQUE AS WAS THE TOUR GUIDE FROM GERMANY, A STUDIED IN FRANCE. THE WALLS OF EVERY ROOM DESCRIBED SOME PART OF HEMINGWAY'S LIFE. FOR SOME REASON I RELATED MY LIFE TO HIM AND I DON'T KNOW WHY. PERHAPS MY LOVE OF CATS, AS HIS FELINE PALS REMAIN IN ANCESTRAL DNA, AND ARE BURIED ON SITE. HE WROTE FROM 6 AM TO 1230 THEN WENT DEEP SEA FISHING ONE OF HIS LOVES. HE WOULD VISIT IDAHO TO HUNT IN WINTER, AND NOW I UNDERSTAND WHY BEING BORN IN KANSAS. I WALKED THE STREETS AND VISITED OPEN AIR RESTAURANTS JUST IMAGINING HIS PRESENTS. THAN YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS.
A friend of mine had his wedding at the Hemingway House in Key West. When I went to Paris a few years ago, my favorite part was walking the streets and finding the places Hemingway wrote about in A Moveable Feast. I'm also a big fan of Ken Burns' documentaries so I've been waiting to watch this for years, since whenever they first announced it. 2021 felt so far away.
Stop shouting at us!
I'm going to start writing this year. Short stories and poems for the next twelve months. My life experiences can influence your free will. This is your one and only warning 🙂
Be confident when you write, don't be afraid to be unconventional. I've used the word "But" to start a sentence when I felt it was needed. And yes the best work will indeed have 3 maybe 4 draft's.
In my opinion "A farewell to arms" is his best
Yep.
Love Hemingway. There‘s before Hemingway and after Hemingway.
Very good advice. I was prepared to discard what you were about to say? After listening I found myself agreeing with you!
"Keep it short and sweet"
In today reality of texting. Keep one thoughts to 15 to 20 words so it can be read.
I am writing in German and always looking for helpful input. Thank you for this. Very precious.
The same rules easily apply to navigating Marriage, Career and your horrific new neighbors.
Short sentences, long sentences. It's about pacing and variation.
Most of his style is almost identical to what is taught in journalism courses.
Yes. I enjoyed many of his short stories, and I liked "The Old Man and the Sea". I also liked his nonfiction "Death in the Afternoon". I never finished anything else he wrote because his sparse language lacked flair, and got boring.
@@peterpuleo2904 this is the risk. It's frustrating when writing courses suggest we write like Hemingway. His style is not appropriate for all writers, or writing, by any means, and is based in its own metaphysics and world view. Still, good to have in your toolkit 👍
Yep. But literature isn’t really journalism, is it? They kinda serve different purposes. Journalism is to inform. Literature should entertain and inspire, at least in my view.
@@tacktful this. Hemingway wrote at a time when reading was a pursuit for high faluting educated types....so he broke from convention and wrote like a layman which made his books an easy read for even the most barely literate person....
@@peterpuleo2904 I never understood why Hemingway is supposed to be the best. Luckily Im not alone.
I loved "The Old Man and the Sea." The story is simple and powerful. I keep thinking about it.
I re-read it a few months ago. It is so haunting, so human. We all need to have more strength of spirit like the old man. It's a worthwhile read for the COVID-19 era or anytime.
AWildBard me too I read it in my own language. It was simple short and strong
@@jamesaritchie1 love the movie and especially Spencer Tracy but we have to admit he didn’t look like a starving fisherman.
thank you.... the Hemingway personification in Woody Allen's "Midnight in Paris" comes to mind..... well done.
short clips from a small town or city neighborhood..... punch writing...... works.
I'm an English Language and Literature student and I've just found your channel and I love it! Your speech is very clear and understandable!
Thank you! Much appreciated. Please spread the word about this channel.
@@VelocityWriting you are the most humble 'tone" that I ever heard, requesting so softly to subscribe. No wonder I became a fan.
The text was concise. The four rules were good advice.
Hi Velocity and thanks for the four rules. What the video lacked was listing the four excellent rules again at the end:)
I'm glad you received value from the video. Thank you for your comment. Back when I taught hour-long classes on the university level, I summarized points for students. You know, "Tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them." Should I do that for a 6-minute video? I think I would get complaints for being redundant. That's why I seldom do it in videos. People would leave because they would say, "You just said that" and not watch to the end. I offer expanded content for almost all of my videos and normally include a "round-up" in them. I appreciate what you're saying, but it is hard enough to retain eyes, and repeating myself will kill viewing time.
