The Dignity of an Iceberg (Writerly)

lesbiaphrodite

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"If a writer of prose knows enough about 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. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water."

Death in the Afternoon, Ernest Hemingway

I tend to live and die by the above stated principle of writing. I like to express reality and to write truly and clearly. But, I do not like to be too elaborate. I think prose writing is better if it's crisper and freer of extravagent overthinking. What are your views on the 'iceberg principle?'
 
"If a writer of prose knows enough about 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. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water."

Death in the Afternoon, Ernest Hemingway

I tend to live and die by the above stated principle of writing. I like to express reality and to write truly and clearly. But, I do not like to be too elaborate. I think prose writing is better if it's crisper and freer of extravagent overthinking. What are your views on the 'iceberg principle?'

I agree.

I never noticed until it was pointed out to me by Colly, but my character descriptions are minimal. I might describe my femal protag as tall or write that she has dark hair, and that's it. In one story I posted to the Holiday Contest there wasn't any description at all of the main character.

I'm not quite sure why I've always written that way, but it has a better feel to me than a laundry list of attributes, or as some put it, the wanted poster description.
 
Its good to let the reader imagine as much as she can.

On the otherhand I've read some sublime prose that leaves nothing for the imagination.

I err on the side of detailing events and experiences unfamiliar to readers, and treading lightly where theyre experienced.
 
I like it, although I've read too many stories here by writers who don't appear to have given any thought to what lies beneath the surface of the water. It's as if those other seven-eighths don't exist for them. And in those cases, they don't exist for the reader either.
 
I think what Hemingway is talking about is negative space. The things that don't have to be described. The things characters don't say that you know they're thinking, the expressions on their faces, way things must smell, the slant of light that doesn't have to be described, the completeness of a scene. Leaving that stuff out is a way of pulling a reader into a scene by making them imagine it.

You have to remember where Hemingway was coming from too. before Hemingway was Henry James and Bulwer-Lytton and Dickens. That's what he was rebelling against. That kind of overly talky, blowsy prose.

But no, I'm big on detail myself. I love description. I just try not to waste it on the obvious. I love it when a writer gives me a glimpse of what's below the water as the iceberg passes by. That's where all the interest is for me.
 
The problem with leaving out 'the obvious stuff,' is that what's obvious to one reader might not be obvious to another reader. Thus something that might draw in one reader would lose another reader.
 
But no, I'm big on detail myself. I love description. I just try not to waste it on the obvious.
I think that's the thing.

If I have to read to much chunky description of things I already know everything about, I get bored. What I want painted vividly is not what's familiar, but what's unusual.

I'm reading a book in Swedish right now, in which the author does that consistently. But even the very conscous descriptions are kept at blurt length. Here's an ad-hoc transation of such a description.

"It was a sunset. But this one was darker, a brooding red, with a string of jagged charcoal pebbles stuck on the horizon."

Not exactly high poetry, but it works to sell the scene.
 
I like to describe what the reader doesn't know. They don't know what my characters look like, what their surroundings look like, what the characters think or feel, what they see and hear. They don't know these things unless I tell them these things.

I can see the fun in going the minimalist route, and have partaken myself. I barely described my main character in my ghost story. However, I tried to become a bit more writerly by actually writing more in my later stories.

Which direction is better? Who cares. People like all of my stories :D
 
I'm particularly fond of the iceberg theory when it's applied to dialogue. I'd much rather have a few taut words and some supporting action than have a character embark on a detailed speech about his/her emotions. I'm a convert to Adam Sexton there - "Melodrama is what happens when people say exactly what they're feeling." Like any rule in writing, it's not absolute, but whenever I'm reading or watching something that feels like melodrama, that's inevitably what's going on.

When a writer is good, I think that there can be rich detail and yet also the iceberg theory. I think of Virginia Woolf's stronger moments there. Orlando is crammed with physical detail that on the surface might appear merely decorative, but in reality is an historical, artistic, and emotional sub-text that becomes its own complete second novel. When an artist manages an achievement like that, it's a master work.
 
I like to describe what the reader doesn't know. They don't know what my characters look like, what their surroundings look like, what the characters think or feel, what they see and hear. They don't know these things unless I tell them these things.
Thing is, they do know. However well you describe them, the characters, surrounding et al will not look the same to you as to your readers anyway. So somewhere, i think enough should be enough. Give a good idea of things. Anything else is gravy, and too much gravy makes it hard to find the beef.

