Write like Hemingway? There's an app for that

If you want to make your writing 'bold and clear' a new app puts Papa at your shoulder. But can software really help those who have not a prose style?

They made an app. It was a good app. I tried it and wrote better. Then killed a bear.

There is a lot of software offering help to aspiring creative writers (and indeed established ones who have lost confidence) get past the many obstacles in their way. Organising research, plot points, fact checks, thesaurus. Some even offer to advise you on style, but few will be convinced that the journey to their Pulitzer will go via iTunes.

Another stumbling block to creation, of course, is often the oppressive sense that other writers have already written what you want to so much better than you ever could. Some might say this is a necessary bump in the road, requiring the writer to bear with their anxiety of influence, use some negative capability and thereby write something fresh. Others might say: This calls for an app!

And so, answering this call, comes a bit of useful Hemingway programming which offers virtual advice from the man who everybody says is so bloody marvellous.

Actually it's not entirely bad: it points out excessive adjectives, tiresome uses of the passive voice and so on. What it doesn't do, sadly, obviously, is get you any closer to Papa's prose. I fed in some more or less random passages from The Sun Also Rises: some of them were declared "good", others much worse. Surprise surprise: a good prose style plainly makes itself up as it goes along. It would be nice though. Very nice. I could win prizes. And then kill bears.

Ernest HemingwayFictionClassicsLindesay Irvine
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