Why Most People Overcomplicate the Hemingways Writing Style
I spent about three years trying to write in a cleaner way before I realized I was approaching it wrong. The problem wasn't that I didn't know what good writing looked like. It was that I kept treating simplicity like a constraint instead of a discipline. You cut words because you've done the work, not because you're lazy with them. The Hemingways Writing Style is fundamentally about removing everything that doesn't carry meaning. Adverbs tend to show up when you haven't chosen the right verb. Passive voice sneaks in when you want to avoid taking responsibility for who's doing the action. Both of those habits make sentences heavier without adding clarity.
How to Actually Write in the Hemingways Writing Style
Start with a draft that isn't clean. The method only works if you separate creation from editing. I used to try to get it right on the first pass, which meant I'd write slow and end up with mediocre prose anyway. Now I write fast, then go back and cut ruthlessly. The first thing I check is adverbs. Words ending in "-ly" are usually a signal that the verb underneath them isn't strong enough. If you find yourself writing "he ran quickly," you should just write "he sprinted." The adverb is doing work that the verb should be doing on its own. This alone typically shaves twenty to thirty percent off your word count without changing meaning. The second check is the passive voice. Look for forms of "to be" followed by a past participle. "The report was written by Sarah" should become "Sarah wrote the report." You'll notice this especially in business writing and technical documentation, where people default to passive constructions to sound more formal. Formal doesn't mean clear, and clarity is the whole point here.
Short sentences matter, but not in the way people think. It's not about making every sentence five words long. It's about varying the length intentionally so the reader isn't cruising on autopilot through paragraphs of identical rhythm. A short sentence after a longer one creates emphasis. A long sentence after a short one creates momentum. You control the pacing by mixing them deliberately. I hit a real wall with this when I was writing technical documentation for a distributed systems project. The concept I was explaining involved eventual consistency in database replication, and every time I tried to keep my sentences short, the explanation became technically inaccurate. The nuance required a more complex sentence structure, and the Hemingways Writing Style as a rigid rule was actively harming the precision of the writing. What I ended up doing was using shorter sentences for the high-level description and allowing longer, more carefully constructed sentences only when I was explaining the actual mechanism. The rule isn't "write simple sentences." The rule is "make every sentence do necessary work." Sometimes a necessary sentence is complex. You just shouldn't dress it up with words that don't belong.
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Common Mistakes That Make Your Writing Worse
The biggest mistake I see is treating the Hemingways Writing Style as a style choice rather than an editorial discipline. It's not about sounding like Hemingway. It's about being honest with your reader about what you mean. When you strip away the decorative language, you're forced to confront whether you actually understand the topic you're writing about. That confrontation is uncomfortable, which is why most people never finish the edit. Another common error is confusing simplicity with oversimplification. If you're writing about a technical subject, removing all the jargon doesn't make it accessible. It makes it wrong. The goal is to use the precise term when the precise term is what you mean, and to explain it clearly when the reader needs the explanation. Don't replace "latency" with "speed" if you're talking about delay in a network connection. Speed is the wrong concept there, and your reader will walk away with a misunderstanding. People also obsess over sentence length and start chopping sentences at arbitrary points. A twenty-word sentence that flows correctly is better than two ten-word sentences that create a jerky reading experience. Read your work out loud. If you run out of breath mid-sentence, it might be too long. But if you pause naturally at the end of a clause, the sentence is probably fine. Your ear is a better editor than your counting habit.
The Downside of the Hemingways Writing Style That Nobody Talks About
This approach has a real limitation, and it's worth acknowledging upfront. The Hemingways Writing Style works exceptionally well for explanatory and narrative prose. It does not work well for persuasive writing that relies on emotional resonance, creative fiction that depends on voice and texture, or any genre where the music of the language is part of the meaning. If you're writing a marketing email, a character monologue, or a poem, this style will actively hurt your output. You wouldn't use a scalpel to chop firewood. Similarly, you shouldn't apply this editorial discipline when the content demands ornamental language. There's also a productivity cost to consider. The first-pass draft might take you ten minutes. The edit could take another twenty. For high-volume content production, that ratio can be unsustainable. I learned this the hard way when I was managing a content team and one writer was producing pieces that took two hours each because they were too attached to their drafts. The workaround was setting a hard limit: three passes maximum, and the second pass is where you cut by half. If you're still revising after that, you're polishing instead of editing. If you need to produce content quickly and the subject matter doesn't demand extreme clarity, consider a simpler framework instead. The inverted pyramid structure used in journalism gets you eighty percent of the benefit with a fraction of the editorial effort. Lead with the most important information, follow with context, and add detail last. It's not as satisfying to edit, but it scales better for production environments.
A Practical Workflow You Can Use Today
Write your draft without editing. Don't look back. Don't revise as you go. This is the hardest part because your brain will want to fix things immediately, but that instinct is exactly what you're fighting against. You need raw material before you can edit effectively. On the first edit pass, cut anything that doesn't serve the core message. If a sentence doesn't advance the argument, provide necessary context, or create a required transition, delete it. This is where you lose thirty to fifty percent of your word count. You might feel like you're destroying good writing. You're not. You're removing the stuff that was hiding behind the good writing. On the second pass, check for adverbs, passive voice, and weak verbs. Replace them. Run the read-aloud test on paragraphs that feel clunky. This is a mechanical pass and should take less time than the first one if you've been disciplined about cutting in step one.
The third pass is optional and only necessary when the work will be published publicly. Look for places where the tone is inconsistent, where a transition is missing, or where a concept was introduced without proper setup. Most writing never needs this pass. The second pass is sufficient for internal documents, blog posts, and everyday communication. I've used this workflow on everything from technical specs to product descriptions to personal essays. The one area where it consistently adds the most value is technical writing, where ambiguity is expensive. A single unclear sentence in a migration guide can cause someone to lose data. In that context, the Hemingways Writing Style isn't an aesthetic preference. It's a risk mitigation strategy. The extra editing time pays for itself in the support tickets you don't get.
