Hemingway Week: It's Not About What You Write, but What You Leave Out

“All you have to do is write one true sentence.” -Hemingway

This is probably Hemingway’s most famous quotation. The agony of his writing experience is wrapped up in those 10 meagre words. Don’t misconstrue him. The sentence is wry and sarcastic. It’s hard to write one true sentence. Some writers go through their entire lives never having reached that goal, so our dearest Ernie spent his entire life trying to wrestle down the idea of “truth.”

He wanted to achieve absolute authenticity, and he learned how to do so quite by accident. One day his suitcase was stolen during a commute. He had to rewrite it, but he’d lost all the surface details. During that rewrite, he learned that knowing what underlies the things you write is more important than the things you write. Hemingway learned that if a writer knew what was beneath the surface, his work would automatically develop its own depth. This is how his famous iceberg theory was borne. It’s a theory of omission, and it’s why so much of our work in the workshop involves removing content rather than adding it.

The iceberg theory states that authors shouldn’t reveal the core of their stories. That information should rise through the work implicitly. In Hemingway’s words:

“A few things I have found to be true. If you leave out important things or events that you know about, the story is strengthened. If you leave out or skip something because you don’t know it, the story will be worthless. The test of any story is how very good the stuff is that you, not your editors, omit.”

In the past, we’ve discussed writing a chapter zero—that is the chapter of the book that readers will never see. It allows you to develop a more rounded idea of your characters and the world they live in. That knowledge will rise through your work even though you remove that chapter from prying eyes. Your omissions have power if you know what those omissions actually are.

The iceberg theory has another important effect: It prevents the writer from acting as an all-knowing, ever-present god. Narrators can only be in one place at a time, so if you’re writing as though they’re everywhere, even in every character’s brain, you won’t be able to write a single true sentence. Authenticity will evaporate, and your reader won’t believe a damned thing you say.

Writing is easy. All you have to do is write one true sentence… and the entire iceberg underneath.

Exercise

See if you can use Hemingway's theory of omission in a short or flash fiction story.