Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner

Two of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner, represented two distinct styles of writing. They were rivals, as shown by this quote from Faulkner (about Hemingway):

…he has no courage, has never climbed out on a limb…has never used a word where the reader might check his usage by a dictionary.

And Hemingway had this to say:

Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.

Philip S. Rader describes their stylistic differences in an essay:

Ernest Hemingway brings us to the moment with speed. He does it as quickly as the plunge of the dirk that drops a wounded bull that can no longer fight. In contrast Faulkner gently leads, involves and seduces, and then overwhelms.

In the essential resource for all writers, The Elements of Style, by William Strunk and E.B. White, they offer a comparison of the two styles as the famous authors both write about languor:

He did not still feel weak, he was merely luxuriating in that supremely gutful lassitude of convalescence in which time, hurry, doing, did not exist, the accumulating seconds and minutes and hours to which in its well state the body is slave both waking and sleeping, now reversed and time now the lip-server and mendicant to the body’s pleasure instead of the body thrall to time’s headlong course.

 

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Manuel drank his brandy. He felt sleepy himself. It was too hot to go out into the town. Besides there was nothing to do. He wanted to see Zurito. He would go to sleep while he waited. 

Not hard to tell who wrote which passage, is it? For me, they are simply two different styles of writing. My own personal preference is simple and direct.

Despite their differences and rivalry, both of these famous authors offered advice on writing that I have found extremely helpful.

In one of my favorite books about writing, On Writing, by Stephen King, King gives advice you’ll find (in one form or another) from a variety of sources:

…the road to hell is paved with adverbs…

Both Strunk and Hemingway also warn against the overuse of adverbs (and adjectives), and it makes a lot of sense to me. It’s easy to get sloppy and dress up weak nouns and verbs with excessive modifiers. Usually I find there’s a better way to say something without the extra clutter.

The other inspiring influence from Hemingway is his famous quote:

The first draft of anything is shit.

Before I heard this piece of advice (via King’s book), I tried to work on every page until it was perfect, until it was in final draft form. And of course I never progressed very far. There’s a tremendous freedom in writing a first draft and giving yourself permission to move forward with an unpolished work. I recently listened to an interview with urban fantasy author Rachel Vincent, in which she echoes this sentiment. Without the pressure of making a first draft perfect, writing is so much fun again!

From his novel The Sound and the Fury, Faulkner was once asked how he possibly could have written the passages about a young girl named Caddy. He replied (I’m paraphrasing from memory):

I followed her around and wrote down what she did.

I can’t tell you how much this inspired me. Brilliant! I’m not even sure I want to try and analyze exactly what this means, but it captures the joy of writing in so many ways. It’s a wonderful experience for a writer when you sit down to write, and one or more of your characters refuses to do or say what you had planned. In the first draft of my current novel, several times I’d start writing a scene without any clue of what a character would say, and they’d surprise me. Their words and feelings rolled off my fingers onto the keyboard, and one time even brought a lump to my throat and tears to my eyes.