In Today’s Journal
* Introduction
* About Hemingway, Part 1
* Of Interest
Introduction
Occasionally I receive an email that offers me the gift of a truly great topic for a post in TNDJ. By “a great topic” I mean a topic I’ve always wanted to write about here, but one that didn’t occur to me without the catalyst of a writer asking a question.
I received just such an email from writer Andrew Schrater recently. Andrew’s question had to do with Hemingway’s “Iceberg Theory” and “minimalism vs. maximalism” and what that means for fiction writers today. What follows is my mostly verbatim response to his question.
About Hemingway, Part 1
I hope you won’t mind if I get a little “down in the weeds.”
The short answer to your question is this:
I absolutely LOVE Hemingway’s work. Although I occasionally study the works of other writers, he is literally the only master I keep going back to (and have done for years) in order to study his work and improve my own.
The medium answer is more involved.
First, a couple of notes re his Iceberg Theory, mostly to shove that aside and get it out of the way:
- Yes, his Iceberg Theory is absolutely about using colloquial, down-to-Earth language instead of the more flowery stuff most of his contemporaries were using. (He loved picking on Faulkner and F. Scott Fitzgerald.)
- But the core of his theory is that whereas only 1% of the STORY (not the description, characterization, etc.) is on the page, 99% of the story lurks below the surface. (Don’t quote me on the percentages. I might or might not have them wrong, but the ratio is about the same regardless.)
Second, with regard to the minimalist-maximalist stuff.
Both are terms introduced by critics, not writers. Anyone who gets too tightly wrapped around such labels will miss some important aspects of the craft, so caution on that. But I hasten to add, Don’t worry. We’ve all been there.
Third, as to the working writer’s use of description of the setting and how much description is necessary, it depends:
- If the characters (and the reader) will spend a good deal of time in that setting in either a major scene or in multiple scenes, the description—always invoking as many as possible of the five physical senses plus any appropriate emotional sense(s)—should be as thorough and all-inclusive as possible so the reader is almost physically pulled into the scene with the characters.
- If the characters will spend less time in the setting or if the scene is more or less insignificant, less description is necessary.
Normally it would be easier for me to point out the practicalities of this to you in my own writing (perhaps the best current example is the story I’m currently serializing on Stanbrough Writes), but you can also see it in the setting description in the excerpt you sent me of the old man’s shack in The Old Man and the Sea.
Pay close attention as you read over the description in that excerpt again. For your convenience, I’ve copy/pasted it here:
The shack was made of the tough budshields of the royal palm which are called guano and in it there was a bed, a table, one chair, and a place on the dirt to cook with charcoal. On the brown walls of the flattened, overlapping leaves of the sturdy fibered guano there was a picture in color of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and another of the Virgin Cobre. These were relics of his wife. Once there had been a tinted photograph of his wife on the wall but he had taken it down because it made him too lonely to see it and it was on the shelf in the corner under his clean shirt.
As you read that passage, do you feel as if you’re actually IN the shack? That’s all down to Hemingway. Although it FEELS as if he’s skimping on the description—it feels stark, largely due to the plain language—look at how truly in-depth it is:
- In the first sentence alone, he both focuses down on the construction of the (walls of the) shack and then mentions only in vague terms the “place on the dirt to cook with charcoal.” You don’t even need “round place” or “square place” in order to see that “place on the dirt to cook.” He intentionally leaves that to the reader because the shape of the fire place doesn’t really matter.
- On the other hand, do you also “see” in your reader’s mind the remnants of the “charcoal” (as opposed to say “charred sticks” or “charred wood” or “charred cardboard”)?
- Notice that he also doesn’t have to say “The floor was dirt” because he insinuated that with “place on the dirt to cook.”
- And there was one other extremely manipulative term—guano—which he at first mentions almost in passing in the first sentence with “which are called guano.” In the passage, he defines guano as “the tough budshields of the royal palm,” but I’m sure it wasn’t lost on him that “guano” is also the term commonly used to describe bat excrement.
Notice too that Hemingway wasn’t/isn’t only a great storyteller but a master at manipulating what the reader sees, hears, tastes, and feels in his own mind. That ability to manipulate the reader is all down to description and how you wield it.
Back tomorrow with Part 2.
Of Interest
40K Income Seminar… More Details and Questions