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Ernest Hemingway is arguably the most important literary figure of the 20th Century. Before his work, writers would fill pages with needless, flowery detail as if they were being paid by the word. Hemingway – with the encouragement of his mentor and colleague, Gertrude Stein – went the other way. His work is noticeably sparse. He leaves a lot to readers to imagine for figure out. His method is too extreme for academic writers who never want to leave ideas up to readers to figure out; everything needs to be spelled out to be convincing. As a literary writer, though, his iceberg technique demands that readers be attentive and imaginative. This means that he gives critics like us a LOT to work with as we analyze his texts.
Here’s an infographic on the iceberg theory:
Take, for instance, his short story, “Baby Shoes,” the shortest short story in the English language, clocking in at a mere six words:
That’s it. But what can we extrapolate from these six words? These are not wealthy people, right? They have to – in their grief – concern themselves with posting this sale in the newspaper. That’s an extreme poverty. We could easily analyze these six words to discuss the impacts of poverty on parenting, especially grieving parents.
While you would NEVER leave this much interpretation up to readers of your academic essays, the concept of being concise is important to academic writers as well. Check out this advice on wordiness
for standardized test takers. It gives quality points for writers.
However, let’s take a moment for some literary writing. For this assignment, write a short story: ten words or less. It shouldn’t sound like a fortune cookie. There should be an insinuation of characters and their lives or values like in “Baby Shoes.” Do your best, and remember this lesson when you edit your work to eliminate words and phrases that don’t need to be there.
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