Saturday, September 11, 2010

Hemingway Paper

Having to "write" a story like Hemingway is not something I'm very passionate about. Two years ago I tried it out, spending about four months on three five page short stories. They were horrible and this one and a half page story I just wrote is equally as horrible.
I didn't put much effort into it. I wrote it longhand first as usual, then typed it direct. Then I changed describing the girl from "you" to "her." I liked using "you," because I felt it tipped more at a Hemingway style for me, except I didn't really believe it. I think it makes much more sense using you, seeing as what is wrote is 100% symbological/psycological, but I decided to change it and I think it reads nicer now.
The next step was shortening it, which didn't happen save 45 words. I think the final count was 434 or 476, and it's supposed to be 250. I tried, though, and the only way it was happening was sacrificing from an already short story with little to be "gained" from. So now it leaks onto half a second page but that's just how it's going to be.

I don't really have any interest in the minimalist style. I don't deny it as form, or pretentiously attack it, but it doesn't fit my method of writing at all. I don't write "flowery," but I certainly use a lot of commas, travel quite a bit from describing one moss-covered bridge-support to the next and enjoy writing quite a bit from the protagonist's perspective and his/her many interpretations of things.
One of the paragraphs in the story just written is;

"Just a moment's breath," I say, leading her away. She wants to say of continuing our dance but I ignore her, moving to the door. The wind cools my hand wrapped around hers as we move to the open balcony.

It's an amateur, if not bad, paragraph, except if I wasn't subjected to writing via minimalist then I think I could have had a good time writing this bite-sized tale. I liked the idea of wind curling between two people's hands, a sort of barrier undesired but existant. I'd have liked to expand on the protagonist's feelings towards the wind cooling his unusually warm hand but alas! Hemingway style.
Perhaps it would have expanded to three and a half pages should I have written in my own form, but it would have still held the basic foundation and I think it could have held much, much more.
The word count thing is rather crude also.

Oh well. C- here we come!

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