@@VelocityWriting Hi & thanks for the answer. I see the conundrum, but I thought of just listing the four rules on a single page, without any further comment, at the end, as a summary, so that the interested listener can take one screenshot instead of four. - The rules are indeed worth gold!
Thanks Jan. You are not wrong. I agree with you. Others have too. A few have even listed the four rules in the comments. I always delete them because I think all "spoilers" (books, movies, etc.) do not deserve to be heard. I strongly believe in free speech, but am equally strong in my beliefs about bad manners. I invest a lot of time in my videos and spoilers are unwelcome. However, know that I've been rethinking the need for summaries in my videos, so your comment was valuable to me.
Henry James probably epitomizes the long sentence. His late work had a distinctly ornate beauty, but this advice cuts to what strikes an impression most effectively and is a world more useful.
A Farewell to Arms is probably his most beloved and most enduring novel.
Thank you for these enlightening tips.
Glad it was helpful!
Thanks for this videos, I am a writer myself so this is pretty helpful. I tried reading Hemmingway's short stories and they are awkward to read (If I can remember correctly.) but I find Hemmingway's life fascinating.
You will enjoy visiting the Hemingway Home and Museum someday. You will get a lot out of it.
Good reminder, Dave. I've been to the Hemingway Home and Museum in Key West. Writers will have a positive experience visiting the place where he lived and worked from 1931 to 1939. I've also visited a few of his hangouts in Paris.
Can I add another great piece of advice? George Orwell told us to go over our work and cut out as many adjectives as possible. When we think we are done, cut out one more.
I love Orwell's writing, but I'm also a fan of judiciously deployed adjectives. I'm torn.
@@estebanb7166 being torn is compound interest for writing.
if you like both, obey the 80/20 rule to have constraint.
if constraint is a creative blocker, put on paper how you would best sum up your topic orally.
if none of this helps, put up a corpus of 3 texts coming from your Praise list, observe yourself resonating with some parts of the text. try to get into that state of mind and scream write it.
another one that helped greatly for me was "write drunk, edit sober"
good luck
Beg to differ.
Adjectives tell the story.
Yes, they must be crisp, and apropos; but they are essential to a description.
Without adjectives, every story would just be "Boy Meets Girl."
But when you have, say, "Homely Boy Meets Beautiful Girl", now you have a story.
@@estebanb7166 Agreed. I was taught: "If you come across an adjective: Kill it." (Can't remember who said that.) I applied it on all my texts and stories, only to end up with precise, on-point albeit clinical, dead prose. I now use adjectives again, but only very specific ones, mostly weird, unexpected ones that help define characters in subtle, almost subtextual ways. I think this is the way. Mostly, when people tell you: "Don't do this or that AT ALL" or "always do this" they're not right. There's always middle ground. Which is where your personal truth lies.
@@Ekkobelli You don’t need adjectives to provide descriptions. Turn “It was a rainy or cloudy or windy or stormy day” to “The clouds had hidden the sun. “As the wind showed no mercy. Trees danced in solidarity, shaking off their leaves. And water had dominated the streets.” No adjectives but still vividly written.
I have learned, over the years, that in almost any artistic endeavour, it's not what you do that matters the most, but what you Don't do!
I first realised this when watching the Band's documentary movie, "The Last Waltz". During a guitar solo in the blues song, "Further on up the Road", I was instantly taken with the little stops and pauses that Eric Clapton sprinkled through his playing. Later in life, I became aware of the concepts in music of creating tension by not playing and then resolving it with your playing. You don't have to play a million notes to impress anybody - sometimes you can do it by not playing at all!
The English actor and raconteur, Peter Ustinov summed it up perfectly in a story about his most valuable lesson as a young stage actor. During rehearsals for a play, a very tall and imposing member of the cast strolled over to Ustinov and asked, "And what are you doing in this scene, my boy?"
A very nervous Ustinov stammered, "Um..um..n..nothing."
Suddenly the other actor, a Knight of the British Theatre, leaned in close to Ustinov and roared, "Oh no you don't - that's what I'm bloody well doing!"
Hemingway's take on writing is bit like the joke about how to be a successful sculptor. All you have to do is get a big rock and chisel off all the bits that don't look like the subject of your sculpture. Absurd, but also strangely true.
