Should everything you write sound like Hemingway?
Writing experts love to extol the laconic American writer of ‘A Farewell to Arms’ and other masterworks—but is his style always the way to go?
It’s become common to hear the writing advice, “You need to write more like Ernest Hemingway!”
The writing expert usually means your writing should be more concise, with more muscular verbs. Sometimes the advice is simply guidance to trim overwriting.
There’s good sense in this. You certainly risk losing your audience if you aren’t clear and understandable. However, one can’t help but wonder, is that really the best/only way to write?
Is Hemingway or Joyce better?
At the other end of the writing spectrum is James Joyce.
Joyce’s writing is everything Hemingway’s isn’t: long-winded, digressive and abstract. Be sure to have a dictionary handy if you’re going to try to tackle one of his books.
Does this mean that Joyce’s writing is somehow “wrong” or “bad” or even “unideal”? According to popular, modern advice: yes.
Then again, in the Modern Library’s list of the 100 best novels, Joyce has not one, but two novels in the top 10 (In fact, he holds the No. 1 spot with his novel “Ulysses”). Hemingway’s best novel “The Sun Also Rises” comes in at No. 45.
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