Today, we scroll past clickbait, skim walls of text, and still crave something that feels real. Hemingway’s advice isn’t just for novelists, but for anyone who writes. Journalists, marketers, copywriters, and even the poor soul drafting emails on deadline.
What made his style revolutionary was the restraint. The trust in the reader. He left room between the lines. You never got the whole story, just the part you needed to feel it.
So, whether you're hammering out a novel or tightening your blog post, the following 13 tips—straight from Hemingway’s philosophy—will change how you write. The Foundations—Hemingway’s Core Principles
1. Use Short Sentences
Short sentences help you hit. They leave no room for confusion or escape. Hemingway wrote as if he were reporting from the front. No lace. No soft landings.
Read A Farewell to Arms. Then read anything from the Victorian era. One feels like a punch; the other, a parlor trick. He achieved certain effects by keeping his sentences short, clarity, dramatic effect, variety, and melodic quality. They made you choose your words carefully.
Write the sentence. Cut it in half. Then see if it still works. If it does, keep it.
2. Write in Active Voice
Hemingway didn’t write what was done to the thing (passive voice). He wrote what the man did to the thing. Active voice is so much more than a grammar rule. It's movement. It’s cause and effect. "Someone shot the lion," not "the lion was shot."
He wrote in Death in the Afternoon, “Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over.” And action builds structure. Every sentence needs a spine. Make sure it stands up.
3. Show, Don’t Tell
Hemingway’s most famous rule wasn’t about what you say, but it was about what you leave out. He called it the iceberg theory: only a small part should show, but it must carry the weight of everything beneath.
In Hills Like White Elephants, two characters talk about the weather, beer, and train schedules. But the real conversation—about abortion—never surfaces. You feel it, though. It hums underneath.
Don’t explain. Don’t label. Don’t hand-hold. Just show what they do, how they look away, what they don’t say. The reader will catch the rest.
4. Stop While You Still Know What Happens Next
Hemingway had a trick. When the writing flowed, he walked away—obviously not out of laziness, but to keep the thread alive. He reasoned that doing so would keep your subconscious alert all the time, rather than tiring your brain out.
It sounds backward. Most people write until they’re dry. But he wrote until he was still thirsty. That way, when he returned the next day, he knew exactly where to start. No fumbling. No false starts.
Want to beat the blank page? Leave yourself breadcrumbs the night before.
5. Write One True Sentence
When stuck, Hemingway searched for one sentence he knew to be true. Not clever. Not poetic. Just honest. That single line broke the dam.
In A Movable Feast, his memoir, Hemingway wrote, “All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.”
Truth, in his world, wasn’t big or abstract. It was something you’d seen, felt, and survived. It lived in the details (how someone sips soup after bad news, how light bends in a cheap motel).
Start small. Write one thing that feels real. Build from there.
6. Edit Ruthlessly
He cut without mercy. Not because he hated his words, but because he loved the reader more.
Hemingway famously said several times, including to biographer Arnold Samuelson in 1934 (via Esquire), “The first draft of anything is shit.”
He rewrote the ending of A Farewell to Arms 47 times.
Don’t protect your favorite lines. Protect your story. If a sentence doesn’t serve it, cut it. If it’s there to show off, cut it. When in doubt, cut deeper.
7. Use Strong Verbs
Verbs are the engine. If your sentence crawls, it’s because the verb limps. Hemingway picked verbs that moved. He didn’t say someone walked slowly. He said they trudged, dragged, staggered.
Strong verbs do double duty. They carry the action and the emotion. They paint a picture without needing an adjective for backup.
If you can feel the verb in your gut, keep it. If it sounds like filler, replace it with something that hits.
8. Avoid Adjectives and Adverbs
Too many modifiers and the sentence sags. Hemingway avoided them like potholes. His rule was simple: if the sentence works without the adverb, it goes.
Take this: “She smiled happily.”
Cut the adverb. Now: “She smiled.” Still works. Maybe stronger. Maybe truer.
He forced his nouns and verbs to carry the tone. That’s how the writing stays tight. You don’t need “terribly hungry” when “starving” will do.
Strip it. Then see what’s left.
9. Write Dialogue Like a Playwright
Hemingway’s dialogue felt real because it was bare. People didn’t explain themselves, but they dodged, repeated, snapped, and stumbled. That’s how people actually talk.
In The Sun Also Rises, the dialogue is clipped and tense. It crackles because it’s unfinished. No one spells out what they want. But, you know, that’s the point.
Cut the exposition. Let the characters speak. Trust the silence between lines to do the talking.
10. Write Hard and Clear About What Hurts
He wrote about pain like a surgeon, no flinching. Love lost. Bodies broken. Wars that never ended. He didn’t explain emotions. He exposed them.
In A Farewell to Arms, when Catherine dies, there’s no melodrama. Just a man walking away from a hospital bed. The grief lives in what’s not said.
If it hurts, write it anyway. Not to vent. But because somewhere, someone else has felt it too, and they’ll see themselves in your sentence.
11. Don’t Judge Your Characters
Hemingway gave his characters space to be human. He didn’t scold them. He didn’t defend them. He let them act and let us decide.
This distance gives power. It allows tension to build without commentary. It respects the reader’s intelligence.
Judging characters is cowardice. It tells the reader what to feel. Hemingway trusted you’d feel it on your own.
12. Live First, Write Later
Hemingway was something. The man boxed in Paris, hunted in Africa, covered wars, and drank with gangsters.
His stories came from what he saw, not what he imagined. That’s why, when you read his stories, it feels like he earned his subject matter.
You don’t need to run with the bulls. But live fully. Pay attention. Get your heart broken. Watch how people argue in cafés. Then sit down and write what you remember, not what you wish had happened.
13. Strip It Down to the Bone
This was Hemingway’s last and most brutal rule: every word must carry its own weight. So, it makes sense, if a word or a paragraph is not moving your story, axe it.
He edited like a butcher, cleaving the fat until only the muscle remained.
It wasn’t about writing less. It was about writing clearly. Each word had to earn its place. Nothing ornamental. Nothing vague. Just bone, sinew, and the beat underneath.
Try this: take a paragraph you’ve written and cut 30%. If it gets better, you’re doing it right.
Conclusion
Hemingway showed us that mediocre writing is about saying more, and good writing is about meaning more. Every cut, every silence, every stripped-down sentence pointed to something more profound. Something human.
You don’t need to follow all 13 tips. Just pick one. Try it on your next draft. See how your words change. Discover what you reveal when you stop decorating and start digging.
The sentence doesn’t need to be perfect. But it does need to be true. That’s where it starts.
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