Hemingway and the Iceberg

Submerged Meaning

I spent the morning re-reading Hemingway’s shorter works, struck once again by his theory of the iceberg. He believed that if a writer knows enough about what they are writing, they can omit the most obvious parts, and the reader will feel them as strongly as if they were on the page.

It is a lesson in trust. When we over-explain, we signal to the reader that we don’t think they are capable of intuition. But when we leave the backstory submerged, the surface prose gains a terrifying, magnetic tension. The power lies not in what is said, but in the weight of what is deliberately held back.

The Monroe Minute
Delete the backstory or the “explanation” from a current scene. See if the emotional tension still holds without it.

Until the next page,
Sloane S. Monroe

Sloane Shay Monroe

I don’t write to idealize love, but to explore it honestly, with emotional precision and depth.