Why is such common the advice to write brief and to the point,

>>7317608
Because you do not waste your time, nor your readers, by using unnecessary words to get your point across.

If you need writing advice, you don't know how to write a good sentence yet. The longer your bad sentences are, the worse your writing will end up.

So idiots can understand

Why would you take advice from Hemingway?

He single-handedly ruined 20th century literature.

His legacy spawned a generation of literary mediocrity.

Only Ameritards could actually like this guy.

>>7317608
it opens the work to a wider audience than otherwise. (at the expense of some artistry)

"Economy is an aesthetic criterion for shoemakers, not artists"

This intimate feeling which I felt for only one in this whole world, this whole existence, is that feeling which we sing about for ages but which we never truly touch except in that simple first moment, the Universal Explosion, The "Big Bang," and which leaves us like the Holy Spirit, fulfilled but empty; it is that feeling your mother had for your father for just a moment in that pre-existence of yours, and she had thought nothing of the physical, only of her and him, no bodies, strictly entities, indeed, what else are we but entities, for you, as I, are embodied in the way we make ripples upon the world rather than for reason of our being stone.

I loved her very much.

>>7317627
Its not only Hemingway. I read i recent interview with Gene Wolfe where he said the same thing.

>>7317627
plenty of americans hate him too anon

>>7317627
Because Hemingway is one of the best writers of the last 150 years. Just because his work is full of easily understandable tidbits doesn't mean they have lesser value. For, when you put all the little pieces together, and look very carefully, there is more wide themes being expressed that are often missed by the general reader of his work.

Brevity is the soul of wit

>And when Philip wrote thus to the Spartans: "If once I enter into your territories, I will destroy ye all, never to rise again"; they answered him with the single word, "If".

>>7317648
You are full of shit desu senpai baka.

>>7317637
Gene Wolfe is in no way near as influential as Ernest Hemingway.

>>7317718
BTFO

>>7317608
Because most people can't write good purple prose. Their sentences end up messy, confusing and cliched. But legit good writers can ignore that advice. Just look at Shakespeare.

>>7317608
Because newfags tend to overwrite and have no idea what the fuck they actually want to say.

When you know how to get to the point, then you can worry about ornamentation and detail in your scenes.

>>7317608
Because it's harder to fuck up.

Why do beginning piano players start with short songs that use few notes?

>>7317635
Who wrote this?

Because writers love to write, and when you love something, you tend to overindulge. Pulling back is almost always a good idea.

>>7317635
Holy shit, that's brutal.

>>7317608
>>7317613
Dude you gotta pare it down and make your novel super efficient so that readers can get through it in the minimum time possible. The ideal we're moving toward is to be able to read 20-30 novels a day and if you're not part of the solution then you're part of the problem.

When somebody tells me that they're "sad" i feel like i can't relate to them because being "sad" is such a general and vague idea. Where does the sadness come from? Is it from a relationship gone wrong, which would be more accurate with "heartbroken," or is it from a pattern of negative thinking, which would be more accurately described as "pessimistic." I don't know what you mean when you say that you're "sad."

>>7317627
Says the guy who wouldn't be able to write a sentence as good as Heminghway even if he tried.

>>7318837
>I don't know what you mean when you say that you're "sad."
Being out of touch with the emotions of others is a sign of autism

>>7318851
there's a difference (albeit slight) between autism and advanced pedantry, which is what is on display above.

Because they write not to push the reader, but to embrace them in continuity.

>>7317627
*tips fedora*

Lolita is the best book ever written, amirite :D

>>7317627
your prose is trash

>>7317635
hang in there kev

>>7318715
>best leave them wanting more and getting less

>>7319498
Your four word response proves you can use less words to be more efficiently retarded as the poster who wasted four lines of rubbish.

>>7317608
His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
any way you use the style you need to get your point across. not simple just because and not flowery just because. if you're actually a talented writer you know what suits your message best.

hemingway's style worked because it complemented the fictional worlds he created

>>7318512
Him, apparently.

