Hemingway's Style

Before I started the first draft I had a particular style in mind that I was hoping to emulate. As I read Hemingway's final book (published postmortem) "True at First Light," I noticed he used a very particular writing style to move the reader through the novel.  In scenes of the book that he felt were particularly important he used almost all dialogue.  Very occasionally description would fall between the dialogue but just to show the addition or leaving of characters from the scene, almost like stage direction.  When the scene was over Hemingway would switch to prose to move time along quickly and get to the next important scene.  What was very interesting was the length of his prose and dialogue was usually very consistent.  He would, for example, write one page of prose to get the characters to the next day, then two pages of dialogue for a very important scene when they are about to go hunting.  He would then switch back to prose for one page to get the hunters out to the kill and two pages of prose for them to talk about the act of the hunt.



As I got about the editing process, I want to focus not only on the gramatical changes but on the flow of the book.  Very often in the first draft you can tell if I, the author, am in a good mood when I'm writing or in a bad mood. You can also tell if I'm chatty or short.  I need to find a consistant voice across the length of the book so the reader forgets that it's my voice speaking and begins to feel like it is theirs.