Hemingway's One True Sentence: How to Start When the Page Is Blank
Every writer knows the feeling. You sit down with time set aside, a cup of coffee, and a clean page, and nothing comes. The story was clear in your head an hour ago. Now it won't budge. Ernest Hemingway knew that feeling too, and the way he got past it is one of the simplest pieces of writing advice ever put on paper.
The advice
"All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know."
— Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast (1964)
A Moveable Feast is Hemingway's memoir of his early years in Paris in the 1920s, published a few years after his death. Back then he was young, broke, and not yet famous. He wrote in cafés over a café crème and in a small rented room, filling notebooks and trying to learn his trade.
Some days the work wouldn't start. When that happened, he describes standing at the window, looking out over the rooftops of Paris, and telling himself not to worry. He had written before, and he would write again. All he had to do was write one true sentence. So he would write one, and then go on from there.
What it means
Hemingway wasn't asking for a brilliant sentence or a beautiful one. He was asking for a true one.
A true sentence is something you actually know: what you saw, what a character really feels, what happened in the room. It isn't decoration or throat-clearing, and it isn't trying to impress anyone. In the same part of the book, Hemingway says that when he caught himself writing in a fancy, ornamental way, he cut that part out and started again with the first plain, true sentence he had written.
That is the quiet genius of the advice. A blank page asks you to write a whole story, which is overwhelming. Hemingway's rule asks for one sentence, which isn't. And once one true sentence is down, the next one usually knows where to go.
Four ways to find your true sentence
Start with something you can see. A rusted mailbox, a soldier's boots by the door, rain on a tin roof. Concrete details are hard to fake, which is exactly why they ring true.
Say it plainly. Use a subject, a verb, and as few adjectives as you can manage. You can dress it up later. Most of the time you won't need to.
Write what the character knows, not what you want the reader to think. "She was devastated" is the author talking. "She folded the letter and put it back in the envelope without reading the last page" is what actually happened.
Cut the warm-up. Look at the first paragraph of your draft. Often the real story begins two or three sentences in. Find the first true sentence and start there.
How it applies to storytelling
Truth in fiction can sound like a contradiction. Fiction is made up, after all. But readers can tell the difference between a scene that's invented and a scene that feels true. The facts may be imaginary. The feelings, the details, and the way people behave have to ring true.
That matters even more in historical fiction, where the story sits on top of real events. In At the End of Hardship, the backdrop is the real conflict between President Truman and General MacArthur during the Korean War. In For a Woman's Love, it's the life of a helicopter door gunner in Vietnam. In stories like these, one false note, a detail that couldn't have happened or an emotion that doesn't fit the moment, can break the reader's trust. One true sentence at a time is how you earn it back.
Hemingway's rule also helps with research. When you know a great deal about a period, it's tempting to show all of it. The truest sentence is often a small one: one sound, one smell, one gesture that puts the reader right there.
Your challenge this week
Before your next writing session, set a timer for ten minutes. Write one true sentence about a place you remember well, a kitchen, a classroom, a car, a street corner. Make it plain and specific. Then write a second true sentence that follows from the first, and a third. Don't stop to polish.
When the timer goes off, read what you have. You may find you've already started a story.
If you'd like, share your one true sentence in the comments. I'd love to read it.
Keep going
The blank page is never really asking for a masterpiece. It's asking for one honest sentence. Write that, and you're on your way.
If you'd like something to read between writing sessions, you'll find my free short stories here on the site, and my novels At the End of Hardship and For a Woman's Love are on Amazon. And if your club, library, or group would enjoy a talk on writing or the history behind my stories, you can book me for a free talk.
Keep reading, keep writing, and keep it true.
Lovely read