{"id":176,"date":"2011-05-18T02:29:00","date_gmt":"2011-05-18T02:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anne.myupcomingsite.com\/hemingways-rules-for-concise-writing\/"},"modified":"2013-08-05T20:31:10","modified_gmt":"2013-08-05T20:31:10","slug":"hemingways-rules-for-concise-writing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/anne.myupcomingsite.com\/?p=176","title":{"rendered":"Hemingway’s Rules for Concise Writing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n
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Ernest Hemingway, East Africa, 1954.
\nPhotofest<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Ernest Hemingway is one of America’s great and original literary figures. Known as a man’s man, Hemingway lived a colorful life on his own terms — as a member\u00a0of the “lost generation” of WWI, as\u00a0a war-time journalist and author, and as an avid outdoorsman. His stories of war and sacrifice and of\u00a0men finding redemption in nature\u00a0feature\u00a0his trademark style of simple, straightforward prose.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n

In a letter to his publisher Charles Scribner in 1951,\u00a0Hemingway described how he felt about his book, The Old Man & the Sea, <\/em>a story set on the Cuban coast that tells of an old fisherman battling a swordfish for four days and four nights alone in his skiff: \u201cThis is the prose that I have been working for all my life that should read easily and simply and seem short and yet have all the dimensions of the visible world and the world of a man\u2019s spirit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hemingway\u00a0would go on to win a Pulitzer Prize for\u00a0that novel, whose main character exemplified the\u00a0type of\u00a0courageous heroes the novelist often\u00a0created…men\u00a0who faced danger straight on with courage and fortitude.<\/p>\n

The name of my blog is inspired by Hemingway, who once wrote, “I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well,<\/em> and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Here are\u00a0six trademarks of Hemingway\u2019s writing approach that should make you a better, more\u00a0effective writer:<\/p>\n

\u2022Start with the simplest things
\n\u2022Boil it down
\n\u2022Know what to leave out
\n\u2022Distrust adjectives
\n\u2022Learn to write a simple declarative sentence
\n\u2022Tell a story in six words<\/p>\n ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ernest Hemingway, East Africa, 1954. Photofest Ernest Hemingway is one of America’s great and original literary figures. Known as a man’s man, Hemingway lived a colorful life on his own<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[583,594],"class_list":["post-176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing-tips","tag-concise-writing","tag-ernest-hemingway"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anne.myupcomingsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anne.myupcomingsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anne.myupcomingsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anne.myupcomingsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anne.myupcomingsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=176"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/anne.myupcomingsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":755,"href":"https:\/\/anne.myupcomingsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions\/755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anne.myupcomingsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anne.myupcomingsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anne.myupcomingsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}