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Inspiration: Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway

Sometimes you just have to reread something to remember why you love it.

I was shelving books in the little library I work at, and I picked up a collection of short stories by Ernest Hemingway.  I haven't read Hemingway in a long long time and as I was holding the bookand remembering a short story that I had read in college when I was working towards my undergrad.

I flipped through the book looking for the story: "Hills Like White Elephants" and found it.  I re-read it, and I realized why, after it had been 5ish years since I first read it, why I remembered it.

It is just so damn good.

I will do my best to not spoil it for you here, you have to read it for yourself.

The premise is really simple: two people (a man and a woman) are talking at a Spanish train station while waiting for their train.  That's it. 

But it is WHAT they are talking about that makes this story so powerful.  And not just what, but also how.  Again, I don't want to spoil it, so instead of saying what they are discussing, I'm going to say that they are talking about...cats.

What makes this story so great, is that though they are talking about cats, neither the man or the woman in the story say the word "cat". And this got me thinking about the age old saying "Show don't tell/" How can I use this tactic in my own writing? How can I make an uncomfortable conversation happen in my story without saying the things that obviously make the conversation uncomfortable.  How can I show fear, or tension, or anxiety without saying "She was scared/tense/anxious."?

In Hemingway's story he does it through body language, and the way he delivers dialogue. You see, in the story, the man really wants the woman to get a...cat. She is unsure. Maybe even offended that he would suggest it. She speaks in short staccato like sentences, often distracted by the people and things around her.  He rambles, trying to convince her but seeming like he isn't.

In all writing you have to make your readers not just see what you're writing but feel what your characters are feeling.  If you just tell your readers that your MC is scared, they will just know that the MC is scared, but they themselves won't feel that fear. The reason that we as readers feel so uncomfortable reading Hemingway's work is because we can FEEL that awkwardness at that train station. 

Sometimes you have to look in places you wouldn't expect for inspiration. I'm writing a YA horror serial novel, but I got some serious inspiration from this literary short.

Read everything. Write anything.

Memento mori
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