![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Advice On Writing
Monologue to the Maestro: A High Seas Letter By: Ernest Hemingway
Esquire, October, 1935
"Real seriousness in regard to writing [is] one of the two absolute necessities. The other...is talent."
"Good writing is true writing. If a man is making a story up it will be true in proportion to the amount of knowledge of life that he has and how conscientious he is: so that when he makes something up it is as it would truly be....But if he continues to write about what he does not know about he will find himself faking." (p. 215)
"...your whole object is to convey everything, every sensation, sight, feeling, place and emotion to the reader. To do this you have to work over what you write." (p. 216)
"The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day when you are writing a novel you will never be stuck." (p. 216)
"He should have read everything so he knows what he has to beat." (p. 217)
"What a writer in our time has to do is write what hasn't been written before or beat dead men at what they have done." (p. 218)
"Find what gave you the emotion; what the action was that gave you the excitement. Then write it down making it clear so the reader will see it too and have the same feeling that you had." (p. 219)
"Listen now. When people talk listen completely. Don't be thinking what you're going to say. Most people never listen. Nor do they observe." (p. 219)
Esquire, October, 1935
"Good writing is true writing. If a man is making a story up it will be true in proportion to the amount of knowledge of life that he has and how conscientious he is: so that when he makes something up it is as it would truly be....But if he continues to write about what he does not know about he will find himself faking." (p. 215)
"...your whole object is to convey everything, every sensation, sight, feeling, place and emotion to the reader. To do this you have to work over what you write." (p. 216)
"The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day when you are writing a novel you will never be stuck." (p. 216)
"He should have read everything so he knows what he has to beat." (p. 217)
"What a writer in our time has to do is write what hasn't been written before or beat dead men at what they have done." (p. 218)
"Find what gave you the emotion; what the action was that gave you the excitement. Then write it down making it clear so the reader will see it too and have the same feeling that you had." (p. 219)
"Listen now. When people talk listen completely. Don't be thinking what you're going to say. Most people never listen. Nor do they observe." (p. 219)