7 Tips From Ernest Hemingway on How to Write Fiction

[longknife]

I normally take pieces like this with a grain of salt. Everyone wants to help you write a best seller – for a fee. But, this article is filled with great tips.

1: To get started, write one true sentence.

2: Always stop for the day while you still know what will happen next.

3: Never think about the story when you're not working.

IMHO, this is a real toughy. How can you ignore all the scenes you see and plot lines filling your head?

4: When it's time to work again, always start by reading what you've written so far.

5: Don't describe an emotion--make it.

6: Use a pencil.

I’m willing to bet that, if he were alive today, he’s be using a word processor.

7: Be Brief.

Hemingway writes:

It wasn't by accident that the Gettysburg address was so short. The laws of prose writing are as immutable as those of flight, of mathematics, of physics.

Well worth the time to read @ 7 Tips From Ernest Hemingway on How to Write Fiction | Open Culture

 

[Wyatt earp]

When I was writing, it was necessary for me to read after I had written. If you kept thinking about it, you would lose the thing you were writing before you could go on with it the next day. It was necessary to get exercise, to be tired in the body, and it was very good to make love with whom you loved. That was better than anything. But afterwards, when you were empty, it was necessary to read in order not to think or worry about your work until you could do it again. I had learned already 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, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.

 

[Windparadox]

`
Know your target audience - You can't please everyone and if you try, you are dooming yourself. There are many different types of fiction, in my case, science fiction and even in sci fi, there are sub-genres of styles and interests. You must research the kind of people who might be inclined to read what you have written.

Vocabulary - Even as a child, I was a voracious reader and my constant companion to everything I read was a dictionary. Some writers pen their stories in the vernacular of the day. Others, develop their own style with words. Frank Herbert, for example, used a wide spectrum of words not commonly used in colloquial speech but they added much color and substance to what he wrote. Michael Crichton peppers many of his works with medical jargon.
`

 

[Mousterian]

And then there's Finnegan's Wake...

 

[longknife]

 

[Gdjjr]

I suspect a good imagination is as important as anything, oh, and a good memory- LOL

 

[longknife]

Basic rule of writing - go about it like a job. Do the research and put in the time.