Open a book by Hemingway. Pick a paragraph at random. Most of the sentences will have fewer than ten words.
Now, look at the words in those sentences. Do any stray over ten characters in length? Not likely.
That would go against the Hemingway formula: short words in simple sentences.
That’s how wannabes try to imitate him. They forgo detailed descriptions. They swear off sentences with multiple clauses. And there’s something to that style: the writing whips by. But it rattles as it goes.
When read aloud, the prose clatters like a tin can kicked down a cobbled road.
The sound is off, which suggests Hemingway played more than that one tune of short words in simple sentences.
Yes, he could ramble for effect. Check the third sentence in our extract from The Old Man and The Sea:
Never have I seen a greater, or more beautiful, or a calmer or more noble thing than you, brother.
It’s 19 words long and laden with adjectives and adverbs. It’s also pure music. It breaks up the staccato burst of one-clause wonders.
Hemingway gets away with his long sentences because they don’t slacken the pace of his stories. If anything, the tempo builds.
It builds through short phrases linked by conjunctions: ‘or… or… or… and… and… and…’
To truly write like Hemingway, write with variety. Weave in long sentences. Stop others short. Make your paragraphs eddy and flow like the currents that bore an old fisherman home.
That would be more than imitation. That would be a great, beautiful, noble thing.
Aidan Clifford writes for Pinstripe Poets – artists who love their day jobs. This post is part of a series called ‘Write like the Greats’. See the rest here.