Hemingway is Hemingway. Style should depend on the subject matter and the author's voice; another author might prefer longer sentences and have a very good reason, too. And then you have the issue of different rhythm, syntax, etc. of various languages. It seems to me that "short" rules are arbitrary. Hemingway liked it that way, good for him. Years ago, Stephen King proposed eradicating adverbs altogether. Nonsense. There are very few rock-solid advice for writing and they are mostly not about style, but story, for example: to have some kind of conflict.
exactly! this video is advice on how to write like Hemingway, not how to write in general (or 'in specific'!). create your own style, but certainly writing is rewriting and rewriting and rewriting...
Couldn't agree more! My first rule for writing is that it is good to have something actually interesting to write about. Second rule, write the first chapter or paragraph last. Third rule, rewrite and rewrite until the rhythm is right.
agreed - i have read a couple writers on writing - and watched his video - and will watch others in the future - but not to let their style wholly supplant mine - but instead to gain some perspective on the art - and adopt what fits me - and ignore what doesn't
I like how simple and concise this video was. No carrion no waste.
Hemingway would approve.
Now, cross out Concise and Carrion.
Wonderful Video! Thanks for sharing your ideas!
I subbed because you look like my 6th grade science teacher.The difference is you have a personality.
Yes...use short everything. Keep it simple. And keep refining your work to keep it sharp, crisp, and brief. Good luck.
Hemingway is amazing! Thank you for sharing these golden rules!
I completely understand and agree with this advice, and what I like the most is the short and clear explanation. John did an excellent job. Thanks.
Great tips! Hemingway was AWESOME!
Yes, I agree. He seems to be under-appreciated by some today. Nevertheless, there is much for writers to learn from reading his books.
@@VelocityWriting He remains among the best stylists of all time, despite the censorious politics of our time.
Thanks for creating this tutorial featuring the skills of Ernest Hemingway. Cheers!
Please take this as an observation, not a criticism. Following one's own advice is difficult, even for the great Hemingway. In the quote at the 5 minute mark, he says, "No man [...] can fail to write well if he abides with them." Given your interpretation of his fourth piece of advice, "be positive, not negative," I submit this sentence should be written, "Any man [...] will write well if he abides with them."
Powerful video. Thanks for the writing tips.
Excellent episode. I am currently trying to overcome my block.
A wonderful review of Hemingway's style. Thank you. Dale E. Manolakas, Legal Thriller writer
What’s a legal thriller?
Excellent video about Hemingway's writing style. I love it.
Thank you for sharing your knowledge of writing tips from Ernest Hemingway !!!! Gratefully, Robert S.J. Hu September 8, 2020.
I went back a few months ago to reread one of Hemingway's novels. It's quite a thing to read an artist's work when you are young and to bring all that extra baggage back to their work over the years. The rhythms of the work felt awkward and it was hard for me to get into it. Is it possible for literary tastes to change so much over the years? I'm certainly more critical of what I read now, but Hemingway was one of the authors that got me interested in literature.
Also the advice about an good opening paragraph is simply cliche. It's the easiest thing to tell a novice and it's a great way to make them crazy. Is this opening interesting enough? Has it been overdone? Is there a better way to tell it? Shouldn't someone die in the first paragraph? What about starting it with a mystery? Maybe it should be like a Michael Bay movie and have a slow motion explosion in the opening paragraph.
Thank you for the thoughtful observations. Yes, both literature and literary tastes change for individuals and society. Remember, Hemingway is heralded as the greatest 20th century novelist and we have moved on. He broke new ground, but others are doing that now.
For example, you point out that saying a good opening sentence is "simply cliche." That advice was new and fresh with Hemingway. He broke new ground that seems ordinary today. Oscar Wilde was considered the greatest 19th century popular writer in English by many people. He started "The Picture of Dorian Gray" with about a 125 word opening sentence. Some 18th and 19th century fiction had opening sentences that ran several pages. So, you have to keep these things in context.
Hemingway was an exceptional writer. We call all learn from his approach and his sensibilities.
remember even the Nobel committee has subjective views; bob Dylan won for his songs--he was so surprised, for 6 months he refused to believe the award was nothing more than a hoax; Alice Munro won the Nobel. have you read her short stories? absolute nonsense.
Yes, definitely...tastes in reading do change. We change as we mature so i suppose it's natural...