>>7317627

Now, I'm divided on Hemingway. About half of his work, I think is terrible, and the other half, really good. But I have to say that

>His legacy spawned a generation of literary mediocrity.

Is completely true. Fuck minimalism. Fuck everyone who tries to emulate it. It's killing language, and when Hemingway himself only managed to pull it off half the time, none of his imitators will ever succeed.

>>7320227
Actually his influence has been positive overall. It's easy to fall into the trap of overestimating the relative literary output of days past for obvious reasons. As someone who has researched and read the works of the "2nd raters" before hemingway, let me tell you that I would gladly read 50 fake hemingways over 10 of those tedious, long winded shits. People say "write like Ernest" for a reason. It can turn execrable work into plain old mediocrity over night.

>>7320227
>i don't care if the sentence is pointless or contradictory, i only care that other people see how many big, fancy, verbose, quizzical, confounding, compelling, pretty, postulating words i know.
>how else will mummy know when to give me a 'god boy' pat on the back?

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>>7320227
>Hemingway
>Minimalism

I think it is true that type of writing is more effective. Trying to sound smart always does the opposite. But why shit on Faulkner, Hemmingway? I've only read As I Lay Dying but the prose wasn't difficult at all, and this is coming from someone who gets headaches from trying to read Heart of Darkness.

>>7320282
faulkner ragged on hemingway first.
faulkner could never get over being a barely talented hick while hemingway was bouncing through europe and women off his balls

by the way, for everyone else in the board who are too pleb to have read beyond 'the old man', the best hemingway is 'a moveable feast'

>>7320289
>a moveable feast

no apart from some entertaining anecdotes of fitzgerald getting keked

>>7320289
>and women off his balls
You first feel the lion's roar from the bottom of your scrotum.

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reader is pussy
your prose should be short cold bath or iceberg

>>7320198
I agree.

There's a lot of fluff in beginning writers' sentences. If you can't write a short sentence effectively and economically, writing a longer one compounds the problem.

>>7317608
Because creative writing teachers and editors can't be asked sifting through ten hours of ''I read a Woolf novel once, so here's my passing day from ''The Waves'' attempt''.

>>7317608
Hemingway's point is that interrupting your reader with a dictionary quest is idiotic and impolite, if not a conceited act of aggression.

If there's a little known word that you really have to use, a bonafide interlocutor communicates its meaning implicitly.

>>7320631
Pynchon is actually really good at this, I noticed GR was difficult because of the sentence structure and amount of characters. The only words that came up were explained (like brenschluss) or like you said you could use context clues.

Infinite Jest disappointed me too much to finish. One of my gripes was being sent to the dictionary for unnecessary words for 9-sided dice. It seemed his vocabulary was patchwork. One of the many things that made that thing trash

>>7318803
>shorter sentences visualise better on my smartphone

>>7320637
>>7320631
Are you two literally somehow making it a fault of the book if you don't know a word?
Jesus fuck.

>tfw 'write like ernest' will one day turn a great up and coming writer into a complete shitter

>>7320673

smartphone reader here

long sentences, long paragraphs and long words drastically speed the reading process

unless you subvocalize or aren't used to reading much, often and quickly

>>7318715
Underrated post

>>7317627
is this going to be a meme now?

>>7320782

why should it be

it's painfully obvious

>>7318480
Loves labours lost is the prime example of why an inexperienced writer should not go heavy on the language

>>7320227
First off, this >>7320275
Also Raymond Carver proves you completely wrong.

Literature is far more than words on a page, yall.

>>7318837
Saying you're heartbroken is inferior to describing how you met this woman, slept with her, planned to marry her and took her on a midnight walk through Paris and proposed and then how she died in a car accident, then saying it made you sad. This is the message of Hemingway; show us, don't tell us.

E.g. a "literary" person would write
>Her absence created a void in my spirit that nobody could fathom, endless despair etc etc.

Hemingway would write
>I arrived home to find a note saying good bye. I sat at the table for a long time thinking and then I poured myself a large glass of cognac.

