PAPA DON’T PREACH: HEMINGWAY ON COPYWRITING

Ernest Hemingway claimed that writers should refrain from talking about their craft – that it takes off “whatever butterflies have on their wings and the arrangement of hawk’s feathers if you show it or talk about it.”

But despite this, old Ernie spoke about writing a heck of a lot.

Do this.

Do that.

Good writers must this.

A true writer must that.

In fact, he wrote and spoke about writing so often that there’s a whole book filled with his quotes and teachings on the craft: Ernest Hemingway on Writing, edited by Larry W. Phillips.

I read it recently and it’s a bit of a gold mine. For example:

I love to write. But it has never gotten any easier to do and you can’t expect it to if you keep trying for something better than you can do.

I’d say that’s pretty sound advice.

And it applies to more than just writing.

LIFE never gets any easier if you keep trying for something better than you can do.

WORK never gets any easier if you keep trying for something better than you can do.

GOLF certainly never gets any easier if you keep trying for something better than you can do.

So, what’s the answer?

Give up?

Accept that it’ll never get easier?

Be patient?

Lower your expectations?

There’s potential in those last two. I think he’s suggesting that we be realistic. Honest with ourselves about what we know we’re able to achieve.

Forget about aiming high. Or at least, forget trying to bite off more than you can chew.

Aim low to begin with and go from there.

One step at a time.

One heavy word after another.

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That’s all very well. But what’s it got to do with copywriting?

Hemingway was famous for his no-B-S style. There’s even an editing app named after him. (But that’s one for another time.)

Raw honesty.

Isn’t that what we crave as consumers? No tricks. No pressure. No attempts to bamboozle us into submission.

Just short, hard facts will do fine thank you very much.

And if you can make me feel something, too, you might just hold my attention longer than a split second.

That is, if you managed to get it in the first place.

Hemingway was great at getting people’s attention. He dived straight in. Landed you in the middle of a situation. No big words. No nonsense.

Just, bam. There you are.

Consider the opening lines to some of his short stories:

It was now lunch time and they were all sitting under the double green fly of the dining tent pretending that nothing had happened. (The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber)

Who was? What had happened? Tell me more.

An old man with steel rimmed spectacles and very dusty clothes sat by the side of the road. (Old Man at the Bridge)

I can see him. Why were his clothes dusty and what was he doing by the side of the road?

Mr and Mrs Elliot tried very hard to have a baby. They tried as often as Mrs Elliot could stand it. (Mr and Mrs Elliot)

All three got my attention.

All three made me feel something.

All three made me want to know more. Each one a story in itself.

The interesting thing about those last two examples is the use of the word “very”. I reckon if you ran them through the Hemingway Editor app, the first thing it would do is send “very” packing to the hills of Kilimanjaro.

But I digress.

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The saddest story I ever read was written by Hemingway.

It’s 6 words long:

For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn.

It isn’t copywriting, of course. But it has all the elements of a great piece of copy.

It’s concise. It’s memorable. It shows, rather than tells. It’s emotional (to say the least). It moves you. Perhaps it doesn’t move you into action – it’s certainly not a great advert for baby shoes. But it moves you, nonetheless.

It reminds me of a great piece from Collett Dickenson Pearce agency, advertising whisky, which read:

Great with haggis. Fantastic without.

Short. Punchy. Sentences. Revealing. More. With. Every. Word.

It moves you. But in a different way to Hemingway’s 6-word story (thank God).

It made me smile, anyway.

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Here’s another extract from Ernest Hemingway on Writing that struck a chord with me, taken from a letter he wrote to Maxwell Perkins:

How about this for a title

For Whom the Bell Tolls

A Novel

By Ernest Hemingway

… I think it has the magic that a title has to have. Maybe it isn’t too easy to say. But maybe the book will make it easy. Anyway I have had thirty some titles and they were all possible but this is the first one that has made the bell toll for me.

Thirty alternative titles, all of which could have also worked?

Sound familiar, fellow copywriters?

You may write something that fits the brief. But does it have that magic?

No? Try again.

And again.

And again.

Until you land on something that stands out from the rest.

Something with the X Factor.

The It Factor.

Something that makes the bell toll.

And you might just hold their attention longer than a split second.

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There’s so much to extract from Hemingway when it comes to writing copy. Indeed, I’ve only scratched the surface.

But I told myself I'd try and keep these blogs to 1,000 words, so I’m sticking to it. (At least for now.)

Until then, let’s try make the bell toll.

Or at least ping slightly.

But no pressure.

One step at a time.

One heavy word after another.