Rule (5): Call the unamazing amazing. That's how mediocrity advertises itself in the business of writing.
Rule (6): Strain for effect in your opening paragraph. That's how to grab the attention of readers who have no business reading in the first place (see Rule 5 above).
Sorry, you're a little too cynical for me. You are entitled to your opinion, but I'd say you are going 100 mph/kph down a dead-end street. Our job as communicators is to encode data (write) in a way so readers can easily decode our word symbols (read) them so that an exchange of consciousness takes place. A superficial elitism like yours will not change hearts and minds.
This omits “have something to say.” That lets out many writers, and reams of screed.
Excellent video. Useful. Effective.
I came across a sentence in William Faulkner's "The Bear" that was a page and a half long.
i found Faulkner impenitaterable at times altho , despite this, i did appreciate the quality.
I'd enjoying a lot about the concept of writing I learned more from you Mr. VelocityWriting I briefly open my curiosity in writing. thank you and Godbless
Thank you. Also, thank you for subscribing to my YT channel.
Thank you for this series of how the great ones write.
Excallent and benefitful guidance
I understand why "good" is generally preferable to "not bad". Yet, "The movie was not bad" has a subtly different meaning than "The movie was good." An example like this may be exception worth considering.
Thank you so much for contributing this!!
When you mentioned extended sentences, I immediately remembered reading John Locke who sometimes seems to fill more than a page with one sentence
Yes, but that may be the main reason (along with his subject matter) why Locke does not sell many books. For example, his Oxford collection has average sales of $67 per month on Amazon.
Meanwhile, just one Hemingway book, "A Farewell to Arms" is still selling at the rate of $ 10,240 per month. "For Whom the Bell Tolls" is doing $8,275 per month on Amazon. Those are the only two Hemingway titles I checked.
So, short sentences win! :-)
Of course, I hope you see I'm just playing. My facts are correct, but you need to consider the subject matter. That said, someone could probably make a load of money today if they re-wrote Locke so his circumlocutious sentences were more accessible to today's readers.
Thank you this was great
Thanks a lot for reminding!
Thank you so much for posting this informative/educative video on writing; that too, the tips coming from the best writer, Ernest Hemingway.
Thank you for this video
I've started writing in short sentences. Can you tell? I wrote some long sentences to see if I could do it. The longest was 250 words. I see it as an exercise in grammar.
Great video. To the point. Thank you.
Thanks for watching!
Hemingway is great. No doubts about that. But his rules are about dealing whith bad readers more than about what good writing is.
Great video. Thank you.
Nothing what I never heard before, but a very good explanation video. TY
I think for these great writers the style of writing is married to the vision . For lesser mortals it’s not easy to follow their principles of writing. And Hemingway’s vision? As Norman Mailer says, he taught us to be brave in a bad world and to be ready to die alone. But a good video worth a watch
Can somebody tell me why the face on the nobel medal is distorted?
Thanks for asking, but I have answered this question several times. Scroll down and you'll see it.
POSITIVELY great advice! Thank you!
English has no grammatical case endings; hence, it is very easy to "get lost" in a complex English sentence, as the function of a word in the sentence is not obvious from word endings the way it is in German, Russian, or other inflected languages. A typical German or Dutch sentence may need to be split into 2-3 sentences in English.
Excellent. Thanks a lot.
Another excellent resource for writers interested in honing their skills and ‘voice’ is George Orwell’s WHY I WRITE - a collection of four essays including POLITICS AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. Orwell clearly examines the power of writing exactly and the lazy mistakes writers often make.
Thanks for suggesting this resource. These days I'm wearing a t-shirt that says, "Let's Make Orwell Fiction Again." Orwell, above all, knew how political speech could be perverted by all political parties.
Today, corporations are also engaged in the twisting of truth by the manipulation of words to change behavior.
VelocityWriting - LMOFA! LMFAO!
“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
So Informative .thank you
True story. I was forced to write a number of term papers in college. One professor objected to my use of short sentences. He wrote that my paper was "too journalistic" and gave it a "B." I took it as a compliment -- his comment, not the grade.
Good story!
One that really bothers me, people will write about an experience , a meal for example and will say or write - "I was not disappointed" I hate that double negative.
Speaking of long sentences... Melville had em in spades... Moby dick's opening pages blew my mind... Fourteen commas, three colons, half a dozen semi colons before the first period shows up...