I often make the mistake of painstakingly describing the wrong things, and instead gloss over plot-critical stuff I actually needed to be specific about. I'm not a big fan of editing and re-writes, but that's one place where it comes in handy. :rolleyes:
 
Thing is, they do know. However well you describe them, the characters, surrounding et al will not look the same to you as to your readers anyway. So somewhere, i think enough should be enough. Give a good idea of things. Anything else is gravy, and too much gravy makes it hard to find the beef.

I often make the mistake of painstakingly describing the wrong things, and instead gloss over plot-critical stuff I actually needed to be specific about. I'm not a big fan of editing and re-writes, but that's one place where it comes in handy. :rolleyes:

*nods* Editing is particularly handy in getting details focused and made into a useful guide to the reader. Detail doesn't just describe things; in written works, it's a sort of clue. The more time the author spends in describing a thing, typically, the more important the item is. When the author doesn't follow that guideline, it can be confusing.

I can still remember reading a story on Lit, years back, in which a couple was having sex in an alley, and in which the author stopped to describe the brick wall at the back of the alley in its color, slope, height, and the actual inch by inch measurements of the bricks. I was completely distracted and kept waiting for the part of the story in which we would finally learn why we needed to know how many inches long and wide those bricks were. It never came. And it was so distracting that I can't remember if the couple did, either.
 
I can still remember reading a story on Lit, years back, in which a couple was having sex in an alley, and in which the author stopped to describe the brick wall at the back of the alley in its color, slope, height, and the actual inch by inch measurements of the bricks. I was completely distracted and kept waiting for the part of the story in which we would finally learn why we needed to know how many inches long and wide those bricks were. It never came. And it was so distracting that I can't remember if the couple did, either.

Well, maybe this would be revealed in the sequel "The brick mystery", some authors are devious that way. It is odd though, sometimes we do indeed focus on strange details that seem irrelevant under the given circumstances, like a ticking clock in a room with dead body, asf - so maybe the writer was actually recounting something from his own experiences.

I try to emulate my own perception, particularly when writing in the first person. Time expands and contracts for me, depending on the situation and so do my descriptions of people. My protagonists might take in details of another person, to seize them up or evaluate them in one way or another, or "file" them under a single label like "cute nurse" without any other distinctive mark (which usually doesn't keep them from fucking them anyway).
 
Like everything else, writing (IMO) is a question of balance, of tension. There is always the question in the author's mind of whether you've done enough or have you done too much. Editors are to authors as bees are to flowers. We need them and their advice so badly, especially for those of us who must still rank as raw beginners. Each time I've tried to submit a story without an editor's eye, it bombed -- for good reasons!

What do you describe, what do you imply? What can the reader infer, what must they have? This isn't easy.
 
"<> the reader, <> will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them.'

I think this is the nub of it but is also paradoxical because the writer can never take into account what the reader will bring to the story.

Trying to bring eduction via reduction depends a hell of a lot on common knowledge and knowledge, being always partial, is rarely common enough when it comes to motives or emotions.
 
In my writing group, I see two approaches to the iceberg; One is to write the top only, then go back and extrapolate the underpinnings and offer glimpses where you can or where it's necessary. that's the way I've mostly done it, and it only works in the simplest of contexts, IME, such as porn...

The other way is to write out everything, and then allow someone like myself to slice two-thirds of all that writing away...

I keep thinking there's gotta be a different way. :eek:
 
In my writing group, I see two approaches to the iceberg; One is to write the top only, then go back and extrapolate the underpinnings and offer glimpses where you can or where it's necessary. that's the way I've mostly done it, and it only works in the simplest of contexts, IME, such as porn...

The other way is to write out everything, and then allow someone like myself to slice two-thirds of all that writing away...

I keep thinking there's gotta be a different way. :eek:

Well, if you will keep trying to write porn about icebergs ...
 
In my writing group, I see two approaches to the iceberg; One is to write the top only, then go back and extrapolate the underpinnings and offer glimpses where you can or where it's necessary. that's the way I've mostly done it, and it only works in the simplest of contexts, IME, such as porn...

The other way is to write out everything, and then allow someone like myself to slice two-thirds of all that writing away...

I keep thinking there's gotta be a different way. :eek:

Is that why you keep encouraging me to write more . . . :eek:
 
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