Ernest Hemingway believed omission made a story stronger.
Like an iceberg invisibly towering below the ocean’s surface, he wrote with the belief that most of a story should be hidden from the reader, leaving ample room for the imagination to run wild.
Hemingway’s Iceberg Theory is most prevalent in the intimate moments of his novels and short stories.
Unlike any other writer before him, Hemingway was able to write about intimacy without ever actually addressing the intimate moments.
Take, for example, this passage from A Farewell to Arms…