My thanks to Fee, for his good natured comment on a recent Hemingway post (see comment, left). Like many British readers, he feels Hemingway is over-rated by Americans, and pleads cultural differences. Specifically, Hemingway’s trademark style, the “relatively unvarying, staccato rhythm,” feela like somone is driving nails into his head. That’s serious. “I know you’re a Hemingway nut, but a lot of British readers and writers don’t really understand the .”
First, to set the record straight, I’m not a Hemingway nut. It was his life, as story material, that initially brought me to him. Along the way I came to respect and admire some of his fiction–mostly the early short stories. I like only one of his novels, “A Farewell to Arms,” and mostly, truth be known, I’d rather be reading other writers. Even British writers! For example, I’d rather settle down with Thackeray, Martin Amis, Hardy, Muriel Spark, even the Mitfords (I once actually met Jessica). Then why do I bring up Hemingway so much? Because, as Fee observes, he offers so many clear, “teachable” examples of the right way to approach doing fiction–examples that, I believe, are not bound by culture.
But culture is a legitimate issue here. Hemingway was certainly American to his marrow–worse, an American abroad whose interest in the natives rarely extended beyond that of an adventure tourist. [click to continue…]
When Ernest Hemingway was a young reporter, he filed stories from Europe for the Toronto Star. Many of them chronicled the struggles of various European countries to recover their stability following the catastrophe of WWI. Here, he observes the movement of refugees from X to X. Later he turned it into fiction.
Take a look at the two versions:
Hemingway - 2 Versions
In the Star dispatches, the purely informational terms and phrases are there because he was writing journalism; his primary responsibility was to convey objective information clearly and directly. And though his reporting had an aesthetic edge to it, to create emotion was not his job.
By contrast, look what happened when he “repurposed” the passage in his first volume of fiction, In Our Time. What differences to you see? Which version do you find more moving? More purely informative?
If you are a fiction writer, seeing these passages displayed side by side should confirm what you’ve learned and are still learning: [click to continue…]
Character name and gender can easily be overlooked when you’re launching a novel or story. But reader attention is too fragile to risk even the slightest distraction, so take care of the little things. Like this…
I screenedClint Eastwood’s Grand Torino the other day, and though I enjoyed it, I had to cringe when I heard a certain dialogue exchange between Walt (Eastwood), a Korean War Vet, and his young Vietnamese neighbor, Thao.
Thao: “How many?” Walt: “How many what?” Thao: “How many men did you kill?”
This could be perfectly decent dialogue if the line preceding “how many” were in need of quantifying, as in, “I killed a lot of men in the war.” (“How many?”) But there’s no such motivator. Thus “how many” is not an honest conversational response; rather, it’s an artificial dialogue extender. It’s a device, pure and simple, and a bad one.
Imagine saying to someone, without specific prompting, “when?”
In real life, there wouldn’t be a clue to what you were talking about, and you’d look pretty silly. My wife would probably fire back, “Is this some kind of joke?”
What’s even worse is how often this lame dialogue trick is trotted out––and by professionals. Whenever I run across it, a giant banner unfurls in my mind, shouting, “PAY NO ATTENTION TO THAT AUTHOR BEHIND THE CURTAIN,” because for the moment (and here’s what’s critical) the spell of the fiction is broken.
A few more slips of the the curtain like that and you’ve lost your reader.
Fiction writers often do too much. In most cases, if you showed it…
it’s done. Resist the temptation to “explain the punchline” with a needless “village explainer” summary of what the reader just saw.
It was a hit last fall, so we’re doing it again. The Powerful Narrative is returning to beautiful Wildacres Retreat Center in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, October 4-8, 2010.
The Powerful Narrative is is a workshop my wife Carol––a nonfiction writer and coach––and I developed focusing on the role of that powerful engine [...]
I am a desperado. I go to war every day. Self-motivation is my battleground, and many days I limp off it, bloody and ready to die.
Oh, I have my excuses: start with personal management skills so bizarre they could probably not be charted. Hands down, I am the world’s worst boss–of myself or or [...]
Fiction writers often take forever to write and revise a scene. Weeks, months, years later, they can still rewrite. Improvisors, by contrast, must build a scene instantly, by interacting in real time with other players. When it’s over it’s over. There’s no rewrite.
Could there possibly be two such different ways of reaching similar [...]
My thanks to Fee, for his good natured comment on a recent Hemingway post (see comment, left). Like many British readers, he feels Hemingway is over-rated by Americans, and pleads cultural differences. Specifically, Hemingway’s trademark style, the “relatively unvarying, staccato rhythm,” feela like somone is driving nails into his head. That’s serious. “I know you’re a Hemingway nut, but a lot of British readers and writers don’t really understand the .” 