Well, I'm not the best writer but you get the idea. Of course you should combine the two.

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>>7317635
You should get the hang of simple declarative sentences before attempting long, complex-compound ones that you're forced to fill with vapid, hackneyed metaphors and grammatically clunky jerkoff bullshit.

>This...feeling...is that feeling... (bravo)
>the existence is the feeling?
>singing about something for ages...jesus
>touching a feeling
>leaves as in "goes away" or "ultimately makes"...?
>fulfilled but empty? what?
>and why is this in second person again?
>this gets way cringey by the end

You should read more Hemingway.

>>7320196
You should use "fewer" and "than" so that people can't tell that you're an illiterate yuropoor

Sentences should be stripped down and brief. This way it can be more easily adapted to a screenplay.

Meme style guides

Big words are like exotic seasoning for shitskins and Catholics. Proper writing is a protestant matter. Salt and pepper should suffice. And so should simple words suffice for literature.

>>7317608
So you can sell it at newsstands and airports.

Comprehensibility.

Do you guys agree with this idiot? http://www.paulgraham.com/talk.html

>>7321565
git gud

>>7321451
This is by far the gayest thing I've ever read (and I've read your dad's journal from his college years).

>>7321564
I really don't see the point you're trying to make

>>7321628
You must be color-blind.

>>7321564
Purple:
>Admiring the chromatic scene of the foreign bazaar, I was accosted by a multitude of fruity fragrances, which provoked my saliva glands to an exceptional degree.

Grey:
>At the foreign bazaar, I saw oranges, red apples, green apples, ripe bananas, pineapples, persimmons, mangoes, avocados, along with some fruits I didn't recognize. As I breathed in their various aromas, I started to salivate.

>>7321805
This. So much this.

>>7321805
Even without 10 dollar words that second sentence is still too verbose.

>>7321805
Red doesn't appear in the pic. Please use a simpler color so that color blind can relate to it.

>>7317608

Learning to write the brief, clear sentence will teach you the principles you need to write the long, nuanced sentence.

It's just like in painting - you have to start with the basics of anatomy and perspective before can be realistic, impressionistic, or surreal.

>On the stall there were oranges, red apples, green apples, ripe bananas, pineapples, mangoes and avocadoes. There was some other fruit I didn't recognise. I smelled them and my mouth watered.

Quote from Hemmmingway:

We went fishing for trout in the river. At first the sun was in the middle of the sky. We threw our bait in the river, hoping to catch trout. There was no trout to be seen in the river. I thought there could be no trout in the river. Jeremy said there was supposed to be trout in the river. I asked him where the trout was.

(goes on for three pages, the word 'trout' is mentioned 243 times, the word 'river,' 123 times, and the word 'water,' around 56.

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>I walked to the stall. I saw some fruit. The dandy's name was Leo. I punched him in the gut. He let out a scream. He pulled out a knife. I grabbed his throat. He gurgled like a fairy. He swung the knife. I pushed it away.

>>7318512
Sounds like Falling Man DeLillo.

>>7318803
awesome

>>7321850
that really looks like it's on purpose, though.

i do believe that his vocab wasn't all that great, though.
whenever someone says "i know them all right" you know something is up.

>>7317635
i liked this

>>7318803
kek

>>7317635

I'm skeptical you wrote it.

>>7321850
I hope no one thinks this is actually a Hemingway quotation. Clearly this insufferable tripfag wrote this, as indicated by the atrocious grammar.

>>7317608
Because dilettantes on the internet who want to give advice on everything parrot the Hemingmeme.

>the "Hemingway is bad" meme

hello neo-/lit/

>>7317622
thank you for explaining this for me

>>7325532
>the "Hemingway is good" meme

hello /r/books

>>7321584
that IS how you git gud. The shitty writers are the esoteric ones.

>>7325532
>>7325588
Hemmingway*

>>7325617
top kek

It had been a while since I last someone do this.

>>7325617
Where does this meme actually come from?