/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.11025014]

Just the concept of the hemmingway editor upsets me. It is truly the worst writing tool ever devised. The damn thing literally encourages young writers to never aspire to write anything above a high school reading level.

[Anonymous No.11025373]

>>11025014
Writing that's above 8th grade level is not clean prose. Any writing that's not clean and streamlined is purple prose. That means it's bad writing.

[Anonymous No.11025438]

>>11025373
But that's a stylistic preferance. Hemingway's “iceberg” writing gets tiresome after a while

[Anonymous No.11025459]

>>11025373
If this were universally true, literature would never have complex language. But of course, it does. Certainly some books are overwritten, but other books use complex language adroitly and evocatively.

[Anonymous No.11025476]

I would quit reading if every book was as dull as Hemingway.

[Anonymous No.11025636]

>>11025476
>>11025459
>>11025438
It’s for essays, professionals like journalists and bloggers who want to write clear and simple to read things which are easy to comprehend.

[Anonymous No.11025724]

>>11025014
>Hemingway editor
>you get mad because it makes your writing like read like Hemingway
Huh. Really gets my noggin joggin

[Anonymous No.11026015]

>>11025014

Would be fun to produce an equivalent screenshot for a "McCarthy editor".

>Inverted commas around speech
GET RID OF THESE

>Two paragraphs without someone dying
FIX THIS

>Dialogue all in English
CHANGE SOME TO SPANISH TO KEEP THE READER ON HIS TOES

>Descriptive passages are all short and easily-comprehensible
NEEDS ERUDITE VOCABULARY AND LONG PHILOSOPHICAL RAMBLINGS

[Anonymous No.11026064]

>>11025373
>hello I have been trained by Harr Potter and the YA genre to never progress past the YA genre despite being adult. My favorite adult author is JK Rowling or Stephen King.

[Anonymous No.11026093]

>>11026064
>thinking JK Rowling and Stephen King write simple and clear prose in the like of Hemingway

[Anonymous No.11026095]

>>11025636
>its titled after a novelist but its not meant for novelists

Shut the fuck up

[Anonymous No.11026210]

>>11026015
Hemingway uses a whole mess of Spanish in For Whom the Bell Tolls. The original name of The Sun Also Rises is Fiesta

[Anonymous No.11026231]

>>11025438
Hemingway's "iceberg" theory doesn't get tired. What gets tired are the people who just capture the tip of the berg. Terse prose works when it points beyond itself, or allows for one to "read between the lines" as the saying goes. It also works well when used in conjunction with lyrical lines, so as to allow for the development of images in the narrative, or to change the flow or rhythm of the piece. What people mistake for "Hemingway's" style are grocery lists, or those stories that go on like:

>Bob entered the room. Bob turned on the light. He hung his coat up.

That's "terse" prose, sure, but it's as potent as a flaccid cock. Speaking of cock, what's the nature of Jake's injury in The Sun Also Rises? We know he can't have sex, but the novel never explicitly details what had happened, because it's Hemingway. A poorer writer superficially imitating his style would come out and write, "Jake had his dick shot off" or something crude. Instead we can ponder and debate decades later the nature of his injury and how that plays into the bull/steer imagery in the novel, etc.

Complex language doesn't necessarily mean better, either. Just look at thesaurus writers. Purple prose draws attention to its own overly ornate quality, obfuscated images, and consequently brings the reader's out of the text.

[Anonymous No.11026257]

>>11025014
They're different styles that do different things. Dostoevskij could never have written his books in Raimond Carver's style and Raimond Carver could never have written his short stories in Dostoevsky style. Different styles, different purposes.