Master Writing like Ernest Hemingway

The Clean Line, The Hidden Depths, The Story That Moves Itself

Hemingway didn’t write short. He wrote true. He selected what mattered, placed it where the heat would be felt, and trusted you to meet him halfway. This course takes you past the myth and into the method—so you can build scenes that carry seven-eighths of their meaning beneath the surface and still fly. Why This Course * Because you’re sick of padding. Because you want sentences that land, scenes that hum under the skin, and characters who reveal themselves by what they do—not what they explain. You don’t need a new voice; you need cleaner choices. Hemingway’s discipline will sharpen your own. What You’ll Learn (and Actually Use) * You’ll learn how to leave out the counterfeit and keep the charge. We’ll turn action into argument, objects into testimony, and silence into meaning. You’ll practice building tension with clocks and doorways, writing dialogue that bleeds subtext, and ending scenes on images that echo rather than speeches that explain. By the end you’ll own a repeatable workflow: draft hot, cut cold, and finish with a line that closes like a hand around the right word. Who This Is For * Fiction writers, memoir authors, and screenwriters who want economy without blandness. Editors who need a practical framework for tightening prose. Beginners who want a reliable way to sound confident. Old hands who want to sound new again. Inside the Course * We begin with the engine: omission as design, not coyness. You’ll write a station scene where the taboo subject is never named, then revise it until the unsaid does the heavy lifting. I’ll show you how to swap labels for behaviors and get the same meaning with more voltage. * Weak prose leans on helper verbs and abstract nouns. Strong prose trusts actions you can film. We’ll hunt flabby constructions (“there was,” “began to,” “made a decision”) and replace them with clean movement. Your pages will feel as if someone opened a window. * Character is revealed when there’s a price to pay. You’ll stage small, honest tests—a wallet under a chair, a rule that costs to keep—and let choices define people. We’ll design micro-behaviors (the tell in the teacup) that confess more than a paragraph of backstory. * People rarely say the real thing. They dodge, deflect, tidy, and joke. You’ll build ten-line conversations that glide past the truth while meaning builds in the gaps. Tags get simpler, gestures do more work, and the room gets a job. * A glass dried twice. A receipt folded along the same crease. A cat in the rain. You’ll learn to choose and handle objects so they carry tone without italics. When the nouns are right, the adjectives can stand down. * Clocks are plot. We’ll add countdowns—the train due, the café closing, the tide turning—and watch how time forces decisions that speeches never could. You’ll learn to compress arcs into a single hour and end on a small act that changes the weather. * Pace without fuss. We’ll stack crisp lines, then release a longer sentence that braids action with a sensory thread. You’ll practice end-weight—finishing on the strongest word—until your paragraphs move like a current. * A three-pass workflow you can use forever: the Iceberg Pass (cut named emotions, add behaviors), the Verb Pass (swap in filmable actions), the Rhythm Pass (short, short, long). You’ll leave with a one-page style sheet tailored to you. How I Work I offer lessons that respect your time. Demonstrations you can copy. Line-by-line mark-ups you can mirror on your own drafts. Each module ends with a focused assignment and a self-check rubric so you know what “done well” looks like. You’ll produce a suite of polished pages rather than a pile of theory. What You’ll Walk Away With A toolkit rather than a costume. Clean sentences that still have music. Scenes that lean forward. Dialogue that tells the truth by missing it. Endings that echo. Most of all, confidence that your restraint is doing work—not taking color away, but focusing it. Frequently Asked Questions * Will I end up sounding like Hemingway? No. You’ll end up sounding like you—only cleaner. This is discipline, not imitation. * Does minimalism mean emotionless? Quite the opposite. We earn emotion with evidence—actions, objects, pressure—so it lands harder. * Is this right for beginners? Yes. The techniques are concrete and immediately usable. If you can write a paragraph, you can make it better by lunchtime. * What if my genre is romance/fantasy/horror? Perfect. These tools travel. Clear sentences, charged silence, truthful action—useful everywhere. Enrolment & Access * Instant, lifetime access. Work at your own pace, return to any lesson, and use the checklists on everything you write from now on. Ready to Put Steel in Your Sentences? Click enrol now below and start the first lesson. Ten minutes from now you could have a cleaner paragraph than you’ve ever written—and a process that will do it again tomorrow. As ever, you can call on me at any time to help via email: to assess your exercises and to offer professional guidance on your writing work and career, I'm literally here for you! Because your success is my concern. Keep Writing!