Beneath the surface of speech, actions, possessions, and appearance lies a person’s values, emotions, and motivations. People in the real world reflect the iceberg theory. He then found that using the iceberg theory as a writing style in fiction could create the “perfect” short story.Īnd it makes a lot of sense. It was actually during his career as a journalist, in which being concise is key. However, it wasn’t in his fiction writing that Hemingway discovered the iceberg theory. “Write the best story that you can and write it as straight as you can.” – Ernest Hemingway But the words you leave out can have just as much of an impact on the story itself. To write anything, you need to put words on a page. “If a writer of prose knows enough of what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them.” – Hemingway, Death in the AfternoonĬommonly used by authors and writers, this immersive writing technique can be a very powerful tool.
According to him, there is always more to a story than what is written on the page, and by omitting details that you already know to be true, you can produce a more captivating read for your audience. The iceberg theory (aka the theory of omission) is a writing style created by Hemingway. That’s what Ernest Hemingway was getting at with his iceberg theory.
The larger, unseen bottom covered by water is the wider story that your reader can assume. The top that you can see above the water is the story you’ve written. Fiction Writing: A Guide to the Iceberg Theory
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