Melville > Hemingway
My high school chemistry teacher got me interested in Hemingway. I then read almost every book by Hemingway in the library. I still tend to binge read authors that I like.
My own writing is limited to e-mails to customers and friends. I find that people stop reading after the first topic. If I start by telling a customer that I can start their job on Wednesday at 8:00a.m. and add that they could upgrade some feature for a certain amount, they will only remember that I will be there 8:00 a.m. Wednesday. If the order is reversed, they will reply yes or no to the upgrade and then ask when am I going to start.
Interesting observation. J Anderson. See my video on writing a news story. Same principle. th-cam.com/video/flq29zwRrZA/w-d-xo.html
Thank you! Greetings from Brazil!
Welcome! Thanks for visiting. Did you subscribe and click the bell? More good stuff coming. :-)
@@VelocityWriting Yeah, I did
I was taught, always write what you know about.
And, be ruthless when pruning adverbs and adjectives.
And use short words instead of long ones.
Idk i just can't agree with that. I feel like taking much of that away removes all of its flavor
With respect, CThunder, you stand alone. That's not flavor, that's jetsam and flotsam that no one wants to read. Good writing does appear in first drafts. It becomes evident after all pruning has taken place.
Great writers like Oscar Wilde, Eudora Welty, G.K. Chesterton, Chekov, Allen Ginsberg, and William Faulkner and many others advise pruning away adjectives, adverbs and and all those other things an author thinks adds flavor. It is called "Killing your darlings."
Stephen King, in his book on writing, put it this way: “Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler's heart, kill your darlings.”
@@VelocityWriting fair enough haha though again idk maybe you're right that i stand alone. I enjoy that kind of writing style. Maybe reading Inifinte Jest has gotten to my head since I've been stuck reading it for months, and that book is very wordy. Though that book is also controversial for that.
Ha! Your heart is in the right place if you like "Infinite Jest." I've been reading it for several years now. Not for the story, but the way David Foster Wallace triggers my creative juices. Reading a few pages sends my mind into hyperdrive. Also, I'm enchanted by a novel that has 388 footnotes. I would not say that Wallace is the benchmark for writing technique. His skills were more transcendent.
@@VelocityWriting yes! DFW and his style is truly uniquely his and i fell in love with it haha. I'm still falling in love with it since I'm only about halfway done, and I'm constantly re-reading pages and going back. I appreciate your response! Gave me a much needed reason to suck it up, take a step back and "kill my darlings" haha. All best!
Excellent video. Worth watching.
Well said.
And now we have novels that read like they're written by copywriters - because they are written by copywriters.
I will use these tips thanks
Solid. Thank you for making this!
This video is great. Thank you. Love it really handy.
Thank you. This is helpful.
Thank you for the tips!
In my writing, I extend Hemingway's advice about short opening paragraphs to most paragraphs. Unless there is a reason to do otherwise, I keep most paragraphs in the 3-5 sentence range. I use what I call the "pee" rule: If someone suddenly has the urge to pee just as they start the paragraph, they should be able to get to the end of the paragraph (a good stopping point) before they have to "go". This rule not only makes it more convenient for modern readers to start and stop reading as real life insists, but it also keeps things moving and helps turn the book into a page-turner with its own sustained momentum.
'In my writing, I extend Hemmingway's advice...' - If you are planning to be a writer it's a good idea to get the small details right - like spelling Hemingway Hemingway.
Do you know where you are, Foggy? This is the internet. Almost everything is a first draft---young people trying to learn, fast typers (or spell-checkers) creating typos. or people trying to express themselves in English as a second language. Be kind. Writers know the best writing begins to appear in the second or third draft, and we don't have opportunity for that kind of revision in this ephemeral medium.
@@channelfogg6629 And yet, his comment was infinitely richer than yours. Who'd have thunk it?
@@VelocityWriting how refreshing it is to read such thing
That is interesting. David Farland in his wonderful course on enchanting prose recalls his female reader who loved his book so much that she stayed up all night to finish reading it AND didn't even go to the toilet AND landed in hospital with urinal infection. So... yeah...good that you care for your readers. The danger is real.
Thank you for the innovative approach!
Just subcribed. This is an awesome video for my report!
How do you quantify the term short?
I don't want to arrest their attention, I want to vault them into the story, to experience it from the first word.