Hemingway’s Iceberg

Hi everyone,

Today, I continued outlining my new novel. For me, since I write fantasy, setting is very important and my conflict tends to come from it. This means that I can’t write or properly plan anything until I know the setting. That’s what I worked on today.

I drew pictures of the setting and labelled what happens at each part, and what obstacles it presents for my characters and how they over come it. I also wrote rudimentary descriptions for each part of it. Moving around in this setting isn’t easy or straight forward so I had to work that out-with arrows and labels.

Tomorrow, I have to work on more detailed descriptions. By the end of this process, my setting will be very detailed. I won’t use most of the detail in the novel. It’s really just for me. An example of Ernest Hemingway’s iceberg metaphor. This means that in good writing, the reader only sees the iceberg above the water (the words on the page), but the writer knows much more and has created this much bigger, hulking iceberg beneath the surface (research and unused material).

This hidden iceberg of knowledge and world-building under the surface of the pages gives rise to a deeper, more complex and emotional world for the reader.

If there is no substance under the water, the reader doesn’t react well to the book but doesn’t know why.

And if all the massive iceberg (exposition or info dumps) is above the water (on the page), then the reader gets bogged down in irrelevant details that stops them reading and creates a slow book.

I’m creating my hidden iceberg at the moment. When I’m finished and ready to draft the novel, I will only include what the reader really, really needs to know and I’ll filter it through my main character. So the reader will literally only see the tip of the iceberg, but they will sense the giant mass hidden below the surface.

Good to note is that this isn’t a minor setting in my novel. It spans more than one chapter and is the heart of a large beat in the story. So it deserves this time. I don’t give settings that are a ‘one-use setting’ this level of time or effort.

Alright, that’s it from me for tonight.

See you tomorrow.

Happy writing.

Joanne.

Micro-tension pages revised: 17