Half the Words, Same Result

In my sophomore year of high school, my English teacher had our class do a comparative study on F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. We were to read both The Great Gatsby and The Old Man and the Sea, and then decide which writer we preferred. “Disregard the actual plot of the novel when you make your decision” she said, “just decide whose work you find more enjoyable to read.”

I read The Great Gatsby first and had a fair enough opinion of it. The characters were multidimensional, and the plot moved along at a nice pace; it was a good book. However, I was not even a quarter of the way through The Old Man and the Sea before it was clear that it was a much more enjoyable story to read. This had me rather confused, as in comparison The Old Man and the Sea has a much dryer plot compared to the lavish and dramatic story of The Great Gatsby. Yet, Hemingway’s placid tale had grasped me much quicker and much tighter than Fitzgerald’s glamorous world ever could.

I came back to class, like the rest of my peers, with my decision. I clearly preferred Hemingway. I found that the novel kept my short attention span focused, and I wasn’t glossing over certain paragraphs on a page in the same way that I did while reading Fitzgerald. Our teacher identified the key difference we faced while reading both novels and said that it all came down to distinctions between the authors’ writing styles.

She pointed out that on paper there weren’t a lot of disparities between the two authors. They were both regarded as literary greats, first gaining notoriety through the American expatriate literary community as they worked in Paris during the 1920’s. They were products of the post WWI lost generation and often centred their work around melancholic existence and tragic conclusions.

They were even said to be close friends and supporters of each other’s work. Yet the writers were known for being stylistic opposites. While Fitzgerald padded his paragraphs with flowery language and long twisting sentences, Hemingway utilised short and simple writing to get his point across to the reader.

Flowery, or overly descriptive writing, often faces criticism from modern readers, and I think the reason for this is twofold. First, in my experience I find that overly thorough and descriptive writing feels like the author is just content dumping information to the reader. This tends to take away opportunity for imaginative thought, making the read less enjoyable. Instead of Fitzgerald describing to me exactly what Gatsby’s grand home looked like down to the colour of wood polish on the stairways, I preferred the imaginative freedom I had while reading Hemingway. All the necessary tools were presented to me through his straightforward writing, but there was enough room left within his narrative for me to use my own imagination. Letting your audience do some of the work themselves is a great trick that authors can use in their stories, as it keeps the reader engaged by forcing them to fill in those purposeful gaps. In a modern world where consumption of media is at an all-time high and average attention spans are at an alltime low, keeping readers engaged by maintaining a simple and straightforward writing style is the better choice.

Secondly, the use of flowery language chock full of words from the thesaurus tends to fare badly with readers because it lessens the trust and credibility they have with the author. It was Albert Einstein who is believed to have said “if you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you do not understand it well enough.” This idea of measuring an author’s expertise in a subject by their ability to explain it concisely has been examined in a 2005 study by psychologist, David Oppenheimer. He found that when he substituted simple text for stuffy and overly academic sounding language, participants reported that the author sounded unintelligent and under qualified on what they were writing on. “Anything that makes a text hard to read and understand, such as unnecessarily long words or complicated fonts, will lower readers’ evaluations of the text and its author,” Oppenheimer reported.

Whether you’re a diehard Fitzgerald fan and love to soak up all the fancy long winded language of the books you read, or whether you enjoy the gritty and simple words of Hemingway, the facts tend to point to a general distaste for flowery writing throughout the literary community. All in all, I agree, keep your writing short and snappy or risk losing your audience.

by Rhea Abraham.