Whenever I tell business people to write like Hemingway, someone inevitably says: “Hey, I’m no Hemingway!”
To which the only reasonable response is: exactly. You’re not. Neither am I. That’s not the point.
The point is that Hemingway chose to eschew obfuscation at every turn, to write simply and clearly instead of hiding behind flowery prose and intellectual decoration. For someone trying to persuade an audience, that’s not a literary preference. It’s a competitive advantage.
What “Writing Like Hemingway” Actually Means
Merriam-Webster defines succinct as “marked by compact precise expression without wasted words.” That’s the Hemingway style in a sentence, a sentence that is, itself, trying to be Hemingway-esque.
He stripped away everything that didn’t serve the reader. No elaborate constructions. No unnecessary adjectives. No paragraphs that existed primarily to show you how smart the writer was.
Business writers and content marketers need exactly this quality. You’re not writing to impress an English department. You’re writing to be understood, remembered, and acted upon.
Five Rules That Will Make Your Writing Sharper
These principles work for written content, video scripts, email, and anywhere else words need to do work.
1. Use Short Sentences
Hemingway was famous for a terse, minimalist style that dispensed with adjectives the way a sculptor dispenses with excess marble. His sentences are lean and muscular, every word pulling its weight.
Perhaps his finest demonstration of brevity came when he was challenged to tell an entire story in six words:
“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”
Six words. A beginning, a middle, and a devastating end. No adjective would improve it. No adverb would clarify it. It’s complete.
Short sentences aren’t dumb. They’re disciplined.
2. Use Short Opening Paragraphs
See the opening of this article.
A short first paragraph does something powerful: it invites the reader in. It says this won’t be hard. Keep going. Long opening paragraphs signal the opposite, that they’re in for work.
3. Use Vigorous English
Copywriter David Garfinkel described vigorous English this way:
“It’s muscular, forceful. Vigorous English comes from passion, focus and intention. It’s the difference between putting in a good effort and TRYING to move a boulder… and actually sweating, grunting, straining your muscles to the point of exhaustion… and MOVING the freaking thing!”
Vigorous doesn’t mean aggressive. It means alive. Your words should feel like they’re doing something, not describing something from a safe distance.
4. Be Positive, Not Negative
Say what something is, not what it isn’t.
Copywriter Michel Fortin calls these “up words”, language that directs the mind toward what you want the reader to imagine rather than what you want them to avoid.
If I tell you that dental work is painless, where does your mind go? Straight to pain. The word you’re trying to negate is the word that lands.
Instead of “inexpensive,” say “economical.”
Instead of “this procedure is painless,” say “there’s little discomfort” or “it’s relatively comfortable.”
Instead of “this software is error-free,” say “this software is consistent” or “stable.”
Direct the mind. Don’t try to redirect it.
5. Never Have Only Four Rules
Hemingway actually did operate on four rules, the ones he was given as a cub reporter at The Kansas City Star in 1917. So to give you five, I had to dig a little deeper and find the most important piece of writing advice he ever offered:
“I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit,” Hemingway confided to F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1934. “I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.”
There it is. The single most encouraging thing a great writer ever said about the craft: even Hemingway produced ninety-one pages of garbage for every page of gold.
The difference wasn’t talent. It was the willingness to write badly and the discipline to throw most of it away.
Write like Hemingway not because you are Hemingway, but because clarity, brevity, and precision are the tools that separate writing that works from writing that fills space. Your readers don’t need you to be a genius. They need you to be clear.
Start there. Edit ruthlessly. The masterwork-to-garbage ratio improves with practice.